Thoughts on Play Varience (Long)

[NegranuFan]

I Appologize to everyone, but it is 5 in the morning and I am on a posting binge. I haven't posted until today and I have some general questions about poker play that I choose to bring up here because here are the better players. They all relate to "better play" no-limit though. Anyway, onto my question.


I read quite frequently on these forums about people who say they will make a move "1/4" of the time, or raise instead of folding 1/8 times. They seem to giving themselves a pat on the back for varying their play but I don't see the logic in the theory of play varience to begin with.

I am proceeding with the assumption that the reason for play varience is to become harder to read.

Here is where I am coming from: everytime you choose to make a play BEFORE THE FLOP, here are some of the factors that I believe a good no-limit poker player flashes through their mind (no particular order):

1-position (general and relative to individual players
2-cards
3-reads on other players (who's better, worse, tilt, drunk etc.)
4-table dynamic
5-chip stack-relative to BB and others.
6-Your table image, general, and specific to certain players

After the flop a whole host of other considerations come into play!

Now, if you are taking even a few of these factors into consideration, play varience would seem to take care of itself. If you are only considering the cards and your position relative to the button, then play varience based on percentages becomes a crude and potentially deadly method for creating deception.

Lets say you choose to do something different just for the "sake of it", then three things need to happen before your change of play will change the read of other players:

1-you need to be playing against players who pay attention (here is a biggy right away!)
2-you need to be playing against them for a significant period of time
3-you need to win the hand and show down, and said good player will have to review the hand and take note of your move.

The number of possible situations that occur in poker is almost infinate, and so I don't see the logic in making a play just to change things up and be deceptive because there are enough unique situations in poker to do that work for you. Z(For that matter, what advantage is there to creating a deceptive image in the first place? but that is another question for another post, which may come up shortly. lol)

Any thoughts? Or is there something I am missing? Id love to know so I can improve my game. Thanks!

Thanks again for your responses.