The Navigation of Your Opponents

Navigating your opponents can be a complicated, albeit small part of poker theory. What do I mean by `navigation'? Navigation is a term that applies more to travel, and many of your opponents are `obstacles' to achieving your optimal `destination'.

I consider gaining the desired flow of the betting and raising as play goes around the table, successful `navigation'. In other words, your opponents behave as you predict they will, making your decisions very accurate.

Aside from the main criterion (the relative strength of your hand), your decisions - betting, raising, or check-raising - are often based upon what other players will do when the action gets to them. Since you make many decisions facing multiple opponents, it can be like solving a math problem of multiple variables (in that each variable makes it more difficult).

You have little time to decipher each opponent, and with more opponents, the likelihood of being accurate diminishes. Often, you must concentrate on the few opponents for whom you have the most accurate feel. The situation will change not just based on each opponent's tendency, but according to the strength of their hand - for which you may have no feel whatsoever - and you will often find yourself in a quagmire.

I started thinking about `navigation' when I felt as if the opponent immediately to my left was measurably affecting my results. I found that if the player to my left just called most of my bets and raises, but almost never raised, I felt as if I had less control over the table.

If the player to my immediate left was aggressive, and would more often `raise or fold', I felt as if I had more control over the flow of betting 3 '. I concluded that I was not imagining things. I was experiencing a malevolent combination of two things: The effects described by Morton's theorem and the effects of a `protected pot'.

the effects of a protected pot

describe a protected pot

manipulate the action

the particular Morton's theorem