What’s the benefit of showing your cards when you’ve made a bad read?
What’s the use of making a foolish statement to the table?
What’s the point in making a bad call, maybe a couple of bad calls, early on?
Advertising.
Of course in poker advertising there truly is no truth in advertising. Advertising is simply setting up your opponent to draw the wrong conclusion. You don’t want to advertise how good a player you really are, rather you want them to think you are a terrible player.
Ever played with a savvy drunk at a live table? Seems like he’s just splashing money around but his stack keeps getting bigger. His big hands keep getting called by weak holding after weak holding? Maybe he’s not as drunk as he’s acting or at the very least the alcohol is not effecting him the way he’s convinced the table it has.
There is a great benefit at sitting down at a table and showing some terrible calls. Especially if you can do so cheaply. Fire that smallish call into the pot on the river and be eager to show-down your no-pair, never had a draw, piece of crapola hand. And get ready for the action to come to you.
Doyle Brunson’s famous quote, “You got to give action to get action” is illustrative of why this false advertising can be lucrative. People will make razor thin calls and pay you off only because they saw you mangle an early hand.
In one recent tournament, I agonized over a ”hero” call with AQ. No pair. I did so, only because the hand my opponent was representing didn’t make any sense. The board was paired. There was a straight draw and a flush draw and yet, the way the hand played out none of that fit with his possible holding. I decided to trust my gut, there was only hand that could beat me if I was right. Sure enough, he held it; AK. His ace high beat my ace high.
What was interesting was a couple of hands later, I watched a player call off almost all his stack against the same opponent. It took him forever to make the call on the river but he finally did with a A on a double-paired board. In the chatbox, the loser wrote, “I just couldn’t get that AK hand out of my head.”
Wow. I did the advertising for somebody else. What’s so effective about advertising is that assesment overrides a player’s in the moment decisions. The terrible call by the other player was terrible because the way the hand played out there were a ton of holdings that had him beat. It looked like the guy connected with a dangerous flop and milked the pot rather than tried to steal it. However, all the loser could think of was the previous pot where AK triple-barrelled with nothing.
Don’t be afraid to etch those moments into everyone’s head. Draw attention to a bad call you make when you first sit down, by offering an implausible and stupid reason in the chatbox to cement the image of your inferiority into the table’s head. Harp on it. Make sure anybody not paying attention doublechecks the hand history to see what kind of nonsense you are harping on.
Now that you’ve convinced everybody you are an idiot. Stop giving action. Sit back, play tight, overbet and let them pay you off. Advertising is an effective strategy.