Poker is like...

… fighting with your wife.

I have never won a fight with my wife. I have been right a lot of the time, but I have never won. Hell, even when I got what I wanted, I still lost. I am remarkably bad at winning fights and she has a sixth sense for verbal sparring that is impossible to defeat. Her tactic is undefeatable and her use of it is unrelenting. The move is so simple as to be comical in its simplicity. Never admit anything. When you are behind, raise the stakes. Keep the pressure on and never ever relent.

When I argue, I try to use logic and focus on the problem at hand. When she fights, there is no logic and she brings everything into the mix that she needs to win. I am stuck in the moment and she is using everything at her disposal. When I get a foothold with some bit of logic that seems to make sense and pins her into a corner, she comes over the top of me and brings up something unrelated and with which I have no footing. Her game is constant aggression and it puts me on my heals. If I play into her or I try to call her down, she just turns up the heat even more. If I call again, she moves all-in and I unquestionably fold.

I am a weak passive and she is the ultimate maniac. The only way for me to win is to flop the nuts and have it hold up to 5th street. But that doesn’t happen very often and by the time it does, she has my whole stack.

To win at poker, you have to play the way my wife fights. Aggression, aggression, aggression! You don’t have to be a maniac, but you have to play to win and that means betting and raising a lot.

There is an old axiom that it takes a better hand to call than it does to raise, but I often wonder, sitting around at these weak passive tables, what percentage of these players have actually considered what this means in terms of their game. To me, it became clear in February when I really took some time to consider why I wasn’t winning consistently. I blindly decided to add more aggression to my game and suddenly everything turned around. Just adding blind aggression turned me into a winner. Whenever I was going to call, I raised instead. Whenever I was going to check, I bet instead. If I was going to call when I knew he was really strong, I folded instead. Boom, I was a winner.

This blind aggression has been refined over the last few months, and what was totally without logic but was winning me money now has a basis to it that I understand fully. “It takes a better hand to call than it does to raise”! If you understand why this is, then you will understand big bet poker. The rest is easy.

Consider this hand from two nights ago:

I am playing 4d5d from late position in a NL Hold’em game. It is limped to me by 3 players. I raise to 4xBB. I get one caller. The flop is 6,7,10 rainbow and he checks. I bet almost the pot. He calls. The turn is a 3 completing my straight. He checks and I bet again, pot sized. He re-raises me but only doubles my bet. I push all-in. He calls and shows 89 to take my stack.

What a terrible example, huh? I lost.

Well, not really. I played this hand really well. He played this hand poorly. I will win a lot of money in the long run by playing my way. He will lose a lot of money by playing his way. Understand why this is and you will understand how to win in the NL Hold’em rings.

My wife asked me afterwards how I did. I said I lost money. She gave me the look and I considered defending myself. I considered explaining logically how my losing money was just like her winning a fight. Then I thought better of it. I had lost enough hands for the night.