Playing the Poker Metagame

As your knowledge of poker grows and your understanding widens, you will begin to appreciate how poker hands are linked and not necessarily independent of each other. On the surface it would appear that all hands are independent of the previous one. After all, the cards have been shuffled be it in a live game or online and if the shuffle is adequate then the cards will come out randomly for the next hand.

All this is true of course but in this instance I am not referring to the randomness of the shuffle. I am referring to how what you do in one hand affects what you do in another.

For instance lets say that you sit down at a poker table and your first five hands are KK, QQ, AKs, KK and AQ. You duly raise with all these hands but in the first four instances, your opponents fold. But now you see an AQ on hand number five. Your image has been affected by raising for four hands on the spin and the table doesn’t know that every hand has been a premium hand as your raise has not been called.

So you make a legitimate raise with AQ and you now get re-raised by the button who has ATs. Had this been your first raise then the button may have folded this hand or merely called but your previous actions have affected the mindset of the player on the button. Instead of merely calling or folding the AT…..they are now raising with it.

Of course your hand cannot stand a re-raise as your opponent is now representing a hand that is stronger than it actually is and stronger than your AQ. This is precisely why hands are not independent of each other. Metagame or the game behind the game affects how you play certain hands which has little to do with your actual hand strength but more to do with the history of what has happened in the poker game so far.

Another example might be if you have been playing very tight so far and suddenly get dealt a piece of cheese like 8-3 on the button. Your previous play makes raising with this and getting away with it more likely as your previous image is of someone who is tight.

Metagame and image plays don’t work as often online as they do in live games for the simple reason that players come in and drop out of games at a far faster rate and haven’t had the time to notice what has transpired previously. Even so, if you are playing in heads up games then Metagame principles can certainly apply.

Implementing this into your poker game really will elevate it to a whole new level. One of the things that you must remember when you play poker is that a “poker hand” isn’t two cards in hold ‘em. A “poker hand” is the entire situation and action that has occurred.

Most people would assess pocket queens to be a good hand in hold‘em but its pretty dire if pocket kings are going up against it. This is why you must look for good situations in poker and not for what appears to be good starting cards. Because “starting cards” is really all that they are, the actual “hand” consists of far more than that and only ends when the hand is over.

But always remember that everything that you do in a poker game impact in some way on what you will do in the future. Also with tracking devices like Poker Office for example, what you have done in the past can be there for all to see as well. This makes diversifying your game a critical part of your overall strategy in modern poker.

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