Advanced Learning Articles
"If I know something you don't
know-I take your money."-Sklansky
Looking at the Meta-Game
The
"meta-game", where it concerns poker, is actually a broad
concept which includes
several meaningful variations.
In the broadest sense its implications are fairly abstract
as
it represents all poker play which is happening everywhere at
this moment, in the
recent past, and the various trends
which may be evolving out of all that. The only
way
that I can see this may be useful for poker players to
understand "meta-game" in
that sense is to know that
there are new general trends, or types of play, occurring in
poker
all the time, to be on the lookout for those trends, and to
adjust one's game
when it might be advantageous to do
so.
In
the next and fairly more narrow sense of it, "meta-game" refers
to information that
we can gather about our opponents
which occurs outside of the immediate poker
environment,
or the table we are sitting at across from them. This is
not as weird,
useless, or farfetched as it sounds-quite
the opposite. This has become a very
significant
factor for online poker players due to advent of tools such as
poker tracker,
which allow you to display the styles,
stats, and tendencies of almost any player you
might be
up against. At poker sights which offer the compatibility
for the data, you can
gain a serious advantage over
your opponents using these tools. Its obvious that if
you
know weather or not your opponent is more likely to make a
certain call, or if he
is likely to be bluffing or
semi-bluffing, your bottom line at the end of the day is going
to
be higher. After all, information is the key
to successful poker play. To a lesser extent
the
note-taking tools that pretty much all online sites offer also
support this concept. Its
the same thing, just
not as comprehensive, as the notes you take yourself about an
opponent
only represent play which you have observed over a short period
of time, and
can often yield faulty results.
The
most commonly used, and probably most narrow definition of
"meta-game" refers
to how decisions which we are making
in the present are likely to affect results down the
road.
This is another important definition, and almost all top-pros do
incorporate this
kind of thinking into their play at
one point or another. I would break this type of
"meta-game"
thinking down further into two basic situations.
First
you might to decide to do something purposely in order to create
an effect down
the line, such as making a loose call in
order to represent yourself as something of a
station,
and deter weak bets being made against you. This is pretty
common, and all
forms of "creating deception" are
actually part of this meta-game catagory.
The
second part of this has to do with situations in which you are
faced with a tough
hand decision of some kind, a real
50/50 type play. Instead of flipping a coin though,
you
resort to your meta-game thinking, and consider how your
decision will affect your
table image or other factors
which might affect success later on. In his recent book
"Hand
by Hand" Gus Hanson talks about a hand at the Aussie Millions
where he made
an unlikely call against a monster bluff
due to the fact that folding would cost him his
"table
captain" image. He already knew that his opponent was a
big bluffer and that
there was at least a good chance
that his own Ace high put him in the lead, but that
in
itself wasn't enough to make the call. He was on the fence
about it until he started
thinking about what would
happen to his table image if he folded. That's a perfect
example
of meta-game thinking in this sense.
I hope this
has been a helpful guide to the "meta-game", and has served to
expand
a few horizons. It is a useful and
probably necessary concept for serious online players
to
understand. Certainly there are advantages to be had if
these ideas are followed up
to their natural
conclusions, such as looking into poker-tracker, and beginning
to
incorporate different kinds of thinking into tough
hand decisions which may affect
the outcome of later
plays. Best of luck with your own "meta-game"!
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