Playing Cash Games Without Looking At Your Cards

Once you have been playing poker for a while you learn that you need to pay more attention to your opponents playing styles. You need to put them on hand ranges, you need to see if they are playing TAG or LAG or Fishy.

Anyone who has seen my favorite poker movie Rounders remembers the line that he could play poker blind. Meaning most of the time it doesn't even matter what his cards are, he plays the player.

Think about it. How profitable would it be to know your heads up opponent is on a flush draw with Top pair? Forget that you have nothing but high card. If you know your opponent is playing the draw and you are successfully representing two pairs, when the turn and river don't complete the flush draw, you can bet into them. As long as your opponent believes you have the two pairs, they will throw away the best hand.

That is a very simplistic example, I know. But you can get very good at reading your opponents and can learn when to bet into them or when to fold. That is much better than only playing your own two cards and the board.

Well this is a cool little experiment I think is worthy to try.

I have heard of this idea before, but I found it again on another persons poker blog. I am going to use his word for word and give him the credit. I only changed the acronyms to there full words - for example - ATC is an acronym for Any Two Cards. I don't expect all readers to know all the poker lingo.

http://www.lowlimitforum.com/index.php?topic=6017.0

In his first book, Arnold Snyder talks about the value of practicing position play without looking at your cards. Online you could do this by sticking something over the screen where your cards are normally displayed.

It seems to me that this would be great practice in cash games also, since you'd really have to focus on your image, hand reading and knowing the tendencies of your opponents.

So preflop for example you fold most hands from Early Position (mixing in the occasional open if you haven't played a hand for a while), but open Any Two Cards on the button, and maybe 50% in the Cut Off. Small Blind open-limps, you raise. The Cut Off has been opening like crazy, you three bet his Cut Off open from the button some of the time. Donk limps in the Hi Jack, you isolate on button. Two limpers, you limp behind on button or raise to take it down. Nit ( A Very Tight Aggressive Player) opens and you cold-call on the button, then float conducive flops. Loose Agressive Player opens, Tight Agressive player cold calls, you squeeze. You get the idea.

Postflop you'll almost always be in position, so you can use the board texture and your opponent's reaction to decide the best course of action, whether that be to check/fold, or to double barrel shove, or whatever.

I've been thinking about this because it seems to me that often my own cards just complicate matters, and I'm sure I get bluffed off more than my fair share of hands by aggressive players who are just playing ME, not their cards. The most important factor in any hand is my opponent's range and tendencies, and it's easy to forget that and just focus on your own holding.

I think you would learn a lot. You should break even at worse. But even if you loose a couple buy-ins - I think it would pay for itself in the wisdom and skill you gain.

Here is what I think you would learn:

1. Ability to put playing styles on your opponents - TAG, LAG, Fishy, etc.
2. Ability to put opponents on hand ranges.
3. Ability to detect betting patterns of opponents
4. Discover which players are only playing their own two cards and which players ar paying attention to what two cards you play.
5. Ability to have better table selection based on where the fish are playing.
6. Ability to have better seat selection at fishy tables. (Always better to have TAG's to your left and Fish to your right).
6. Understand how playing position effects your table image and what cards you play.

I am going to give this experiment a try. I will probably play $10NL. I'll let you know the results.