Reciprocality: The Cause of Profit at Poker-II

Reciprocality: The Cause of Profit at Poker
Part Two
by Tommy Angelo

From part one:
Before anything flows, there must be a difference. Between different elevations, water flows. Between different pressures, air flows. Between different poker players, money flows.

In the world of reciprocality, it's not what you do that matters most, and it's not what they do. It's both. Reciprocality is any difference between you and your opponents that touches your bottom line. Reciprocality says that when you and your opponents would do the same thing in a given situation, no money moves, and when you do something different, it does.

You can mine for reciprocality gold anywhere in the poker universe. In this four-part series I will examine reciprocality as it applies to information, position, betting, quitting, bankroll, and tilt.



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Information Reciprocality

"My secret is I keep secrets."

I play poker on a need to know basis. I need to know the thoughts my opponents are thinking. I need to know the feelings they are feeling. And I need to know the cards they are playing. Meanwhile, I need them to know as little as possible about me. I call this relationship the information war.

The information war is fought on two fronts -- sending and receiving. To win it, send less information than they send, while receiving more and better information than they receive. By controlling those differences, you control information flow. That's where to mine for reciprocal gold.

On the internet, the information war is fought on a vast landscape made of statistics software, timing tells, chat boxes, forums, and more. Non-internet poker happens on a table, so I call it "table poker." Table poker always comes with sights and sounds and smells and tells and it's like an eternal orgy of information exchange. The rest of this section is about information reciprocality at table poker.

Muscles

Think of the human body as a communication device that uses muscles to broadcast information. It is not always obvious who is in charge of operating the muscles. Sometimes we are, and sometimes they are. The more control we can retain over our muscles, the more control we have over information reciprocality.

Face

Humans have twice as many facial muscles as any other animals. The favored explanation is that at some point in the past, increases in facial musculature made our ancestors better than their neighbors at silent communication. The better communicators had an advantage at surviving, and at getting laid, and that's a genetic jackpot. So anytime a mutated gene gave mother nature a choice on this matter, more muscles in the face were naturally selected.

Now, many generations and mutations later, we've got these 40 muscles in our face, all wired up and ready to send subtle silent signals, and we can't unplug them. All we can do is try to talk them into keeping quiet when we need them to, for the sake of the team. During a poker hand, the brain can be saying "Holy Crap!" and then, just as the face is about to say the same thing, the brain will whisper urgently to the face, "Wait! Shhh! Don't move a muscle!"

And when that happens, we see the poker face. The poker face is an instinctive reaction to situations in which the brain tells the body to stop sending information. Reciprocal gold goes to whoever is better at detaching his brain from his face.

Hands

For the game to be played, chips must be moved, cards must be moved, and human hands must move them. And where there is motion, there is information. Sometimes a little hitch in the hands will tell me something. Sometimes it'll be the way they handle their chips, sometimes it'll be the way they handle their cards, sometimes it'll be the way they check, sometimes it'll be almost nothing, but there's always something.

But the hand movement I get the most information from, by far, is the one where an opponent shows cards when he didn't have to.

Mouth

Here we have a collection of muscles and parts that send information using not only expressions, but also sounds. And not just any old sounds. Words. Sentences. Information of the highest grade. This comes as great news for the reciprocality miner as there are no rules that require the muscles of the mouth to move while playing poker. You have the right to remain silent.

My Teachers

I cannot tell you that quieter is universally more profitable than louder. I cannot tell you that stillness always beats motion. I cannot tell you that less is always more. But I can tell you a story.

Years ago, I used to shuffle chips so much that it was routine for me to change seats in mid-session from the one-seat to the ten-seat so I could switch from shuffling left-handed to right-handed because my hand was sore. My legs would sometimes pulse so violently that my shoes had predictable wear patterns like a poorly aligned car. I have often parked myself at one casino for months or years at a time, and I talked so much at the table I was like a welcoming committee and a table captain and a waitress translator all in one.

And with all that movement, and all that talking, I was still able to support my food and rent habit from my poker winnings because I was still way, way ahead of my opponents in the information war, because of what I didn't do, and didn't say, and when.

I didn't show hands. I didn't talk about hands. I concealed elation and disappointment. When it came to information, I was wide open about everything, except the poker game. I learned to play that way because whenever I went to Vegas in the early years, I ran into two kinds of players: the ones I was afraid of and the ones I wasn't. Naturally I paid most attention to the players I feared most. The conspicuous thing they all had in common was this uncanny way of looking like they didn't give a shit. And it scared the shit out of me. So I copied them and I learned their skills. And the more I did what they did, the more I realized that what I had learned from my teachers was how to play what I call sixth street.

Sixth Street.

Sixth street starts when the betting stops. Sixth street is when players relax, which is why it pays not to. Reciprocality.

Sixth street is when statues become fountains. While playing the turn and river, the players are stoic and unflinching, doing their very best to give up as little information as possible. And then, as soon as the betting stops, their parts start moving, they start broadcasting information about their thoughts, their feelings, and their cards. Sixth street is when players let their guard down, as if all of a sudden it's safe to reveal classified secrets to the enemy. It's like they don't even know the war is still going on.

In the stream of information, sixth street is a reliable place to pan for gold.

Mum Poker

A military arms race results in bigger bombs and thicker bunkers. A zoological arms race results in exquisitely camouflaged prey, and predators who can see them anyway. The information war at poker has an arms race, and if one were to take it to its natural extreme -- which I have -- one would play a style of poker I call "mum poker" -- which I do.

On the outside, mum poker is the traditional poker face, extended to the entire body, and maintained through sixth street. On the inside, mum poker is no complaining, no blaming, no regretting. Mum poker is stillness. Mum poker is readiness. If you wanted to go all the way with it, you could think of mum poker as being like absolute zero, the cessation of motion. It is knowable in theory, and forever approachable, yet unattainable.

Or you could just think of it as sit up and shut up.

Today, when I am playing purely for profit, I play mum poker. I wear a baseball cap, no sunglasses, and no lettering. I rarely make eye contact. I do not speak unless spoken to, and even then, I do not react to comments or questions pertaining to poker. I have found that the less information I send, the more I focus on the game. And when I am focused on the game, I send less information. When I employ mum poker, I fight for reciprocal gold by taking on both fronts of the information war simultaneously.