Cowboy Carl versus the Loose Gooses
By Dave Scharf

If I were to give you only one piece of advice for low-limit casino or cardroom poker it would be: Tighten up pre-flop.

Three Kinds of Loose Goose

There are three categories of players who are too loose at low-limits: (1) Those that don't know any better; (2) Those that do, but can't help themselves; and (3) Those that think loose play is essential for deception. These three make up the loose gooses.

If you are in the first category - you have no idea what it means to be loose or tight - then go today and get a good book. Lou Kreiger Hold'em Excellence: From Beginner to Winner, Lee Jones Winning Low Limit Hold'em, and David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth Hold'em For The Advanced Player all contain excellent starting hand guides. If you are in the first category, the best way to get better is to get a book and start studying.

If you are in the second category - you can't help yourself - then neither can I. If you know you are playing too loose then I'm not sure what I can say that will reform you. Try writing down every dollar you win and lose. After a year look at the total and ask yourself how to make it better the next year. Almost certainly you will conclude (as I did) that adding even a little more discipline to your pre-flop hand selection will improve your bottom line.

And finally, if you are in the third category - you believe you have to be deceptive - then I want to introduce you to Cowboy Carl. But first, let's examine why you think you need to be deceptive.

Self-Evident Poker Truth Number One

If you are playing loose for deceptive purposes I suspect it is because of self-evident poker truth number one: "If you play too tight, you never get any action." The implication, of course, is that if you are a tight player then when you enter a pot your opponents will simply fold and you will never make any money.

And so, with self-evident poker truth number one ringing in your ears you call pre-flop with king-ten offsuit when you are under-the-gun in a low-limit hold'em game. "I have to mix my play up," you tell yourself, "or my opponents will figure me out and they won't give me any action."

There is, however, a problem with that idea as it applies to little-skilled low-limit hold'em games. For self-evident poker truth number one to be true, your opponents must notice that you are tight and they must act upon that knowledge. Hmmm· maybe it wasn't so self-evident after all. The point is that if nobody is going to notice whether you are tight, loose or otherwise, then why bother trying to fool them into thinking that you are one or the other - they are not paying attention anyway! It gets even better than that though. Some poor players notice, but don't alter their play accordingly. You will actually hear them say: "Oh-oh, Mr Tight is in. He must have pocket aces. I call." On the river they will muck their losing hand (who knows what it was?) and puff out their chest and say, "see I told you so" as you roll over your aces. It's weird. I can't explain it, but you see it happen time and time again.

Still not convinced that you can play tight in low-limit games and nobody will notice? Let me tell you the story of Cowboy Carl.

You Can't Miss The Guy

Cowboy Carl is a real person. I have occasionally played against him. Carl has what can only be described as a flamboyant sense of style. Every time we have played together Carl has been wearing a magnificent western shirt on which there is embroidered two royal flushes (one above each breast pocket), a ten gallon hat (maybe twenty or thirty gallons for all I know) and snakeskin boots. In short, you cannot help but notice Cowboy Carl. He sticks out in a crowd.

His playing style is not nearly as flamboyant however. In fact Carl may be the tightest player that I have ever seen in a low-limit game. To speculate, I would guess that Carl limits himself to AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, AK, and AQ. If I am right, Carl is playing 62/1326 hands or about one hand every two laps of the button. Assuming thirty hands an hour Carl plays about 1.5 hands per hour (excluding his unraised big blind). The point is this, if ever there was a super tight player that the bad players would notice it would be Carl. I mean it't like a rodeo is sitting in seat number eight. It would be impossible not to notice how many hands Carl folds because it is impossible not to notice Carl.

At least, that's what you would think. But no, Carl gets all kinds of action on his good hands. After two hours of folding hands, Carl is under the gun and he announces: "Raise." Five players call Carl's raise. The flop comes Kxx of mixed suits and a betting frenzy breaks out. Carl bets out, gets raised and Carl re-raises. And so it goes until the river when Carl turns over KK for a set of kings and takes down the pot. Carl had folded almost every hand for two hours and then he suddenly went nuts betting and raising! The poor players at the table had never noticed Carl folding hand after hand. As a result, they didn't know that Carl would only re-re-raise with AA or KK in this situation. The bad players not only gave Carl action on his good hand, they raised him several times!

I mean, here was a player that practically had a sign above his head reading "I am a super tight player don't give me any action" and nobody other then me noticed. Weird. After three hours of this I actually leaned over to Carl and asked him: "Doesn't it amaze you that anyone ever calls you?" Carl nodded and said something prophetic: "You know, it's the same everywhere I play."

And there it is: why try and deceive poor players? They aren't paying attention anyway and it's the same everywhere you go.