Using Card Dependent Strategies for Poker Beginners
What exactly is a card dependent strategy? Well it is as a series of poker plays that are made by certain types of hands in certain positions given the action at that point. Many stronger players criticise them for being too wooden. While this argument has some merit, it also has serious flaws as well. Once your level of poker sophistication is such that you can dispense with strategy charts then your game will be taken to the next level….or will it?
It is a proven fact that many players start to play worse and achieve poorer results after they acquired more knowledge and became theoretically better poker players. The knowledge that you amass as you go through your poker life is not always conducive to helping you to make money. What other reason can there be to describe what has become known as FPS or “fancy play syndrome”?
This is the act of playing fancy plays but the fact is that this type of behaviour originates in knowledge that has been picked up and then incorrectly applied. So we then reach a situation where having more knowledge becomes harmful and not helpful and so much for the old adage that, “knowledge is power”. I think that card dependent strategies solve these problems to a large extent because they provide the beginner or novice with a good solid track to run on.
In a way then this operates almost like a basic strategy chart and card counting system in blackjack. Here your play is being dictated by numbers which keeps the player on the right track as playing correctly and incorrectly are clearly defined. It is when there is room for individual creativity that problems can arise if this is mismanaged properly. So what is a card dependent strategy and what do those words mean? Well it is basically what it says, a card dependent strategy is basically a way of playing poker that is dependent on the cards you hold and nothing else.
An example would be if it had been folded to you on the button and you held a junk hand like J-6. Here a card dependent strategy would assess your play as a fold because of the strength of your hand. But a non card dependent strategy would be more flexible and take other factors into account. These could be to do with the relevant tightness of the blinds or your ability to outplay these people post flop. So in short then it is taking other factors into account that are not dependent on your playing cards…..hence the term “card dependent strategy”.
While it is clear that this is not the “optimal” way to play poker, the word “optimal” needs to be better defined here. Optimal play is a way of playing that correctly fits a players own level of ability at a given point in time. Also given the environment then card dependent strategies have other strategic uses as well and one such environment is when players multi-table. Here it is not possible to follow everything that is happening if you are playing several tables at once.