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Something really caught my attention
on the Internet the other day, an
article all about cross-cultural
faux pas that pop up in advertising,
particularly when copy is written in
one language and translated into
another without regard for how
idioms and cultural nuances can lead
to dramatic and unforeseen changes
in meaning. Oftentimes, the results
are dire, unforeseen, and funny,
too. When Chevrolet introduced its
Nova in Latin America, it had a bit
of an image problem to overcome,
since "no va" in Spanish means
"won't go" — not quite the image one
would want when trying to sell cars.
It got even worse and much funnier
when Coca-Cola tried translating its
name into Chinese ideograms. The
Chinese characters that Coca-Cola's
advertising people came up with
translated as "Bite the Wax Tadpole"
to the Chinese, which isn't an
appealing name for a soft drink in
any culture.
Texas holdem
Poker has a language and a culture
all its own, too, and that got me
thinking about how we misuse it at
the table. Sometimes we misuse it
just as badly as the advertising
agencies did that tried popularizing
a car that won't go in South America
and a wax tadpole soft drink in
China. We communicate in a multitude
of ways at the poker table: Our
actions, our hand, face, and eye
motions, and our betting patterns
all speak volumes to our opponents.
And when someone is communicating,
listening to what he is saying can
pay big dividends, especially if it
provides a clue about the kind of
hand he has, and whether the action
he is taking is consistent with the
hand he holds.
But just as "no va" translates into
a car that won't go in Spanish,
sometimes we misread our opponents,
too, and that's usually because
they're speaking a different
language than we are. After all,
when we attempt to decipher what our
opponents are holding and whether
their actions are consistent with
their cards — or they're
inconsistent, and represent either a
slow play or a big bluff — we make
our judgments based on what a
reasonable and logical player would
do. But what's sauce for the
Texas holdem
poker-playing goose is not
necessarily sauce for the gander,
and unless we can reason that out
and factor those results into how we
read our opponents, we're liable to
go as far astray as the ad agency
did when its ideographic depiction
of "Coca-Cola" turned out to mean
"Bite the Wax Tadpole."
Let's get really simple here. You're
in the big blind in a Texas holdem
game. Someone opens for a raise from
seventh position. What could that
mean? With some opponents, it means
they could only be holding the same
kind of hand they'd raise with when
first to act in early position:
aces, kings, queens, or A-K. Other
players might open for a raise from
late position with any two facecards
or any pair, and quite possibly any
ace, particularly if they peg you as
a fairly tight player who is wont to
defend his blinds without a big
hand. Still others would raise with
a pair of sevens or better, or any
two-card combination as long as it
was A-10, K-10, Q-J, or better.
The natural tendency is to use your
own raising standards as a guide for
applying a range of hands to your
opponent, and that's not a bad way
to go about it — as long as your
opponent plays like you do, and
hasn't read you as someone who's
quick to release a marginal hand
from the blind.
It's natural to do this because we
tend to see our own actions as
responsible and moderate, tempered
and true. Whether or not that's the
case is entirely problematical. In
fact, if you took all the poker
players in every casino and cardroom
in the world and baked them into a
pie, the largest slice by far would
be neither responsible nor moderate,
nor tempered, nor true. After all,
the majority of poker players are
not right smack-dab in the middle of
the responsibility spectrum. A few
are tighter than you are. Some are
looser, and a few others are right
there at the maniacally loose and
absurdly tight extremes. And none of
them are going to see things in
quite the same manner as you.
So, it's up to you to gauge their
play, and make determinations about
what they might do, based on how you
read their playing proclivities and
how well you figure they're reading
your own playing style, and how that
all figures into the decisions
they'll make when you're their
opponent instead of the guy next
door.
If you're sitting there thinking,
"This hasn't happened to me," it has
— believe me. Anytime you find
yourself sitting there wondering,
"How in the world did he call a
raise cold with 7-5 and back into a
straight to beat me?" it's happened
to you. It happened because he's the
kind of player who does things like
this. And when you were blithely
assigning possible hands to him and
figured he had to have big cards or
a decent-sized pair to cold-call a
raise — and therefore a possible
straight that could be completed
only with a 7-5 was impossible, and
your top set must be the best hand —
you simply didn't assign a wide
enough range of hands to him. You
misread him. The devil, as they say,
is in the details, and this time
those details were lost in
translation.
From his
Texas holdem
poker-speak to yours, something went
very wrong. The result is a pot that
was lost, and even if you would
never release top set under any
circumstances — few of us would in a
fixed-limit game — at least you
could have saved a bet or two on the
turn and the river.
So, sit up and take notice the next
time that happens. Then, just grin
or grit your teeth and resolve to do
better next time. Those kinds of
things are bound to happen when you
bite the wax tadpole.
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