Now, I’m not a maniac, and
most players who know my game would vouch for that. But, as mentioned,
my unusually high energy and spirits made me come in gunning. And the
table image I created from the first round – that of a madman gambler –
gave me an advantage over my slightly shell-shocked foes. But then, to
maximize this advantage, shortly after I shot my wad so to speak, and
recognized that I’d been playing recklessly and that I’d gotten lucky
but it wouldn’t last, I decided to change gears.

This
was the obverse of my usual procedure, i.e., create a tight table image
and then exploit that with steals and re-steals. No, this time I had
created the image of a veritable maniac, and the best way to exploit
that image is to gear it down and play tight as a drum. To succeed at
poker you never want to get yourself pigeonholed as this or that kind
of player. You never want to fall into a discernible pattern. Changing
gears, whether you start out playing loose or tight, is necessary if
you want to keep your opponents always guessing, always a little
uncomfortable when you come into a hand.

Indeed, a few of the
fellows at the table made comments under their breath and to each other
about the hysterical quality of my play. I overheard one guy, who could
have passed for a young Bela Lugosi, lipstick and all, I overheard him
say, “Those bloody chips are coming my way,” referring to my sizable
stack. Of course I targeted Dracula over the next couple of hours,
playing only premium hands whenever he came into a pot. As a result we
had a few showdowns where I crushed his queens with my kings or
destroyed his A-Q with my A-K, that kind of thing. I had the guy
re-buying every hour. So, clearly, changing gears is important, whether
you gear down or up, whether you start slow or fast.

But that
being said, after I started showing only premium hands, and everyone
thought I had finally regained my sanity, I started betting, raising,
re-raising, and moving all-in like a maniac once again. Okay, I’ll
admit I was catching a few cards when I played my junk and when I made
moves with nothing but a two-outer, but if I hadn’t been changing
gears, if I hadn’t read the rhythm of the table correctly, and if I
hadn’t gotten into the heads of every player at the table that night, I
would have done well but I wouldn’t have won a bundle like I did.

Then
again, the poker gods can be so fickle, eh. The best poker tactics and
strategies look ludicrous and overstated when things don’t go your way,
when the cards don’t come, or you miss flops. A few nights after my
tour de force I found myself in the Fallsview again facing a table full
of frothing maniacs who were moving all-in at the drop of a hat. I
could hardly catch my breath these guys were playing so fast. To
counter this I tightened up my game considerably and waited patiently
for a chance to strike. But it didn’t work out that way. After I took a
few bad beats with premium hands I was so thrown off my game I wound up
turtling and playing scared. I couldn’t even get it out of first, never
mind changing gears. So sometimes, let’s face it, the hill is too high
and too steep to climb, no matter what gear you’ve got it in, and
that’s when you turn around and quietly pedal home.

Emile Frendo of the Honeymoon City is a semi-professional poker play and winner of the 2006 Pirate Poker Open Championship.