Poker and Creativity

Occasionally, when watching a WPT or WSOP episode, an announcer will refer to a player as “creative”. Generally this means that said player can put any 2 cards together to take down a pot. And generally the best players in the world have this ability.

So what is there to be said about creativity in poker? And how does one improve their creativity? Does a winning player need to be a creative player?

Creativity is something that seems almost innate to a human being. Some people have it, others don’t, or have much less of it. Throughout my life I have always been thankful that I had been raised and taught with a solid foundation of math and science. I have always been a numbers guy, doing well in math and science, you know - logical stuff. However, being of this mind can get you into trouble when you are forced to be creative.

Without getting to much into my limited philosophical understanding of life, I feel that in order to be truly creative (and if you look at the worlds greatest “creators” you will see this common theme) you must create something that has never been seen, heard or even thought of by anyone including you. If someone draws a painting or writes a song, the product that is ultimately produced will generally be a conglomeration of every song/painting that they’ve seen or heard, where they take what they liked about them and made it their own. New creation? Not exactly. But it is new in the sense that no one has seen that exact song or painting before. Basically what I’m getting at is the more creative you are, the more you can take what you’ve experienced and turn it into something different. Being the logical person that I am, whenever I try to create something, I take a very logical approach. Say I was writing a song with my guitar. I would essentially “program” the song in my mind, taking bits and pieces of every other song I’ve ever heard before and combine them in some sort of way that sounded coherent. But what I feel a truly creative person would do, is basically invent something completely different, putting together riffs and chords that have never existed before to create something that is truly unique. Because I am trapped in a mathematical world where 2+2 has to equal 4, and chords A + C = sound good, I can’t break out of that box to create. A creative person can. They see beyond the math that contains me, and takes it to a different level.

Ok that paragraph was a little crazy, but I hope it made sense. Now to the poker application of all this.

By being mathematical and logical about your game, you can really only go so far. You learn what hands have +EV to play, and play them accordingly. You know that when you flop trips, mathematically you will be ahead so often that it is +EV to call someone’s all in reraise. You learn about the probability of drawing and pot odds and all that. You know about position and how it mathematically changes the hand. So you have all that, and you are probably going to be a strong player, and if you remain disciplined, you will most likely become a wining player. But, any decent player playing against you, who is aware of your logical play, can take you out by exploiting exactly the types of things that you can’t even fathom in your little math world.

I find myself doing the same plays over and over again while playing online. I play hands the same way almost every time. I basically play them the way that they are supposed to be played, based on the probability that I am beat or have someone beat. I sometimes reflect on the plays I make and laugh at my own robotic idiocy. I know that if anyone is really paying attention to me, they can figure me out and dominate me, but since I havn’t run into enough players that have this ability, I will continue playing ABC (+EV) poker.

So if playing solid logic poker is +EV, then what is solid logical creative play? You guessed it: ++EV. And boy did I exhaust my creative resources to come up with that term. Once you understand the math and all that stuff that goes with it, you advance to the next level of play – exploiting the math guys.

A quick example.

You are a creative genius sitting to the right of a multi-tabling math master (no limit cash game). You have seen him raise preflop with the standard top 20~ hands depending on position. You have seen him make continuation bets on the flop after being called. You have 5s6s and are faced with his opening raise. You are the only caller and the flop comes Ts8h4d. Knowing pretty much exactly how he plays, at this point he either has two overcards or an overpair. He makes his continuation bet and you are faced with a bet representing an overpair, or at least a hand that is better than 5s6s. What do you do? You call. His next action will determine your move. If he has 2 overcards, being a math man will force him to check the turn. He knows it is almost always –EV to fire a 2nd bullet, especially while multi-tabling where reads on his opponents are sparse. He will almost always continue to fire that 2nd bet if he indeed does have an overpair, where you can then decide to continue with your hand, knowing almost exactly what he has. You can even get really tricky by reraising his turn bet, representing a really strong hand, if you have seen him make laydowns in this situation.

Basically you are just exploiting the math that binds him.

In this situation, if the math master was a bit more creative, he would mix up his play. If he had the mind to check/call with overpairs and fire 2nd bullets with overcards occasionally, it would be almost impossible to get a read on him.

I unfortunately am stuck in the math master mould, unable to break free of my captors, and subsequently giving away pots to more observant and intelligent players. My plays are designed to be +EV against basically terrible opponents who don’t know what my bets mean, or against equally math minded individuals. Against smart observant players, they will be –EV. However, as long as I continue to play against unobservant players I will continue with my robotic, uncreative play.