Poker Pearl #28

In the Sept. 23 issue of Card Player magazine (see scan above), there's a short interview of Andrew Brokos (check out his excellent blog called Thinking Poker.) He has cashed in the WSOP main event for the past three years including a 35th-place finish in 2008.

Adding to your arsenal:
When asked about throwing some wrinkles into one's game, he says:

   I think a big problem that a lot of people
   settle into is playing mechanically. If you
   are open raising and three-betting with the
   same hands, all you are doing is passing
   money around the table.

   If you look at the history of online poker,
   the people who have made a lot of money are
   people who started doing something no one
   else was doing.

   What I recommend is to start doing something
   that you don't ordinarily do. It might even
   be things that only bad players would do.
   It might be min-betting, min-checkraising,
   limping into pots, overbetting the pot,
   and so on.

   Your opponents are used to someone who
   raises their big blind from the button.
   They know how to deal with that.  They
   don't know how to deal with people over-
   betting the turn when the board pairs,
   or something else they've never seen
   before. A lot of times people are going
   to make a mistake.

   After the game, ask yourself how did
   it work out? Were you using it in the
   right spot? Why did it work? How did
   the guy respond? All that gets you 
   thinking about the game, rather than
   going through the motions.