Wordplay and game flow

Wordplay and game flow

Stripped to its essence, the flow of the game is language. The words of this language are the structures of folds and betas that two players use to communicate. As in any language, they do not communicate directly - the phrases have only their own ascribed meaning. In this way, the players make for themselves templates of simulated coincidences.

Let's remember the grids of points. Humans tend to create unusually neat structures when thinking about randomness, and poker players are no exception. Moreover, when players encounter randomness, it is an experience. Even if they have a good mental understanding of all the subtleties of the randomness they have created, in poker they will not get a specifically analysed string of letters, so they may not notice everything.

Now we know how our opponent imagines coincidences - neat and uniform. In that case, it doesn't really matter what the randomness is, that it is clustered and irregular. Our aim is not really to make things random, but to make the opponent think that things are random. This means that our actions must be in line with his preconceived ideas about randomness.

When designing the flow lines of our game, we should keep them regular, and we should distribute the actions in a way that is as even and orderly as possible (with enough variation to make sure that it is not just a "three folds, one bet" pattern). We want to simulate a clear, periodic, pseudo-random game flow.

It would be simple enough if we stopped there. But this is where the flow of the game gets confusing.

The way to record coincidences (which we have discussed in previous articles) is the first step in the game of simulated coincidences. This is because everyone tries to set up their game in this way, which is the norm. The opponent will automatically conclude that you do it too. If you do it very well, he will just think that you understand how it should be done. These are the basic rules of this language.

So, in order to improve, we have to move up from this level to a higher level and give in to the "word game".

Remember that your valuebets, denoted by V, which are definitely random, will sometimes inevitably cluster under B (bets). It just happens sometimes. A first-tier randomizer will almost always try to cool things down after such a series, as if to say to his opponent, "That's not my image! It's just a series of good hands, I'm not guilty!"

The second tier player plays using language. He knows that his opponent was Wordplay and game flow1conditioned by other poker players, and saw streaks of good hands as unintentional. Thus, these clusters are classified as harmless. And because they are aware of this, a second-level player can use such clusters as a weapon in his or her game flow arsenal.

Instead of always trying to forge spacious lines, he simply uses swarms, thus creating second-degree game flow phrases. For example, if we were to write phrase 1 as B.F.F.F, a simple spatial random phrase, and phrase 2 as B.B.F.B, the second-degree flow of the game would look like this:

1 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 1

What is a player doing here? He applies the same spaciousness but at a higher level, simply by taking advantage of innocent hand pools at the first level, he can increase the number of bluffs.

To achieve a masterful game flow, a player must learn to play very well with clustered hands. The best players know the mutual possibilities of playing with such clustered lines, so their game already becomes a battlefield in their minds.

Finally, you have to experiment and play a lot to see how your opponent reacts to hand spades, how much he believes in them, and where his limit is when he already retaliates. Ideally, you have to balance on that line without crossing it.

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