Observation of Opponents in MTT (Timing)

For an introduction to this piece i'm going to make a football analogy. Tottenham Hotspur have drawn Slavia Prague away in the next round of the Uefa Cup. To all intents and purposes, Slavia Prague represent an unknown opponent. As with most things in life, the unknown is potentially more difficult to deal with than the known. If i know it will rain tomorrow, i can have an umbrella ready. If i know my train leaves at 533pm i can make steps to get to Heuston Station on time. If im unsure of the weather i might get drenched, or if im not sure of my train time i might miss it. I might not do either but my level of certainty is far lower. However, sometimes knowing things can make it exponentially more difficult as the number of decisions you have increases with knowledge. I'll get back to that soon.

Ok so Spurs are drawn away in Prague, apart from it being a lovely city what other information can they glean and how? Step 1: they send their chief scout to watch some Slavia matches. Observation. What formation do they play? what system? Step 2: Video analysis. They get as many videos of Slavia as possible. The goal is to find weaknesses in the side to try exploit. Does the left back have a weak right foot? Is the keeper prone to mistakes on crosses? Do their centre midfielders like to go forward or hold?

Collation of this information turns Slavia Prague from an unknown opponent into a known opponent. This enables Juande Ramos, the Spurs coach, to formulate a strategy he feels will be productive against this side. This is good obviously, he has gone from a position of no information to a position of lots of information. However, the information in itself presents new challenges - he knows the Slavia left back is predominantly left footed and likes to overlap the left winger, how does he react to this? Does he advise the right back to usher him inside so he cant get crosses in, does he ask the right winger to drop deeper when they lose the ball, does he ask him to hold his position so they can counter-attack quickly? Knowledge is useful but it just adds more levels upon which to think on and implentation of this knowledge is still the key.

Step 3. Awareness. Gus Poyet, the assistant coach is sitting in the stands during the game. After 25 mins he notices that when Slavia have a free kick or corner they are only leaving 2 at the back, so he gets word to the coach to leave 2 up top for a potential quick counter attack.

When you sit down at a poker table for an mtt, generally you are faced with 8 unknown opponents. Sometimes you will encounter people you have played with before, and for that you draw upon your previous "scouting". For everyone else, a challenge facing the mtt player is to scout-in-running. Multi-tasking - playing your own game whilst observing 8 other 'games', often this is done simulataneously over multiple tables. It's a subliminal and conscious collation of information to try gain an advantage against your opponents. Our objective is identical to the Spurs coach - we want to gather, collate and assimilate information on opponents in order to make better, more well rounded decisions at the table.

For the mtt player, software like pokertracker isn't as pertinent or useful as for the cash game player. Observation is the best weapon in our armoury, some things are easier than others to pick up on. When you see someone consistently overplay mid-pairs or weak holdings like KJo preflop, it's an easy one - you make a note mentally or write it down "overplays marginal holdings". If someone is sitting tight and only playing with massive holdings, again it's an easy note of "rock". If he raises a lot from LP or button, again it's an easier observation note "active LP, re-steal potential". These notes are used to help sway a decision one way or another in a hand against said opponent.

Some other things are less easy to pick up on - Betting patterns, amounts, cbet frequency, preflop aggression, postflop aggression etc a lot of this will be collated on a subliminal level, a subconscious level and wont involve notes. I guess some of it can come under "feel". Getting an overall feel for a player involves your interpretation of so many snippets of information. Often this information is over an uber-short sample of hands and is unreliable, but it's all we have to work with.

Gaining knowledge, reads, tells etc is good for the poker player, it increases our awareness of our opponents and increases our chances of making better decisions against them. The more we know about them, however, the more levels we have to think on and that presents challenges in itself.

Ok so it brings me onto an extremely grey area:

TIMING

The question at hand is as follows: along with all your other snippets of information gleaned from an opponent, what relevance does the speed of his/her actions have? We are dealing with fractions here and it is open to massive debate. My contention is this - the speed at which an action is taken is something one should look at when faced with a decision, and can/could be partly used in your response.

SUBJECTIVE

Almost everything to do with this area is of a subjective nature. I could sit at a table for 4 hours with the same opponent who eventually pushes from C/O after a 15 second dwell and interpret this timing differently than someone else at the table who has sat there for the same period of time. It's almost fully subjective and it's not an exact science. Also a skilled opponent can use timing on metagame levels, deliberate delays/speed ups to try influence a call/fold/induce a raise etc.

In general: On a subconcsious level we all observe the speed at which someone is playing on the table. Slow players are more noticeable as they usually wreck everyones head and stand out a mile. For other opponents, it's amazing how we can get a feel for their standard rhythm. Once that is established, you must ask yourself what a deviation from that rhythm means to you (if anything)?

The majority of lay players, casual players, the fish pool, whatever you want to call it, they take ever so slightly longer over big hands. This is a sweeping generalisation but one that i've found holds true. (The opposite may hold true for others, hence the subjective nature of the area). When they see AA or KK either at low or big blinds, it's an extreme rarity to see any sort of insta-move, be it call or raise. They dont have the muscle memory of a lot of hands to call upon, so they need more time to think through their plan of action. Once i peg the rookies at my table, im always acutely aware when they take a little longer over hands and the range i put them on tightens considerably.

For established players (rounders) with plenty of hands experience to draw upon, it's difficult to make generalised statements. One which i think holds relatively true a lot of the time: at high blinds, the quicker the shove from LP the wider the range. Most competent players will have decided even before UTG acts that if it folds to them they will shove their K8o from C/O, their decision is made. The more they delay the more it looks like an obvious steal to the average fish, so speed is important. They want to make it look decisive, no doubts. However this is conversely giving away the "strength" of their hand. Anyone with a premium hand here takes slightly longer than insta, because they dont have a pre-determined play in mind - it's always dependent on how the players before them act. Thus, while K8o is a predetermined shove-if-folded-around, AA has many possible courses of action. If there is a raise ahead of them, do they flat call, reraise, shove? All this means it takes slightly longer to react when it does fold to them - instead of a simple shove-steal the goal now is to try get some action on the premium hand, and this involves slightly more thought (and time). Slightly can equal a fraction of a second up to many seconds.

For sharks, top class mtt players, timing tells are almost best ignored as the metagame involved is massive. Fake delays, fake insta's, TIME BANK tricks etc are all used with a massive range of holdings. It involves thinking on many levels to even guesstimate a range of hands for the time delay involved; so in my experience in situations like these against the best i let my cards speak for themselves.

ADVICE

My advice is as follows:

For your own game - mix it up a little. I said earlier that subconsciously we are all aware of the speed of an opponents game, make that more difficult for them. Vary the speed of your actions. This will add a layer of unpreciability to your game which is never a bad thing. Once an opponent can pigeon hole you it makes you easier to play against.

Work on your observation skills. It's almost impossible to be fully focussed on every hand when you have folded, especially when multi-tabling. In so far as possible be observant, keep your head on a swivel, it will serve you well in the long run.

Observation of timing - Completely subjective. My advice is to be aware of it and to place your own importance on it. As in my football example, if the coach is aware of their system he can place his own relevance onto certain aspects of it and ignore others. Remember, the bottom line is a 10 second delay could be due to your opponent running back from the toilet, or being on the phone, or multitabling, or having an argument with the wife or anything. Timing tells have a range from 0-x% on relevance, x being somwhere below 100, and a lot of the time the relevance is 0%. The speed of someones actions should never be taken in isolation when making a decision. But if you can observe it and take it on board, and attribute your own meaning to it, it may be useful in deciding whether to call/fold/raise.