Art of War Strategy for Poker

Sun Tzu defined several different types of potential combat grounds that require strategy considerations. Among the grounds that apply to poker there is accessible ground, entangling ground and standstill ground.

“Ground which can be freely traversed by both sides is called accessible grounds”

            The majority of deep stack play during the early betting rounds is considered accessible ground. This is usually found to be the case in the early levels of a poker tournament as well as in most cash games. On accessible ground, the betting is generally such that none of the players involved will be greatly effected by of their actions.
Accessible ground is mostly used by players to maneuver for the later betting rounds and to set players up for the subsequent hands.
Because there will still be opportunities to improve the quality of a hand, players can weaken their starting hand requirements in these scenarios.
If their opponent has a weak hand, they may be able to out maneuver them in order to win the pot. If their opponent has a strong hand, the implied odds will often be great enough to allow a player to continue the hand. In either case, the player does not need a superior hand to have a positive expected value on accessible ground.

“Ground which can be abandoned but is hard to reoccupy is called entangling ground”

            Entangling ground is most relative to poker as it applies to your table image. Throughout a tournament, it is important to keep in mind how the rest of the table perceives you. Doing so can allow you to anticipate how the other players may react to you in certain scenarios, and allow you to narrow their range of likely hole cards.
It is important for aggressive players to recognize situations where they may be attempting a bluff that will not work. Under many circumstances such a bluff might be successful, but because that player has portrayed such an aggressive image, their bluff has little or no chance of success. Once a player has lost their image of being a tight player, it is hard to regain. This makes it much harder to bluff the other players at the table.
On the contrary, if that player is perceived as being passive, they can choose any level of aggressiveness that they would like. When that player begins to play aggressively, they will have an advantage as long as their opponents still believe that the player is playing a passive style.

“When the position is such that neither side will gain by making the first move, it is called standstill ground”

There is an old story about two great warriors who agreed that they would meet at sunrise to fight. It was determined that the fight would continue until one of them was dead or the sun had set for the evening. When they met at sunrise they both assumed a fighting stance and stood until the sun went down. Neither warrior attempted to strike at the other because in doing so, they would be exposing a weakness that the other warrior would be able to exploit. The warrior who remained in his stance would have no weakness to exploit, thus his reaction to the attacking opponent should yield a victory. This is an example of standstill ground.
If one opponent is weaker than the other, an attack would be advisable. But if there is no weakness to exploit, your opponent is likely sitting and waiting patiently for you to make the first mistake. For this reason, standstill ground is only found amongst opponents who have a mutual respect for the other player’s strength.
An example of standstill ground can sometimes be found at the poker table when two aggressive players see a flop that is almost certain to have helped neither player. If the flop brings something like 6-6-2, both players will know that the majority of hands that the other player is likely to be holding would not have improved.
When considering this scenario, if one player bets on the flop, there is always a strong possibility that the other player will raise and the bettor will not be able to continue the hand. This is a scenario where each player knows that if they bet, they are exposing themselves to a situation where they may be forced to lay down the best hand quite often.
On standstill ground, the first player to strike is often at a disadvantage unless they have a hand that will allow them to tolerate a raise. It is common for a player to assume that a flop of 6-6-2 could not have helped their opponent, so they will raise and try to bluff an opponent who is holding a hand like A-9 or K-Q.
If you are holding one of these hands and you believe that it is still the best hand, you may be best served by value checking on this flop. This can keep the pot small enough so that you can afford to call a bet when your opponent decides to try and bluff. You can read more about value checking here: DEFEATING OUR ENEMY