Yes and no, all good players use a measure of "randomness" in their play, however in any one situation there are profitable plays and unprofitable plays (talking long term), so if you are constantly taking the unprofitable play, sure you will be hard to read (unless you do it too often in which case you become fairly predictable also), and you may win a few hands with pure bluffs, but in the long term you will be coming up against players who either have figured out that you are not playing solid poker and ignore your bluffs, or they actually hold the nuts and check into you letting you bluff where they promptly send you broke. In the long run it is nowhere near a valid strategy.
Here is where some people are led astray, they hear pros talk about how difficult it can be to play in a field of amateurs as they are so random that it's almost impossible for them to get good reads, or people call any bet no matter what their odds and get lucky, etc, etc. Some rookie players hear this and think then that it translates to random play being the profitable way to go. What the reality is though is that when you are a good player sitting at a table of players who are willing to bluff or bet all their money on a 20% shot, and you are a good solid player, getting your money in as a 80% favourite, you only need to run into 5 such people to statistically be handed a bad beat, and be heading home. What gets missed though is the fact that although the pro has been taken out by an amateur, because the pro was playing a solid game, it will have taken on average 5 amateurs playing 2 card bingo to have sent him home, so for the 1 pro, there are at least 4 'donkeys' also heading home. This is why pros will avoid playing fields where there are a large number of very unskilled players and when they do they will normally be eliminated early, you'll find that none of the entrants in events like this are able to place well with any consistency as it just gets turned into a game of bingo. Here's an example I witnessed very recently:
Pro is under the gun, looks down at AA. He opens with a 5x BB bet (knowing that the table is very loose, he's bet a bit more than would be normal) blinds are 20/40 so he's bet 200 out of a 2000 stack. Donkey number 1 is to his left, with pocket 3's, he has no concept of the fact that a large raise by the player under the gun is a very clear danger signal, he hasn't been paying attention to know that the pro has been playing a tight/solid game and that a raise here should be a clear warning that he has a very strong hand. He also does not have any concept of the fact that pocket 3's are a limping hand at best at a full table in early position, against any raise like this they are an instant fold, however he doesn't fold, he re-raises all in!!, he's only got 600 chips left, so they all go into the middle. 4 more players call the 600 bet with hands of J9, J6, A4 and 78. Action comes back to the pro with AA who re-raises all in, knowing that his Aces are not going to play well against more than 2 people, and knowing that no poker player in his right mind can call this bet unless they are also holding AA or KK, so he's assured unless they are all donkeys that he will get the matchup he needs of 2 or 3 players. Unfortunately, none of these players are "in their right mind", lol, so they all call, and we have just about the whole table all in.
Now for those who do not understand the odds in relation to Aces, against any of these hands individually the aces are going to win 80-90% of the time, so for any of these people to call knowing (which they would if they understood the basic concepts and knew to pay attention to the table) that they are so far behind, is just like playing the lotto and hoping to win on a consistent basis, it is simply impossible. The problem comes though when you get Aces vs a number of hands, like in this siuation, even though the pro in this case has done everything right, the fact that he is at a table of donkeys has resulted in him having odds as low as 30-40% to win this hand. Does this make the play by any one of these people correct? Definitely not, in all likelihood five people are going home in this hand, and it's a complete toss up as to who they are, definitely not a way to be able to play consistent winning poker, you may as well be playing roulette and throwing every cent you have on 13. This is in fact what happened, in the end the guy all in with 33 made a full house, and the suited J6 made a flush to take the side pot. Now here is where the problem gets even worse, the guy with 3-3 and the guy with J-6 will remember this time that they got lucky and won big, but if they really sat down and figured out what happened, they could clearly see they made a huge error getting all their money in with almost zero chance of winning, just as much of an error as the other three donkeys who walked away with nothing. This is what we call "results based poker" and is clearly a very poor way to evaluate your game (particularly when your results are skewed as you always remember the big win you shouldn't have won, and forget the hundreds of times you lose on J6, if you actually sat down and figured it out long term, you would see that you have lost a lot more than you have won with these sorts of moves). |