Poker In The Dark - How Doyle And Annette Win Without Looking At Their Cards

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The true poker pros have such a fine poker instinct that they manage to do things that mere mortals can only dream of: they make hands out of nothing, read players like open books and bluff away into the sunset with bags of cash in tow. And one of the most impressive things a pro player can do is playing in the dark - betting or raising blind, or even going through several hands without once looking at their hole cards.

The master of masters, Doyle Brunson, is well known for saying once that he could beat a table full of players without seeing his cards, as long as they did not know he had not looked. He confirmed it in an interview:
My two cards didn’t matter. It was the situation. That’s what I’m talking about. Ninety percent of the hands aren’t shown in a poker game. You raise it, and you bet. Then, you bet again. Especially when there’s a lot of money on the table. So when I said one time that I could beat a game without looking at my cards, that’s what I mean. It’s the situations that arise. It’s not the cards that you have all the time that makes you a winner or a loser.

This is not just bravado on his part; it is an amazing command of odds and a very good read on the players in the table. You could say “Well, Doyle has been around for so long, he can probably beat a table full of player in his sleep!”, and you’d be right. So what about the new generations? In his candid blog, young poker master Daniel Negreanu tells all about how he also beats whole tables blind:
I wanted to show [a lady who was learning to play] that you can win without looking at your hole cards.

I made it 60 and got two callers. The flop came 9h 4h 3h. I bet out 120 and both players mucked their hand. At that point I revealed to the table that I didn’t even look!

[…]I genuinely, and honestly believe I could beat that game without ever looking at my cards. I’m dead serious. I couldn’t win if they knew that obviously, but I am certain that I could squeak out a small profit just by taking pots that no one else wants.

That would seem to be the key to it - “taking pots that no one else wants”. The logic behind these amazing poker feats is based on an accurate estimation of how the other players will respond to a raise: will they fold half of the time? More than half? Less than half? Do they give out signs of weakness? Not for the rookies or the faint of heart, blind poker seems almost doable for somebody with excellent memory and people reading skills.

Now for the really amazing part: recently a 19-year-old Norwegian player faced 180 people in an online $4 Sit & Go tournament and won… without seeing her hole cards through the entire tourney. This young lady went on to break several records by winning the Main Event at the first World Series of Poker in Europe, so you must have heard about her by now.

The amazing Annette “Annette_15″ Obrestad has only been playing poker for a few years, so her stunning success playing blind is not due to a vast experience, but rather to her sense of other players and betting strategy. Her playing style is so aggressive that the cards she holds are almost irrelevant: “I do play very aggressively preflop. I always try to attack the weak players at my table. In most situations, my cards don’t matter.” She took this one step further by playing without seeing her cards, mainly in $40 and $50 Sit & Gos. She stopped for a while to focus on improving her playing style, and then she decided to do it again, with spectacular results. This is how she explained it:
This was the first time I’d done it in a while. I really just did it for fun, and that’s why I peeked on one hand; I didn’t think I was going to take it seriously enough. But when I got deeper, I wanted to win [without looking] to show everyone that it was possible.

And she showed them indeed! Annette believes her success proves “how important it is to play position and to pay attention to the players at the table.”

It is hard to imagine a better way to prove that poker is a game of skill and not chance. These professionals, from poker legend Doyle Brunson to young sensation Annette Obrestad, have shown how a player’s skill, control of the table, ability at reading people and poker intuition are more important - and more powerful at the tables - than getting a pair of Aces every time.

[Kids, don’t try this at home! These are trained professionals, even if one of then is a 19 year old girl. If you really want to have a go at playing in the dark, we strongly recommend you do so with play money or at very very low stakes.]

This article was published courtesy of Poker Source Online, the leading free poker gifts website.

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