As a total poker junkie, most of my life’s experiences get filtered for potential poker lessons. I suspect I’m the only one in the produce aisle that automatically thinks about hand selection while choosing vegetables. It’s hard for me not to contemplate positional advantage in relationship to the button when negotiating my way through a traffic jam. On my way to a family reunion this summer, I traveled through much of the American South, visiting and reading about Civil War battlefields and battles – and of course thought about poker.

The strategy of war, for obvious reason, is often tapped to develop battle plans for the felt. But I also liked this period of American history as my frame of reference because the Civil War was so instrumental in the proliferation of poker, probably only second to the invention of the television hole card camera. As soldiers congregated from all over the country, the game of poker was taught and played to pass the time.

Another interesting facet of the Civil War was the similarity of background and training of the combatants. Unlike foreign campaigns where differences in strategy, training and culture could be diverse, most of the officers on both sides of the Civil War were trained in military strategy, side by side, at West Point. One of the key figures of study in their curriculum was Napoleon. Many West Pointers could recite Napoleons oft-quoted axiom, “The logical end of defensive warfare is surrender,” just as many poker players know the folly of a defensive, rather than aggressive, strategy. But knowing and executing are two different things; in war as in poker.

High Ground and High Stacks:

Being the high stack or chip leader in a tournament is an enviable position. Once you’ve staked the high ground, you have vastly reduced your risk of elimination. Staking the high ground in battle also lessons your vulnerability and enhances your ability to defend your turf. But as the Confederate Army discovered, the high ground is not a panacea.

In both the Battles of Vicksburg and Lookout Mountain, the Confederates had the advantage of highly defensible elevated positions; but defend is all they did. As Napoleon noted, defense is not a winning strategy. The true power of the high stack and ground is the increased risk it poses to your opponents to come out into the open and tangle with you. Once your enemy knows you are willing to sit back and protect what you have, you’ve mitigated most of your advantage. In Vicksburg, the Union prevailed after a prolonged and punishing offensive siege. At Lookout Mountain, the Confederates allowed the Union to close in around the peak. While the peak was still protected, the Confederates realized they had few escape routes. They also realized that by letting the Union take positions just below them, the Confederates now had to expose themselves over the mountain’s edge to attack. In the end, the Confederates had to abandon their position.

If the Battles of Vicksburg and Lookout Mountain have lessons to teach, it is relative to big stack play. If you have stack advantage, you need to wield it, not sit on it. Don’t let your opponents pick away at you without risk because they realize you are taking a defensive position. And don’t give your opponents time to gain ground and stack on you, mitigating your advantage.

Fear and Uncertainty:

As a new commander of the 21st Illinois Regiment, Ulysses S. Grant was about to enter a rebel camp. He was afraid and uncertain and said he would have given anything to turn back. Grant was about to learn a valuable lesson. A lesson the best poker players know by heart.

When the valley came into view, the enemy camp had been abandoned. “It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him. This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards. From that event to the close of the war, I never experienced trepidation upon confronting an enemy, though I always felt more or less anxiety. I never forgot that he had as much reason to fear my forces as I had his.”

Poker is a game of imperfect information. Good players hone their skill at gathering information; developing their card memory, observing tells and betting patterns, and gauging their opponents’ hand selection. Their goal is to decrease their level of uncertainty, to improve their comfort level and odds of survival when executing a hand.

But the very best players use the dearth of information as a weapon. Ambiguity is their ally. Uncertainty is their edge. Unless an opponent has the stone cold nuts, a pro knows they can exploit an opponent’s fear of the unknown. This is especially true in tournament poker, where survival is the underlying goal.

Tournament strategy has classically been described as finding a balance between aggression and survival. The best players shift the fulcrum toward aggression. They exploit uncertainty; playing a wider variety of starting hands, playing more hands, raising pre-flop, and betting post flop, all with the goal of increasing an opponents’ uncertainty and putting them on the defensive.

If a player holds two unpaired cards, the flop will miss them (not pair them) 68% of the time. A savvy player is likely to bet the flop on the chance that their opponent has missed the flop or will fold with a marginal hand, regardless of what they, themselves, hold. They will play on an opponent’s uncertainty and the situation more often than they will play their own cards.

In his attack against Fort Donaldson Grant said, “I was impatient to get to Fort Donaldson because I knew the importance of the place to the enemy and supposed he would reinforce it rapidly. I felt that 15,000 men on the 8th would be more effective than 50,000 a month later.” Grant knew his opponent was weak. He realized that his best chance was to try take the pot with a weak hand rather than to wait for a better one, when his opponent might be stronger and less uncertain.

As Grant quickly learned, once you realize the enemy is dealing with an equal level of uncertainty and fear, the only winning strategy is offense and aggression. After all, if you are willing to take the offensive, the only logical conclusion your opponent can reach is that you know more than he does.

George McClellan, one time commander in chief of the Union Army never learned this lesson. He consistently overestimated opposing forces, always asked for reinforcements, and stalled an attack unless he felt he had an overwhelming advantage. Frustrated with McClellan’s unwillingness to engage the enemy, Abraham Lincoln relieved him from his command stating, “My dear McClellan: If you don’t want to use the Army I should like to borrow it for a while.”

Aggression: use it or lose it.

This article originally appeared in Woman Poker Player Print Magazine 2006