I drive to work each day on a street with two lanes for traffic each direction. It goes through mostly residential areas so the right hand lanes in both directions are available for street parking in the evenings or weekends. You know the type. During rush hour there are long stretches where there are often cars wanting to turn left at the more major intersections, meaning most of the time it’s more efficient to stay in the right lane because there are no left hand turn lanes. The only problem with the right hand lane is that you may get caught behind a bus and there are no bus pullout areas. Our city likes to force the buses to stop in the right lane of the streets to act as traffic speed controls. Where there were once bus pullout areas a few years ago they have since been filled in with extra sidewalk forcing the buses to block the right hand lanes.

This morning as I was driving there was a slow moving big truck ahead of me in the right hand lane. The left lane was clear, so I pulled into the left lane and passed the truck. Up ahead was one of the major intersections. The intersection is at the bottom of a dip in the road so I had good visibility of the entire intersection.

1. Light ahead is red, traffic is stopped,
2. Five or six cars in the right lane,
3. One car in the left, but it was signaling to turn left
4. I’ve passed the truck, so the right lane beside me is clear

Situational analysis told me to pull into the right lane, so I checked to make sure there was enough distance between the truck and the last car in the right lane for me, and then signaled and pulled in. As I slowed behind the last of the cars the light changed.

The car two ahead of me pulled out into the left lane as the traffic started to move forward and I looked to see why. There was almost no traffic coming the opposite direction, so that the car that had been signaling to turn left was able to go almost right away. Had I looked at the volume of traffic coming the opposite direction I would have understood that the left-turning car would be able to go easily and I should have remained in the left hand lane. My situational analysis was correct, but my data collection was incomplete. I didn’t think far enough ahead.

When I’m on top of my driving, I look to see if the car waiting to turn might have an easy time doing so. When I’m on top of my driving I also look ahead in the right lane, past the intersection, to see if there is a bus stopped or preparing to stop. I do a more complete situational data collection and extend my search for useful information to elements that may affect the future.

Obviously in a poker blog there is a poker reason for this story, and it’s probably not hard to figure out what it is. Sometimes when I’m mulit tabling I miss reading the right parts of the story, collecting all the pertinent data, thinking ahead to the future and looking for data that helps me to plan for the future.

Example; I raise preflop from late position with something that I think is worth raising. One of the blinds calls. Flop comes dry so I continuation bet. Opponent calls. Already I’ve missed two pieces of information. 1) how loose and likely the blinds are to call my preflop raise, and 2) how aggressive the caller is postflop and how often he goes to showdown. If I had looked, I may not have raised if I’m raising into someone who is loose and aggressive. Or, if they are loose and have a low fold to continuation bet and a high showdown percentage, maybe planning to continuation bet is a waste of money. Or if he’s very aggressive he may check-raise with a worse hand than mine.

Or, I call a preflop raise with a medium pair and flop a set on a board with some draws including a flush draw. Preflop raiser bets, and I just call hoping to get more money on the turn. Or I raise prelop or call an aggressive player and flop top pair/good kicker, and just call the flop bet planning to get more money. Or I hold T8s and flop 976. Turn in first two cases cases fills the flush or is an 8 or T in the third case. Now, not only might I be behind, but if I’m not behind, my opponent sees a more scary board and probably won’t pay me off with a hand that I was beating on the flop. I didn’t think ahead to scare cards that will kill the action.

And as they say, I made the situation more difficult for myself by my choice of action previously. You see this all the time when players call preflop with hands that can be dominated, like AT and lower or KT and lower. What are you hoping for with these hands? Unless you flop at least two pair, you’re making things difficult when you flop top pair with no kicker or a middle pair.

Think ahead, look for pertinent data to help plan the for the future, and your choice of action in the present may even change.

• The Poker Playbook: Categorized listing of basic poker plays and styles I: Preflop plays
• The Poker Playbook: Categorized listing of basic poker plays and styles II: Postflop plays
• No Worries? No Fear!
• Betting and isolating for value, with weaker hands, in terms of G bucks
• Running badly at the poker tables
• Calling gives you more control than raising?
• Starting hands for full ring no limit hold’em, as percentages
• Fear, of poker aggression
• Dreaming about falling asleep while driving
• PokerStars Statistics