Inquisitive Poker vs Prescriptive Poker by Phil Gordon

Ok, first of all, this article was not written by Phil Gordon. It is from a seminar conducted by Phil Gordon and I am just downloading the key takeaways I got from it to share with you guys.

Who is Phil Gordon? To be honest, he kinds of sounds and looks like Nicholas Cage to me. He is better known for being the author of "The Little Green Book", really revolutionary poker thinker of his time, really good book by the way. He has 5 WSOP bracelets and plenty more other accolades.

So what is Prescriptive Poker?

Do you have that annoying friend that always asks you things like.... if you have AQ under the gun, how much should you raise? If on the button instead, what should I do? Should I c-bet a 7 high flop? What if it is K high?

Prescriptive poker is when you give a solution to a particular situation, generalizing the action you should take without considering anything else. For example, always 3 bet with Queens no matter what. Raise with AK, limp with AJ, etc. Prescribing an action for a certain scenario. However poker is not that simple, nor straight forward. That's why Phil is teaching us to be inquisitive.

Instead of asking what you should do in certain situations, you should be asking yourself more questions in any situation. For example.

- How likely is it that I have the best hand?
- How frequently do the small and big blind defend?
- How many hands have I played recently?
- What hands will my opponents expect me to be playing?
- What will I do if I get re-raised?
- Have any of the remaining players given anything away?
- How much do I need to raise to get the information I need?
- How many players should I want to play against?
- What are the remaining stack sizes?
- Does getting involved in the hand pot-commit me?
- What are the chances of flopping a monster?

For me the key takeaways are

- You need a plan when you play a hand
- You need to put players on a hand range
- You need to know what they can put you on as well
- You need to know what they think you put them on too

I need food. This is giving me a headache. Anyways, if you're one of those annoying guys that keep asking me what to do with certain hands in certain spots, be ready for a bunch of questions I will ask you back.