Newbie Insight

I ran into this Brit on my way to Mendoza, Argentina last weekend, and when he learned I make money on poker, he was fascinated.

We ate a delicious steak dinner (Argentina may well have the best steaks in the world), drank some excellent Malbec wine and then talked poker on the way back to the hotel.

What impressed me about the Brit, whose name was Jason, was that he seemed to ask all the right questions about the game.

"How do you overcome bad luck? How do you deal with the poor runs of cards? How do you ensure that you don't get frustrated and blow your money? How do you keep a level head when things go wrong?" he asked.

Jason immediately realized that the psychological factors of the game are almost as important as game play itself. It took me quite some time to be able to mentally absorb the bad beats, even long after I knew they were just part of the game. Knowing something and acting on it are two different things.

In answer to his questions, I responded that you need to be prepared for a bad run of cards but realize that it doesn't last. Good players always beat bad players in the long run.

I told him that I'm a winning player, but I have losing days all the time. No one wins all the time, and no one loses all the time -- that's what keeps losing players coming back for more.

I safeguard my bankroll by making sure I play at a level where I'm sure I can handle the losses and still be well-off. If I were to lose too much, I would step down to a lower level to rebuild my bankroll rather than playing at the same (or higher) level until I went bust.

I emphasized the importance of playing against players worse than yourself. It does no good to play at your exact level of skill because that would mean you'd be lucky to do better than break even.

It reminds me of what David Sklansky says in "Small Stakes Hold Em." He talks about how humans are great at pattern recognition, but that it's a terrible skill to have in poker because the patterns aren't there. Every hand is an individual event, and past events have no bearing on future performance, unlike many other aspects of life.

Perhaps the natural inclination to get frustrated when patterns don't work out contributes to people going on tilt. It makes sense that it's easier to get angry when you do everything right but the results are unfavorable. What do you do when you do the right thing for the right reason, but get the wrong result? You just keep on keeping on.

Jason didn't know much about poker, but he knew that it wasn't the game for him because he doesn't have the mental fortitude to deal with the random fall of the cards.

The poker players with natural skills quickly acquire the ability to separate the results from their actions. The rest of us need to learn the hard way, by repeated practice at each limit.