When Adversity Strikes at the Poker Table
When Adversity Strikes at the Poker Table
When things seem to be going along just fine, cards dealt are good, hands hit and you win a lot of pots both small and large, it is time to prepare for the inevitable. Sure enough, for the past ten or so days I couldn't lose. Session after session I was winning 70 to 80 big bets per hundred, making good profits and thanking the poker gods for this great streak. Today, of all days, that all changed. I couldn't catch a break. Sets were beaten by straights, straights were whipped by full houses. I was making great hands but seemed to be outdrawn on every hand.
Okay, while it is easy to say, "That's poker folks," it is really something else to know what to do when adversity strikes...and it is most certain to do so without warning. I have three solutions that I practice. The stop-loss, the trust in probabilities view, and the escape. Let me elaborate.
The stop loss is a simple technique. When I buy into a cash game I always buy in for the maximum table limit. If I go broke I do not ever buy more chips, not ever. I limit my loss at that table to the buy-in. If I am running poorly, I do not play in cash games, rather I play tournaments that have a stop loss in that I know how much I can lose and win. By carefully managing my buy-in exposure I can limit the adverse impact of a loosing streak.
The second technique is a bit more cerebral. It is simply to understand that poker is a game of probabilities. If I make fewer mistakes over time than my opponents, I will make money. If my opponents make fewer mistakes than I make then I will lose money. So my goal in every session is to not play foolishly, to play each hand correctly and let the probabilities prevail. This is not to say I don't make mistakes. Everyone does. But at the end of the day, if I can say I played my best and made few mistakes; if I can say I played basically correctly, even if I lose for the day I cannot beat myself up for having lost. This is the probability game in full effect. I take a long haul view of the game and not a hand by hand or session by session view.
Finally, if I am not going well at a table and I have not yet gone broke at the table, I sometimes just get up and go home. Playing while being beaten up is not a pleasant experience. Even when playing well, opponents are more inclined to challenge you when you are not hitting than when you are. Players tend to loosen up and play back at someone who is having a difficult time at the table, no matter that he is playing correctly. So I just get up and move on. Sometimes I move to a different table and sometimes I just pack it in, go for a walk, or something else.
Today is a perfect example. I'll describe one hand to give you an idea. I had TT in the big blind. I called a standard raise from the player on the button. The flop came 7 2 T rainbow. I bet and the button called. He is a loose player seeing over 60% of the flops. It is hard to place a loose player on the button on a range of hands but I decided to be conservative and place him on some kind of Tx, Maybe AT, KT, QT, JT. But he could be playing suited connectors as well say 67s. Maybe he was playing a raggedy T like T6 or T7. I am good against any of those hands. I bet out on the flop with a standard C-bet of two-thirds the pot. If he was on a draw this should have priced him out of a call. Even if he was holding two pair, say T7, he was priced out of calling, but call he did. The turn came 6h placing 4 different suits on the board. There was nothing about that card that scared me. Even if he held a pair of sixes, my set beat his. I bet the pot and he raised all in. I called. He turned over JJ. His two over cards to the board needed a miracle J, a two outer to win. A Jack pealed off on the river and this guy wins a huge pot. As I look back on that hand, there is nothing I would have done differently. I played the hand correctly. That being said, the law of probability has one extremely basic tenant, even a blind squirrel will find an acorn once in a while. My opponent commented FISH, apparently aimed at me and then left the table. If I were such a fish, I wonder why he didn't stay for more?
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