Hope and Fear

Have you ever noticed how much more clearly you tend to see things at the poker table when you're watching a hand you're not engaged in? Of course you have. With the pressure of personal involvement out of the way, a certain inner static evaporates, and your ability to put players on specific hands feels enhanced and amplified. Another ability kicks into high gear for you as well – I'll bet you've found that you're considerably more perceptive when it comes to reading facial and body language, and catching clues and tells without even looking for them. As an emotionally detached spectator, your intuition seems to border on clairvoyance. Some of the signals you pick up defy verbal description, but wordlessly you appreciate and understand them. The nuances you detect are so subtle that you don't process them in conscious terms, yet your grasp of their meaning and significance feels dramatically heightened. As the action unfolds before you, its dynamic is crystal clear.

At every stage of that action, you see – in fact, you know – who is leading and who's drawing, who is playing intelligently and who isn't. You spot who the actors are, and their attempts at deception seem childishly transparent. Nothing feels mysterious. With each new development, your ability to re-evaluate your impressions remains nimble and confident. Whatever complexities you see are distilled into manageable form, and you feel a profound sense of inner stillness as you watch. In contrast to your own deft appraisal, the players you're observing seem plodding and error-prone. It's almost as if the game is in slow motion, and you wait with a kind of amused impatience while surveying a progression of events that lags a few steps behind your vision of it. More significantly than anything, you know with absolute certainty who the winner will be before his cards are turned over, and it amazes you that the participants, some of whom you had thought were good players, could have been in any doubt whatsoever regarding the outcome.

And just as surely, you've noticed how seldom – if ever – you achieve this state when your own chips are in the pot.

Don't worry, you're hardly alone. You've simply been victimized by human nature. We are not robots, after all, and since poker is a game of self-interest and money, it's only natural that our emotions come into play when those two things are on the line.

In my opinion, the two emotions most counterproductive to the serious player are hope and fear. They are opposite sides of the same coin, and are the greatest impediments to playing winning poker.

The problem with fear, of course, is pretty obvious. It paralyzes us. It also shows on us, and it shows in a variety of ways, such as a moment's hesitation that carries insight to an observant opponent. Fear can take a seed of rational doubt and spread fertilizer on it, forcing it to sprout into timidity, or mutate into panic. Even worse, fear can goad us into feeling a need to prove something, either to ourselves or to another player, at exactly the wrong (and most expensive) moment.

But while much has been written about the liability of fear in poker, not enough attention is paid to its evil first cousin, hope. In life, hope is generally regarded as a positive emotion, but it is worse than dead weight in the cardroom. At the poker table, it is just another form of passivity, and leads to the mindset that one's outcomes are the result of luck. The next thing you know, you're just another victim who's blaming the dealer for all of your woes.

Let's get specific. There you sit, hoping a certain card shows up that will make your hand. What on earth does this accomplish? Technically, "to hope" is an active verb, so supposedly you're putting energy into an actual activity – yet it is not an activity at all. It is not proactive, but utterly passive. Can your hope have any effect on what that next card will be? Of course not. There it sits on top of the deck, and all the hoping and wishing in the world won't change its spots. Meanwhile, your mental focus could be directed at matters over which you do have control. For instance, how 'bout spending your time exploring some contingencies? Try assessing the prospects that exist if you don't hit your hand. Are there any scare cards that would enable you to bluff successfully? Well, what are they? Even though you're not on a flush draw, does the board make it possible to represent that you were? If the river brings a third suited card, would the evolution of the betting lead an opponent to put you on a flush? Perhaps a simple overcard would be an effective scare card that could win you the pot. Or, if neither one separately will do the trick, what if it's both – that is, a third suited overcard? Would that specific combination cause your opponent to cave in?

Likewise, suppose you have reason to believe that someone has a big overpair. If the river pairs the flop's highest or second-highest card, might your opponent despair and put you on trips? If so, there are other questions that need to be answered, and we've got only a matter of seconds. Is representing a hand a viable option with this particular opponent, or is he basically oblivious? Is he a hothead who sometimes mucks in knee-jerk fashion? Has he been winning or losing? If he's a calmer sort of fellow, is he capable of laying down a hand? If he is, will the size of the pot enhance those chances or reduce them? What about position? Is your position conducive to a steal here? How would it best be executed? And aside from your perception of your opponent at this stage of the game, what is his perception of you? Would he automatically donate to you at the end – or would he rather eat a bug than pay you off?

Of course, Lady Luck could smile upon you and actually make your hand, but if that happens, have you weighed the various alternatives for maximizing your profit? If you go for a check-raise, how sure are you that someone will bet? If it's a multiway pot, will a bet likely come from your left or right? (If from your left, a check-raise could add many extra bets to the pot, whereas leading out would probably be better if you determine that a bet or raise would come from late position.)

Sitting around preoccupied with mere hoping distracts you from asking these questions, as well as many others that can increase your effective outs in a hand, as opposed to your actual, literal outs. And even when this sort of probing fails to bear the fruit of immediate profit, the overall strength of your game becomes healthier and stronger. Such mental poker exercise becomes habit-forming, and leads to mental poker fitness. Moreover, by actively investigating the realm of possibility, you expand the borders of your abilities as a player. In the long run, plenty of good will come from keeping your head in the game, instead of playing a game of hope in your head.