Random Ramblings: Cracking Open the Inbox

I receive so much e-mail with questions regarding poker that I thought it would be a cool exercise to share some of it with you, as you probably wrestle with some of the same issues. Let's take a peek.



TC: Big Joe, I have been playing poker for about two years now and am getting so sick of all the suckouts! It seems that every time I get hit with one, my game completely falls apart soon thereafter. What should I do? I hate my losing streaks because I always believe they are due to others playing poorly against me. Would you suggest moving up in limits to stop the suckouts? I am playing $8-$16 limit now. Help!



Joe: This particular e-mail reminded me of so many others I receive that seem to be about one certain topic, but in reality reveal a completely disparate problem. TC believes that his main issue is not being able to withstand suckouts in his game, but his more pressing problem is perhaps not having the emotional control, at this point, to play poker.



I can tell you that there are going to be suckouts regardless of what level of poker you play. When I started playing $3-$6, I always thought that when I moved up, there would be no suckouts. Trust me, friends, there are still suckouts on my level today. You can't stop them. A good player treats them like bad drivers on the road, and just steers around them and keeps moving. It's just that simple. Suckouts are just an obstacle, nothing more.



As I sit here right now, I just watched Bear (Barry Greenstein) lose a $360,000 pot to Sammy Farha with A-A versus K-K on GSN's High-Stakes Poker; $360,000, people! That's not the story behind that hand, though. The real story is that Bear didn't even bat an eyelash when the K flopped. He just took it and played on. Granted, this is something that a player improves upon with experience, but you need to have the intestinal fortitude to absorb sick beats. It can't affect you. If it does, you aren't cut out for poker.



Another part of the game that comes with the territory is losing streaks. My advice to all those who write to me about their losing streaks is always this: You need to learn to play the game to make the correct decisions, not for the money that you win or lose. I know this concept is, in a sense, nonsensical, because we all play poker for one reason: money. The thing is, you can't control the outcome of a hand. You can control only what you do up to that point. Likewise, you can't control a losing streak as long as you are playing good poker. You just have to learn to let it go if you are confident that you are making solid decisions.



T: Joe, I need your advice. I held pocket queens on the button and called an early-position raise. The flop came down all rags: 8-4-2. The raiser bet, I raised, and he moved all in over the top. What do you think I should have done? Lay the hand down? I think I had to put him on aces or kings.


Joe: The main problem with this e-mail is that it poses the incorrect way to look at this hand, and this particular problem. It's entirely possible that the writer made the correct move and folded to a bigger hand, but he wasn't looking at the situation in the right way. Had he been looking at it from the correct angle, it would have read something like this:



Joe, I need your advice. I held pocket queens on the button and decided to call a raise from a player in second position who had been playing fairly tight and had built up a nice stack by showing down some solid hands. When we took the flop, I had $3,000 in front of me and the raiser held about $5,500. The flop came down with all rags (8-4-2 rainbow), and when the raiser bet, I decided to take a stab there to see if he held something like A-K, or the overpair I feared. I raised, and when my opponent moved all in, I thought that I was up against a higher pair than my queens. Of course, there was a chance he held J-J or 10-10 and would probably play it the same way, but this player was pretty cautious. It was a sickening laydown, but I really believed I was beat there. What do you think?



See the difference? The opening raiser may have been tight or playing like a maniac, but you have to notice both possibilities and account for them. You even have to notice how the player is reacting at that moment, as well. Was he fidgety? Did it seem like he didn't want to put his chips into the pot, or was he stoked to get them in? There are so many factors going into a hand like this that just the "nuts and bolts" of the cards doesn't come close to cutting it when analyzing it. All of the other factors in this hand are actually what make up the entire hand. The cards are the least of it.



Depending on the circumstances, I would have chosen to (a) fold, (b) call the all in, © just call to get the player to put all of his chips in on the turn if he had raised just a smaller amount on the flop, or (d) move in myself if my opponent had just raised and not moved in. The point of this is that poker isn't just a simple game of, "I have good cards, I call." It's much more complicated than that, and much more rooted in psychology than math. While it's true that you have to know the odds and be able to make quick calculations, it is much more important that you know the people you are playing with and how they will react to different situations.



Too often, I receive e-mail that I simply can't answer based on what is written. The last e-mail above is unanswerable in the form that I received it. Instead of trying to tell the writer what to do, I instructed him to begin to look at the game in more minute detail, and to take note of things other than just the cards, such as the players and the situations that arise.



It is very important to be able to accurately assess the problems that come up in poker, and to be able to identify the most workable solutions. Don't focus on just the most basic of principles and try to fix them. You might just be cleaning your windows when your transmission is completely shot and you just blew a tire.



Remember, you can't select the right answers if you aren't asking the correct questions in the first place.



Joe loves to receive all of your questions and comments. You can reach him at [email protected].