Everyone hates to hear bad-beat stories. The worst are the ones disguised as legitimate questions about strategy. You've heard them before - and I hear them all the time. "I had two kings, and there was a raise and a reraise in front of me, so I moved all in, and the first guy called with J-10 offsuit, and the next guy called with pocket sevens, and the flop came 9-8-7. What should I have done differently?" Of course, the answer is "nothing." All you can do in poker is get your money in with the best of it. The rest is up to the gods of variance.
Clearly, the guy who lost with pocket kings after he got it all in as a big favorite, and then wondered what mistake he made, is guilty of
results-oriented thinking. He lost the hand, so he assumes he must've done something wrong. In fact, the player with the kings had no control over whether he would win the hand, only over how the money got into the pot. These are two very different things.
The above is an obvious example of results-oriented thinking, but there are other far more subtle examples, as well. Let's look at a more interesting no-limit hold'em hand. You have two queens and open for a raise. Only the big blind calls. The flop comes 7-4-2 with two hearts, and your opponent checks. You make a bet of half the size of the pot, and your opponent calls. By the turn, there is $1,000 in the pot and you have $3,500 in your stack. The turn is an offsuit 8 and your opponent checks. You bet $600. Your opponent sets you all in. Should you call?
Let's say that you call, and your opponent has the A
9
. If he hits an ace or a heart on the river, does that mean you made a bad call? Of course not; that's exactly the same situation as the guy who thought he played his kings badly after he took a bad beat with them. But guess what? Just because your opponent had the A
9
in his hand doesn't mean you played your hand well.
Your opponent's holecards are another
result, just like the river card is a result. To illustrate this point with an extreme example, let's say that your opponent misread his hand, and thought he had two aces. Would you still be congratulating yourself for having called him with the two queens? The fact is, if you read an opponent for a specific hand, and you happen to be right, that doesn't
prove your read was correct. Your opponent happened to have a flush draw, but would he always have a flush draw when you read him for one? Would he have one about 70 percent of the time? Maybe he would have a flush draw only 10 percent of the time, and this just turned out to be one of those times. Sorry, but if your opponent turns over the A
9
, that doesn't prove that you made a good call. To think so would be another case of results-oriented thinking.
"OK, Matt," you might say, "I'll put him on a range of hands that he could've had. I think he would've made that play with any ace-high flush draw, a pair of jacks or better, any set, or the 6-5 for the straight. I ran it through PokerStove, and I have about 25 percent equity against that range, which means I needed 3-1 on my money to make the call. I was getting only $5,100-$2,900, or a little more than 2-1 on my money, so I guess I made a bad call. That's what you wanted me to say, right?"
Again, not necessarily, because even this argument, by far the most well-reasoned analysis of the hand so far, is not completely independent of the results. The opponent in question had a flush draw, but we didn't know in advance that he would play a flush draw this way, and we have no idea if the rest of the range is even close to accurate - not to mention that if our opponent had turned over something wacky like 9-2 offsuit, we would have absolutely no way to come up with any kind of range that makes sense. And finally, it's possible, and even likely, that this opponent would not play each hand in his range the same way every time. For instance, maybe he moves in only half the time with his sets, and the other half of the time just calls with them. The point is that poker analysis is almost always a form of educated guesswork, and it's almost impossible to keep the results of the hand out of the analysis entirely.
So, how do we combat this problem? For starters, we shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking about the two cards our opponent happened to hold at the showdown, let alone what card happened to fall on the river after all the money went in. Next, we should try to come up with some idea of how accurate our reads are. This is something I struggle with as a player. If I put my opponent on top set, how often am I right? If I put him on a bluff, how often am I right? The only way to track this is to keep notes about each session or tournament. But even that's not good enough. You have to be honest with yourself and not let the results of the hand influence your
reporting of your reads! How many times do you hear someone say, "I knew he had aces, but I called anyway"? Did he really "know" before he put the money in? And if so, why did he call? Did he call because he didn't trust his knowledge enough, because he was priced in, or for no good reason at all? I don't track my reads in any systematic fashion, but I think it might be an interesting experiment to try. If you take it on, please let me know what kind of results you have. And in case it's not obvious, I'm not interested in hearing, "I thought he had two sevens and I was right." I'm interested in hearing, "I recorded a few thousand instances of reads that I made at the table, and 75 percent of the time that I put my opponent on a flush draw, it turned out that he had a flush draw." That kind of information might be useful.
I hope I've shown how tricky it can be to analyze poker decisions objectively, without being influenced by the results. This difficulty might be the single biggest obstacle facing players who are trying to improve their games. Make every effort to fight through results-oriented thinking whenever you're working through a poker hand.
Matt Matros is the author of The Making of a Poker Player, which is available online at www.CardPlayer.com.
