One of the toughest things about poker is that the variance that the luck factor brings to the game can really mess with your short-term results. I often receive questions like the following from readers of both this column and my blog: "Could you fold aces here?" "Can I get away from a set here?" There are some rare instances when I can, but for the most part, these are just inexperienced players who suffered a bad fate (their aces or sets got cracked), and since they lost the pot, they're desperately trying to figure out what they did wrong.
Poker is a funny game that way. Some players are always blaming luck when they lose a pot, while others are always looking for what they should have done differently. The truth is, we measure our success in the game by our profit, so we should be results-oriented, right? Well, yes, we should be long-term results-oriented, but in the shorter term, we should expect some variance within the game and realize that sometimes we're going to make good decisions that lead to bad results, and sometimes we'll make bad decisions and still get rewarded.
The key to evaluating your game and not letting short-term fluctuations lead you to alter your game in negative ways is being able to evaluate situations and hands after they're over without being results-oriented. Have confidence in your game and look back at the decisions you made. If you believe they were correct, move on even if the result wasn't positive.
I've found that it also helps if you have some friends you trust from both a skill perspective and an honesty perspective with whom you can discuss hands or situations. Lay the situation out for them and ask them what they would do. Make sure not to tell them the results of the hand, though; that way, they can just look at the situation in isolation and give feedback. Also, when approaching your peers, make sure that you ask not only about hands in which the results where unfavorable, but ones in which the results were favorable, as well. Maybe it's a hand in which you drew out but the decision was close, or a situation in which you thought it was a real close decision and you ended up having the best hand, but you're not positive that your play had a positive expectation against your opponent's hand range.
As an example, I recently played a hand in which I raised with the Q
10
from the button. The big blind flat-called. The flop was K
9
2
, a dream flop for me. The big blind checked to me, I made a standard continuation bet, and he made a decent-sized raise. Looking at our stack sizes, I knew that if I flat-called and he bet the turn, he would be committing himself to the pot. I wanted to play for his stack, so I just flat-called. Sure enough, on the turn, he put the rest of his chips in and I gladly called, only to see him turn over the A
5
for the nut flush.
Now, if I were being results-oriented, it would be very easy for me to look back on this hand and try to figure out a point where I could have laid it down. The truth is, though, that the stacks weren't deep enough for me to ever really get an indication that I was beat. I very easily could have been up against something like the A
K
, a naked A
, or even a set. A vast majority of the time, I end up with this guy's entire stack and don't think twice about it. There are times when situations arise and there is really very little you can do to avoid them. It's key to be able to recognize these situations and not let the results impact future plays. I'd be making a huge mistake if the next time I was faced with that exact situation, I folded my queen-high flush out of fear that my opponent held the only hand that beat me.
The bottom line is that in the longer term, we need to be focused on producing results. However, in the shorter term, we need to be more focused on making good decisions than on the outcome of those decisions. That can be a constant challenge, since poker can throw some real curveballs at you at times. The good news for us poker players is that it is this very form of short-term variance that leads bad players to give us their money. They're often having bad decisions positively reinforced in the short term when they get lucky, and they're always able to blame the bad results on luck.
Eric "Rizen" Lynch is a professional poker player who is well-known for his impressive online results. Read Eric's analysis on his blog (rizenpoker.blogspot.com), and check out his instructional videos, available at PokerXFactor.com.
