How Green is My Wally

Based on a true story.

A no-limit newcomer finds himself in Las Vegas for a haberdashers convention. Late one night, his business done for the day, his intestines distended by a heavy meal, and his mind muddled by fine wine (or what passes for such in Vegas), he slopes into the poker room of the new and fabulous Insidion Hotel and Casino. Excited to try the game he's seen on TV and played occasionally with friends in someone's rumpus room, he sits down at the first no-limit hold'em table he sees. This is, of course, a mistake in game selection, but game selection is yet to this newcomer a concept as foreign as Zoroastrianism or the ancient mariner's art of macramé, so let's let that go for now.

A garden-variety Wally (Cally Wally; a weak, loose player), he fumbles his buy-in a bit and eventually plunks down the table minimum, $200 in this $2-$5 blinds game. There's good news and bad news for our Wally. Having bought in for the minimum, he stands to lose the least amount possible; however, having bought in for the minimum, he marks himself as scared, green, or both. He further reinforces his rookie image by taking a hand under the gun, not waiting for his big blind or for the button to pass. He picks up pocket jacks and blithely calls his way into the pot.

Across the table sits a cagey, experienced, observant player we'll call Kitten Caboodle. She studies Wally carefully. She can tell by the way he fumbled his buy-in, by the way he handles his chips, by the way he didn't wait for the big blind, and by his overall fretful demeanor that he's out of his element, and depth. So, she raises to $30, immediately putting Wally's feet to the fire. Wally doesn't much like that. He knows enough about hold'em to know that big pocket pairs are good cards, but not enough to know that -- big pocket pairs notwithstanding -- Kitten has a plan to outplay him after the flop. Furthermore, he's not comfortable having to commit so many chips so early. Heck, his seat isn't even warm yet; his free drink hasn't even arrived.

But pocket jacks are pocket jacks, so Wally calls. The flop comes A-Q-3, and Wally is lost in the hand. Fearing those overcards, he meekly checks. Of course, Kitten bets; she puts Wally all in. Poor Wally. He knows too little about card odds to know that two-thirds of the time, Kitten will have missed the flop. And he knows nothing about Kitten, so he can't gauge whether she'd bluff here or not. All he knows is that if he calls and loses, he'll have lost his entire buy-in on the first hand. He will be miserable.

In the name of not being miserable, he folds.

In the name of turning the screw, Kitten shows the 8 7 with which she drove him off the hand. Now Wally really feels lousy.

And his night slides sideways from there. Stung by the hurt and humiliation of having been bluffed off a big pot, desperate to ease his psychic pain, Wally buys some more chips and starts overplaying his hands. His logic - such as it is - is that if they can bully, he can bully, too. Sadly, he's as transparent as cling wrap, and his second buy-in swiftly goes the way of the first. Soon, he's hemorrhaging at the wallet and doesn't quit until he's financially flat-lined, at which point he staggers away from the table and stumbles off to find the other haberdashers, or possibly a slot machine that at least, won't make him feel so punked when he loses.

Now, at this point in his poker career, all Wally has going against him is lack of experience. To be fair, he doesn't even know enough about poker to be aware of the many mistakes he's made, and that's fine. But if he comes back tomorrow night and the night after that and plays the same way, without learning and without growing, that's not fine. If he thinks he lost due to luck -- Those darn pocket jacks, why didn't they hold up?! -- and figures that luck will get him even next time, he's just compounding mistakes and dooming himself to a long, unsatisfactory relationship with the game. He stands thus at a crossroads. He can either assign himself the task of learning the game properly or assign himself the role of perennial loser.
It's not a pretty picture, eh? Not one I'd want for myself nor, I know, one you'd want for yourself. So, let me ask you a question: Considering your level of knowledge and experience, are you at this moment closer to Wally or to Kitten in ability, aptitude, and approach to the game?

If you have even a modest history in poker, you probably consider yourself to be well past the sort of green gaffes that a Wally would make. And, probably, you are. But guess what? In fact, you're much closer to Wally than to Kitten -- I am, we all are -- for the simple reason that Kitten doesn't actually exist. Wallies exist; Wallies abound. But Kitten is an ideal, a paragon of poker, the rhetorical sum of a lifetime of learning and growing in the game, hand after hand, hour after hour, day after week after month after year. She's the end of the rainbow, the goal we aspire to but never will completely attain. No matter where we are in our poker, the first thing we must do is acknowledge that we're much closer to the beginning than to the end, because the beginning is well-defined, but the end remains, like the end of the rainbow, always out of reach. That's no problem, nor any cause for dismay, for, as Robert Browning said, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or what's a heaven for?" But if we think we have the game sorted, we're doomed, for, as someone other than Robert Browning said, "If you're not slowly getting better, you're slowly getting worse."

Everyone starts somewhere. The question is, where do you go from there? Do you grow in the game, through diligent study and clear-eyed appraisal of your weaknesses and strengths? If yes, you can expect a worthwhile, satisfying, and probably profitable journey through the game. If not, a Wally you have been and a Wally you'll remain.

This will sound twee, I know, but I want you to take out a piece of paper (after you look up twee, of course) and write down three things you can do, now, today, to make yourself a better player. Do it, really, twee though it may be -- 'cause after all, who wants to be a Wally all their days?

John Vorhaus is the author of the Killer Poker book series. He resides in cyberspace at vorza.com, and in the blogosphere at somnifer.typepad.com.