It Was 20 Years Ago Today ...

This month marks an anniversary of a sort: It was 20 years ago that I first sat down in a public cardroom, where "they went through me like a freight train through the wind." Twenty years. Wow. Twenty years of trying to balance sensible caution with naked aggression; of work on the math and the mind reading of the game; of peeling back the layers of this never-ending and endlessly fascinating onion; and of trying (without much success) to figure out how to play pocket jacks from early position.

Twenty years on, I flatter myself to think that I've learned a thing or two about poker. Considering how much I've written, I'd have to be a good deal denser than I am not to have picked up at least some knowledge by blowback. Still, 20 years on, I'm certain that I know less than half of what I think I know about poker and only a tiny fraction of what there is to know. After 20 years of trying to solve this problem, of one thing am I convinced: This problem will never be solved. I don't find that thought depressing -- to the contrary. Faced with a challenge I never get tired of confronting, I think I chose my obsession wisely.
Anyway, I was sitting here waxing nostalgic, got to wondering whether my early writings have stood the test of time, and decided to go back into the archives and find out. This proved difficult, for 20 years ago, I was writing on an IBM PCjr (the dinosaur of the computer age), in a word-processing program called WordStar. Well, guess what? None of my old WordStar files open cleanly anymore. They all look much like this:

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Yet, I was able to wring out some content from those early works. Let's see if any of it still rings a bell.

THOU SHALT NOT FALL VICTIM TO CHAIR GLUE. You've played tight for two hours. Now you take a bad beat and you're behind, and anxious to catch up. Leave now, before the damage is done. Remember the law of poker dynamics: A body in a card game tends to stay in a card game unless acted upon by an outside force, and that outside force is usually your empty wallet.

Quaint, huh? It's not that the notion of getting stuck and chasing has gone out of fashion -- you still see it every day -- but what amuses me is the idea of two whole hours being a long poker session, and then the idea of being put off your rails by a single bad beat. I guess I had less poker stamina back then. Maybe we all did. Quit after two hours? Hell, we're just getting warmed up. And thanks to a better grounding in math, I think we're also much better equipped to take garden-variety bad beats in stride.

NOT PLAYING A RUSH. This may sound counterintuitive, but rather than try to push a rush, why not consolidate your profit instead? Take a walk. Think about it. The money will still be there when you get back. But it might not be there if you don't go away. Remember, nothing kills a rush faster than getting out ahead of one too many hands.

I think I was trying to warn myself and my readers that when we're on a rush, we're at risk for reckless adventures. Nevertheless, we all now know that when you're on a rush, you have the benefit of a strong image and the perception that, for the moment at least, you can do no wrong. The game's balance of power is temporarily in your favor. Why would you want to walk away from the table when things are going great? So my advice then was not just counterintuitive -- it was just plain wrong.

ABOUT SUBJECTIVE REALITY. So much of hold'em is betting on what your opponents assume you hold. Contrast this with seven-card stud, where they can see most of what you have. Success in hold'em, then, is predicated on seeing yourself accurately through the eyes of others.

Well, yeah, that's still true. Although, how many of today's players would say, "Seven-card what?" I'm exaggerating, of course, but who 20 years ago would have predicted that no-limit hold'em would become the be all and end all of poker? I thought by now that we'd all be playing anaconda.

DON'T BE A FLOPHEAD. There's nothing more expensive than a cheap flop. It sucks us into a hand with marginal cards, whereupon we often see just enough improvement to string along long enough to be seduced and abandoned on the river. Bad idea. Just say no.

I remember being terribly pleased at giving the world the word "flophead" (along with "Omaholic," my other self-congratulatory neologism of the time). And while I still think that bargain hunting can be a bad idea, most of today's players are better at measuring the risk and reward of speculative hands, and better at getting away from hands that miss. I also don't think I put cheap flops in the context of position back then. A bad hand in good position is not so much a must to avoid, especially if you bring it in for a raise.

QUALITY DECISIONS. For my money, the one basic trick of consistent winning is making the quality decision: peering into the depths of the hand you're playing, taking in all the facts and half-facts at your disposal, factoring in your feel for your opponents, and their feel for you, mixing it all together on the spot and arriving at a conclusion. Your conclusion isn't always right, of course, but players who don't analyze and decide just aren't playing good poker.

Now, not only is that still true, it has become the rock upon which my game stands. To this day, if I'm "making the best possible decision based on the best available information," I can stand pretty much anything the game throws at me. Certainly it's easier to take setbacks and bad beats in stride if I believe I've done thoughtful, thorough analysis. And it has become common knowledge that if you're a better decision-maker than your opponent, you will make consistent money on the margin.

So, well, there we are. Twenty years on, some of my poker truths are still true. Others … not so much. And there's good news: Twenty years on, I think I'm finally starting to figure out the game. But you know what? I'll bet you that 20 years from now, I'll still be saying the exact same thing.

And I still won't know how to play those damn pocket jacks.

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. John Vorhaus' photo: Gerard Brewer.