Back to Back to the Past

A while back, I wrote a column in which I did an archaeological dig, of sorts, into my past poker wisdom, of sorts, and investigated whether those early ideas had stood the test of time. Well, some of you seemed to like that exploration and reached out to tell me so, and since I'm like a dog with a bone with praise, I immediately responded by launching another voyage into the archives of my earliest poker writings, circa 1988. Forward into the past again, shall we?

Desperation Metaphysics: Sometimes poker players have bad luck. This is not news, but the way we deal with bad luck separates the winners from the losers, in poker as in life. In times of bad luck, some people think that only the application of weird ritual or direct appeal to the poker gods will pull them out of their funk and back into their winning groove. This, my friends, is desperation metaphysics, and I'm here to tell you that it's wrong, wrong, wrong.

And on that one, I was right, right, right. Between then and now, I've learned what every solid poker player knows: Setbacks happen, and the way out of a tailspin is not through imprecations to gods, but through the thoughtful application of basic principles. You tighten up. You gear down. You drop down to a lower level. You take a break. You refresh your understanding of poker through study. In the sense that bad luck is a storm that's at least partly self-induced, the way we weather it is by reducing the damage within.

Relax! Why be tense? Why be grumpy? You're playing poker, for gosh sakes. Sure, I know it seems like torture that you've had to fold 10 hands in a row, but is it really? Lighten up. Tip a waitress. Love life a little, why don'tcha? It could be worse: You could be working.

Some number of years after committing this observation to print, I stumbled upon a better way to describe the negative mindset that some of us get into. It's called a luxury crisis, and it comes about when we feel bad about something that we really shouldn't feel bad about at all. It seems to me that anyone who is privileged to play poker either for fun or for a living has no right to complain about anything, for merely to be at that table is to exist in a state of privilege that 99.9 percent of the world's population cannot enjoy. But you know what? No matter how much I tell people to lighten up, they don't seem to listen. I guess it's true what they say: To an a--hole, the whole world looks dark.

It's not bad news when they raise your blinds. At a full table, in nine- or 10-way action, even if your blinds aren't raised, you'll still be surrendering most of those random rags after the flop. So if you fold to a raise preflop, all you've lost is the chance to catch a miracle flop - unlikely - or the chance to catch a tantalizing half-miracle that just drags you into trouble. When they raise your blinds, then, they're actually doing you a favor. Oh, be sure to pay that favor back.

I don't think I appreciated just how valuable this advice was back then. Position is so powerful in hold'em that there's almost no good argument for getting involved in a hand when you don't have that edge. (The need to be in action is an argument - just not a good one.) And remember that the advantage of position comes not just from last action, but through having control of the hand and, especially, winning pots through bluffs and steals. It's damn hard to bluff when out of position, or, indeed, to find any effective line of play. Why deal yourself that disadvantage? Unless you have very strong cards or very strong reads, just surrender your blinds and move on.

Don't watch the flop! Sure, you want to know if the flop helps you. Everybody does. So, watch the other players instead. You'll learn volumes from their reactions, or at the very least not give away anything by your own reaction. In other words, study your opponents before you study the cards. That flop isn't going anywhere, but critical information (reactions and tells) is fleeting. Never watch a flop fall again.

It took me forever to train myself off of watching the flop, and to tell you the truth, I'm not sure it's done me that much good. These days, almost everyone I play against is sufficiently good at guarding their reactions that they give away very little useful information in terms of reactions and tells. Nevertheless, it continues to astound me how fixated most players are on that flop. They literally cannot tear their eyes away. So file this information away under "good card hygiene." It's just basic common sense to watch the other players instead of the flop. You probably won't learn anything, but you definitely give nothing away. As a bonus, the time it then takes you to absorb the information of the flop will slow down your play and give you an extra moment or two to arrive at the correct line of play.

The long view: When you first sit down to play, your cards don't really matter. In fact, they'd probably do you a favor if they weren't very good, because you won't be ready to compete effectively at first - not until you've had a chance to get a line on your opponents' play. Take the long view, and take your time. Remember that your goal is not to win this hand or that hand, but to crack the game and make it bleed money to you. To do this, the first thing you need is information, and you can get that whether you play hands or not.

Back then when I was thinking of the long view, I was thinking of the 20 minutes or half an hour it would take me to figure out my foes' weaknesses and strengths. After 20 years of writing about poker, and of just living life, I now see "the long view" in a much broader context, and I use that context to keep me from freaking out over bad beats or minor setbacks. These days, I invoke the 20-Year Rule: If it won't matter in 20 years, it does not matter now. It's still a good idea, though, to breathe into a poker game. Information is power, and the more you gather before you go to war, the better your results will be.

John Vorhaus is the author of the Killer Poker book series and the new poker novel Under the Gun, in bookstores now. He resides in cyberspace at vorza.com, and blogs the world from somnifer.typepad.com. John Vorhaus' photo: Gerard Brewer.