Playing Poker for Fun

t must be fun to be Superman and run into a bully when appearing to be Clark Kent. Some guy starts giving you a hard time, thinking he has the upper hand in the situation, but at some point he gets a rude awakening, finding out that he has no chance, and has to back off. Superman is a fictional character, but there are many real people who look quite unassuming but are actually high-level black belts in karate. We all love that quiet power of competence, when things are not as the other person thought they were.

This same feeling is also a pleasure in poker. You have a monster, such as a straight flush or quads, and run into a poker bully who wants to use his money to push you around. Or, maybe he does have a good hand but you have the nuts. It is unquestionably very fun to let the opponent think he is the boss until the point where you have your phone-booth moment and let him see the real situation.

It is also fun to let someone think you are a fearsome character, and see him back off. I remember a story about a friend of mine who was working undercover, and he got into a sticky situation in a barroom. He was with a buddy and some of the locals were about to get real ornery. He and his buddy did the same thing: They backed up toward the door with a hand holding an object under their suit jacket that someone might take to be a pistol. Their bluff did not get called, and they managed to get out of a trap.

This real-life situation also has its counterpart in poker. You act tough and win a pot when you did not have the winning hand. This gives you a great feeling, knowing that you won by making a good and brave decision when most other people would have lost with your hand. You feel that your money was earned.

Using deception is a lot of fun. It is much more fun than just being a straightforward person, betting when you are strong and folding when you are weak. But there is a problem. The fun you derive from acting meek when strong and brave when weak can become an end in itself. The purpose can change from winning money to getting a kick out of deception.

Deception comes at a price. Even though being deceptive is an important tool of poker strategy, there is no such thing as a free lunch. If you act weak and check a good hand, some bad things can happen. First, the pot fails to grow in size when it would have if you had bet. Second, a scare card comes and you lose your market. Third, the opponent decides to take a free card and it helps him turn a loser into a winner. So, deception has to be tempered with good judgment. To be successful in poker, you must not lose sight of the purpose of the game, which is to win money. Poker is more fun to play if you constantly fool your opponents, but making that an end in itself will hurt your bottom line.

Would you rather play a game or not play a game? Which is more fun, playing or sitting out? I am sure that you are thinking these are dumb questions. Obviously, it is more fun to play than not to play - but the question has its point. Folding is less fun than putting money into the pot. Yet, to play the game well, you must fold a lot of hands. The essence of poker is betting that you have a better hand than your opponent. Obviously, playing every other hand against an opponent who is a lot fussier than you are will bring a bad result for you whenever the blinds structure is small enough to allow patience to work. The best hand out of four or five will usually be superior to the best hand out of every two or three. Once again, the fun way to play the game is not the optimal way if one's goal is to win money.

To play or not to play comes up when making the decision of when to quit playing a session. You quit when you are getting tired and feel off your game, and by considering who is still playing. Again, it is more fun to keep playing, but this may not be in your best interests.

You need to have the right attitude in many other areas of poker, as well. You need to suppress your desire to have fun. It is more fun to play for high stakes than for low stakes. Yet, the caliber of play gets tougher as the stakes get higher. The pro needs to play for high enough stakes to cover the overhead of living, but not so high that the game is too tough to beat.

Poker is more fun to play when you can bet whatever you have in front of you. No-limit poker is unquestionably more fun than limit poker. It is often more profitable, as well, but a seat in a soft limit game is better than a seat in a tough no-limit game. Playing only no-limit is not the optimal course of action for a pro player.

Of course, the point of this column is that you have to go against human nature to a certain extent in order to maximize your poker profitability. There is fun in playing the game a certain way, but that way is not optimal. You have to defer your pleasure, getting joy from counting your money after the game instead of doing certain things that are fun during the game.

If you look at who are the most successful poker players, you will see that a lot of them are people who lack discipline in the game of life. They eat too much, smoke too much, and drink too much. Models of discipline, they aren't. Yet at the poker table, they have learned to master the discipline required in poker. They are impatient with many things, but in poker, they have learned how to control their emotions well enough to get good results most of the time.

How about you? Are you one of the many who lacks the discipline to play the game optimally? At some point, a player gets an epiphany and is able to exercise the needed discipline. One of my old Detroit friends, Ronnie the banker, had a serious poker discipline problem for a long time. Then he got into a horrible motorcycle accident and was in a coma for a week. When he came back to poker, he was a totally changed man. I do not recommend this radical method of cure. However, many players experience an epiphany of some kind before they are able to play the game well. You can do this the easy way or the hard way, but do it. Counting winnings is fun, too.

Bob Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Poker. All can be ordered from Card Player. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons: e-mail [email protected]. His website is www.pokercoach.us, where you can get his rulebook, Robert's Rules of Poker, for free. Bob also has a website called www.fairlawsonpoker.org.