Mind Over Poker

Investing, like poker, requires cold, calculated decision-making. You must remain completely objective and emotionally detached. Most of all, you have to stay firmly planted in reality. I was recently sent a quote from the cutting-edge website scopelabs.net that read: “Trade what happens, not what you think should happen or want to happen.”

For purposes of this column, we won’t get into its relevance to investing. However, as it pertains to poker, this advice seems quite simple and very straightforward — and yes, very relevant. It’s one of those statements that is a lot simpler to understand than it is to practice. Yet, if we could consistently take this advice to heart, our games would improve.

What am I talking about? First, let’s substitute the word “play” for “trade,” with play encompassing all actions — checking, folding, calling, betting, or raising. Now, let’s look at an easy example. We’ve all witnessed beginning players chasing down straights or flushes despite greatly unfavorable pot odds. They aren’t playing what is actually transpiring at the table. They are playing what they want to happen. They are gambling in the purest sense — hoping to hit their draws. For them, it is much more about hope and gamble than making objective, calculated decisions based on all of the relevant factors happening at the table.

Now, if you’re reading this column, I’m sure that you are well beyond that kind of simplistic play. Yet, I think a fair number of players make similar if more subtle mistakes. And we’re all probably guilty of making a mistake every now and then due to our failure to adhere to this advice. For instance, I oftentimes witness a player sit down at a new table and immediately make a tricky move against an unknown opponent. Or, I’ll witness a player make a tricky move against an opponent when he should know that it’s not going to work.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t have a repertoire of tricks and moves in your arsenal. You should. However, you should be using them selectively and judiciously at those opportune times when you have the best chance of succeeding. You don’t play in a vacuum. You have to take into account everything happening at the table. Failure to do so is the equivalent of playing because you want a certain outcome. At that point, you are relying on hope and gamble instead of reason and objectivity.

Poker can be a very cruel and unjust game in the short term. If you don’t accept those terms, you can get into a lot of trouble. If you try to take matters into your own hands and exercise vigilante justice, the results can be disastrous. Take the situation of the guy who plays everything and gets a mountain of chips due to a great streak of luck. Most of his opponents will be salivating as they try to get their hands on those chips. You have to be smart about it, though. You can’t just indiscriminately attack him because you believe those chips rightfully belong to you. If he’s going to call no matter what, you have to wait until you have something to beat him. Yet, so often I see players just continue to feed the luck monster needlessly instead of waiting for the right set of circumstances. If a player wants to give his chips away, you have to be ready to pounce and take advantage, but you can’t play just because you think or want him to give those chips to you.

The scope of the initial statement of advice above is well beyond one column. However, if you take the time right now to reflect, I’m sure that you can come up with a few situations in which you made a wrong action based on your hope for something to happen that was different from what was actually happening. If you can analyze why you did it, you’ll have prevented a potential leak in your game.

David Apostolico is the author of several poker-strategy books, including Tournament Poker and The Art of War. You can contact him at [email protected].