Wisdomettes

In another corner of my multifurcated career, I consult with scriptwriters on the development and execution of their screenplays. One of the points I stress to them is that if they can’t reduce their story idea to one clear, powerful sentence, they don’t yet have a sufficiently firm grasp on the story they’re trying to tell. Meanwhile, over here in this corner of my multifurcated career, I find — no surprise — that the same is true in poker. If you can’t reduce your strategy, tactic, cautionary tale, or lesson learned to a single, simple, clear, coherent thought, you don’t yet understand it.

With this in mind, let’s boil a few strategies and tactics down to their simplest terms and see how we can use this information to improve our game. The point of this minimalist symbology is to give us easy nuggets of information — wisdomettes, if you will — tidbits of useful instruction upon which we can meditate, with a view toward incorporating these clear cogencies into the mindscape of our play. And away we go …

If you can’t be right, be loud. Announce your bets and raises — and even your folds and checks — in a loud, self-assured voice. Do this for two reasons: First, if you announce all of your actions with confidence, you will ultimately acquire confidence, as well. This is the Buddhist concept of “right action, right mind.” Take the action that you wish to take, in the way that you wish to take it, and your mind will eventually come along for the ride. Second, if you announce all of your actions in the same forceful tone, you’ll make it more difficult for your foes to find tells in your inconsistencies. Of course, you could announce all of your actions in a consistently weak way, but that wouldn’t exude confidence, and as we know, confidence is king in poker.

Each of us is the center of our own universe. And we’re of blindingly little interest to the universe next door. People don’t care about, for instance, your bad beats. They really don’t. All you do in sharing those stories is reinforce others’ perceptions that you are a loser, and that their luck, looks, and all-around existence are in all ways superior to yours. Why would you want to reinforce that perception? If there’s bad news within your universe, do yourself a favor and share it with no one — or with your therapist, at most.

Only victims get victimized. Telling bad-beat stories is just the tip of a certain victim-shaped iceberg. If we have other patterns of loser behaviors — whining, self-pity, abusing dealers, or other fatalistic noise — and we show these patterns to the world, we actually inspire our opponents to come after us, play better against us, and kick us when we’re down. Don’t do it. Present a hard target, not a soft one. Even if you feel like you’re being victimized by everyone from the floorman to the poker gods themselves, please act at all times as though you’re walking on sunshine. Let the victimizers go victimize someone else.

You’re born broke, you die broke — everything else is just fluctuation. This is a hard idea to hold on to when you’ve just lost every bill in your wallet, but remember that every bill in your wallet is just a tiny fraction of every bill your wallet’s ever held or ever will hold. Take the long view — the longest possible one — and allow today’s losses to recede into proper perspective. Another way to embrace this thought is via the 20-year rule: If it won’t matter in 20 years, it doesn’t matter now.

Don’t bite the hand that feeds your bankroll. If you’re beating up on some weakie, and he’s giving you all of his money, don’t do anything to distract him from his task. Especially don’t berate him when he draws out on you. He has to draw out on you every once in a while in order to maintain his enthusiasm for the game (and for the job of feeding your bankroll). Never tap on the glass. Rather, nurture the weakies, and don’t begrudge their wins. After all, they’re only temporarily borrowing from you the money that they win.

Money is important only to people who don’t have anything important in their lives. Does poker rule your life? Or, does it exist in the context of a conscious, well-balanced, self-aware existence? It may surprise you to learn that the less obsessive you are about your poker, the better your game will be. Why? Because if poker is all you have going on in your life — if getting that money is the only thing that matters to you — you’ll be so hooked on outcome, and so dependent on a positive outcome, that the pressure of performance will cripple you. Vary your interests. Live a full life. Then your poker can be the triumphant experience that you want it to be — in its proper place.

Don’t challenge strong players, challenge weak ones — that’s what they’re there for. I’ve made this point before, but it bears repeating: A poker game is not a tennis match, where your goal is to improve your play by tackling tough foes. That’s certainly a worthy aim, but it’s no moneymaker. Wherever possible, find weak players and pummel them senseless. Like Willie Sutton said when they asked him why he robbed banks, “’Cause that’s where the money is.”

If you look harder, you see better. This sounds self-evident, I know, but put it into practice: Study your poker texts; study your opponents; and most of all, study yourself. The effort you put into looking hard at yourself pays the biggest dividends of all. Do you, for example, play “getaway hands” — loosen up your starting requirements when you’re about to leave the game, hoping to win that last, lucky pot? More often than not, you end up giving back part of your win. Sometimes you give it all back, then stay in the game and end up losing lots more. This wouldn’t happen if you really knew yourself, and knew the danger that getaway hands posed to you. What other, similar, dangers can you think of and call your attention to? Know yourself — just know yourself; everything follows from that.

OK, that’s enough wisdomettes for now — or no, you know what? It’s not. Because these are my wisdomettes, not yours, and I venture to guess that your game will benefit from the clean, clear thoughts about poker that you can share with yourself right now. Write them down. Write down what you know to be true about yourself — your strengths, weaknesses, and style of play. As I said, every success in poker follows from self-knowledge — and self-knowledge starts with the courage to write things down.

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.