Forgive Yourself

Poker can be a frustrating game. Even the best players experience severely unlikely beats, long losing streaks, and sessions or tournaments in which it seems that they can’t do anything right.

There are several reasons for this. First, of course, is the fact that luck has an immense impact on your short-term results. If an opponent has outs, there is a chance that he will hit one, no matter how unlikely, how foolishly he plays, or how much you really want to win.

But there are other reasons. They relate to the unknown and often unknowable aspects of our game. For example, an opponent makes a pot-sized bet on the river. You have a mediocre hand, but have good reasons to believe there is about a 50 percent chance that he is bluffing. Since you are getting 2-1 on your money, you call. He shows you an excellent hand and takes the pot. He may even toss in a demeaning comment or two about your play.

Clearly, your call did not work, but that does not mean it was wrong. You easily could be right that he would make exactly the same play as a bluff half or more of the time, but this wasn’t one of those times. Unfortunately, you also could be wrong. Your call could be based on an erroneous assumption, and he would rarely or never bluff in that situation. You have no way of knowing for sure. All you can do is forgive yourself and move on. Play the next hand, make the appropriate strategic adjustments, and try to make the best decisions you can.

Aggressive play: In my book Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy, I advocate an aggressive approach to the game. This is uncomfortable for most players, as it always seems safer and easier to check and call than to bet and raise. The book’s strategy dictates that you make those uncomfortable plays more often, and presents reasons and scenarios that show you will make more money if you do.

You also will make more mistakes. Even if you are judicious about increasing your number of bets and raises, you will sometimes be wrong. On those occasions, you will lose more money than if you had simply checked and called (or, in some cases, just folded). Your swings will increase along with your profits.

To tolerate the increased volatility, you will have to expand your mindset.

Encouraging this, the book ends with an epilogue titled “Forgive Yourself.” The title surprised many people, who wondered what this was doing in a strategy book, and if I, a hardened professional not known for touchy-feely things, had suddenly joined a new age group. Nevertheless, this concept is especially important as you attempt to expand your game.

For example, you hold the J 10 in the cutoff. The player on your right open-raises. Your tendency is to fold here, remembering that you need a better hand to reraise than to raise. But you also have seen this player raise here with a wide variety of hands, so you decide to follow my advice and three-bet. You succeed in getting the blinds to fold, and the villain calls. The flop is J-5-3. This looks OK, and you bet after he checks. He calls. The turn pairs the 5. Check, bet, call. The river is a harmless-looking 8. He checks again. Perhaps your normal play is to check here, to avoid any possible trouble, but you are trying to be more aggressive, so you bet. He calls, and shows you Q-J to take the pot.

This is quite unfortunate. A hand that you might have folded suddenly has cost you four big bets. In my view, you did the right thing and got unlucky, but this was not an enjoyable experience, and you might decide to go back to your old ways and not try it again.

To progress, you have to be able to absorb setbacks. If a new play backfires when you try it, especially when it costs you money, you will naturally be tempted to stop trying it. This is the worst possible outcome. Not only have you lost money in this instance, but by giving up, you will never be able to see whether or not, in the long run, you can significantly profit.

Thus, you actually need to forgive yourself, take what you can from the experience, and keep on going. Maybe you made a mistake, and maybe you just got a poor result. You can analyze your decision-making later, and you should. But when you are at the table, you need to focus on the next play, not the last one. Regardless of whether you were right or wrong in this case, or even whether or not it is possible to figure it out, you have to forgive yourself.

Conclusion: You probably watched this year’s Super Bowl. New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Peyton made an unprecedented aggressive move to start the second half. He ordered his team to attempt an onside kick. The play worked, but it nearly failed.

Had it failed, he would have given a highly dangerous opponent excellent field position, with the likely prospect of a score to increase its lead. He had thought about the play and practiced it. He even told his defense, “If this doesn’t work, you are going to have to go out there and make me look good.” He realized that if his decision backfired and his team lost the game, he probably would have to shoulder the blame.

But he also thought it would work and spark his team, and they would go on to win. Ultimately, it did work, and he is being praised for making a bold call instead of being vilified for making a foolhardy decision. He understood the risks, and, most importantly, was prepared to forgive himself. If the play failed, he was just going to continue making the best decisions that he could.

At the poker table, that’s all you can do. Think about your next play, have a good reason for making it, make the best decisions you can every time it’s your turn, and forgive yourself when they don’t work out. Remember that “unsuccessful” is not the same as “wrong.” Just take what you can from your successes and failures, integrate it into your future decisions, and continue to do your best.

You must forgive yourself for a wide variety of “offenses,” real or not. If you don’t, you won’t take the risks needed to develop your game, and you will spend time looking backward, which will distract you from focusing on what you should do now.

Barry Tanenbaum is the author of Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy, and collaborator on Limit Hold’em: Winning Short-Handed Strategies. Barry offers private lessons tailored to the individual student. Please see his website, www.barrytanenbaum.com, or write to him at [email protected].