A Poker Lesson In Backgammon

So I’m playing backgammon with a friend of mine, and I have him out-pipped as we come down to the final two rolls. He needs to roll doubles twice in a row to beat me, and he’s just enough of a math geek to know the odds against that outcome. I’m not any kind of math geek, and only understand the odds as “long.” But the long odds come in, and double doubles gives him the win in the match. “Well, that happens,” I sigh as I set up for another game. This is backgammon, and even though we’re playing for money, I’m not likely to go on tilt. And even if I did go on tilt, this is backgammon, so my negative frame of mind probably wouldn’t hurt me so much.

Poker, though, poker’s another story altogether. Because in poker, as in backgammon, bad outcomes happen to me every day (just like they happen to everyone every day). The question is not, how can I avoid bad outcomes, for those are inevitable. The question is, what do I do about it now? That’s when I borrow my backgammon equanimity and just say, “well, that happens.” It turns out to be surprisingly strong kung fu.

You flop middle set and get meat-grindered by set over set. Well, that happens.

Your nut straight dies an agonizing death at the hands of a runner-runner flush draw. Well, that happens.

You’re dealt pocket kings and get all raisy-crazy, only to face an ace on the flop. Well, that happens.

Tell me it hasn’t happened to you.

Take those pocket kings. Sure, they’re a terrific hand – but not so terrific when an ace hits the board and a raising war bursts forth. If you’re holding that hand at that point, you’ve got two choices. You can pretend the ace is not an ace and let your own pocket kings plunder your stack, or you can say, “well, that happens,” make the fold you know you have to make, and glide on into the future with tranquility in place.

Are you capable of saying, “well, that happens?” Many players think they are, but they’re not, not deep down where it counts. When a foe draws thin and gets there, they know enough to say, “nice hand, sir,” and keep their anger and resentment out of view.

But there’s a world of difference between keeping your anger hidden and not having anger at all. When you can bet top two pair into some yahoo who catches a two-outer to beat you, and genuinely feel no pain, then you have achieved the true Zen of “well, that happens.”

People get so bent out of shape when they lose. They get caught up in a negative-feedback loop of bad outcomes generating bad outlook, fomenting bad decisions, begetting bad play, and leading back to bad outcomes. Here’s a crude rendition of that loop.

When people put themselves on tilt by not taking setbacks in stride, they become our secret allies in our conspiracy to destroy them. It’s vital that we not let ourselves become such co-conspirators, and “well, that happens” helps with that. “Well, that happens” trains us to push past the past.

So how do you acquire this mindset? How do you manifest not just the appearance of tranquility but the fact of it as well? First, acknowledge that the anger is there.

Acknowledge that you hate the bad beat, despise the suck-out artist, and detest the dadratted dealer who seems to give everyone the cards they need but you. Don’t pretend these feelings don’t exist; they exist in all of us, save the Buddha (and even Buddha had his bad days). Accept that your play is colored by emotions. Acceptance is the first step toward neutralizing the toxic effect those emotions can have. (Acceptance is the first step toward everything, but that’s a discussion for another time).

Next, deal with your anger constructively. For me this means writing the words, “well, that happens” on a piece of paper and placing it where I can see it. Every time I look down, there it is, reminding me that the road to attitudinally perfect poker is really only three words long. Often, I say it out loud. No matter how big the pot nor how bad the beat, I require of myself to say only and exactly, “well, that happens.”

When I first started saying this, I really didn’t believe it, just as we don’t really feel it in our soul when we say, “nice hand, sir.” I knew that I hadn’t fundamentally changed, but I allowed myself the patience to change. I let the attitude shift come by slow degrees. I knew that my temper and my righteous indignation wouldn’t magically vanish overnight. But I kept at it. I kept saying and thinking and trying to believe, “Well, that happens,” until eventually the phrase, and the attendant emotional state, became part of my nature. Somewhere along the line I left my angry old self behind and became a person who no longer struggled to take bad beats in stride.

Eventually I didn’t even see them as bad beats. I began to see them as an exciting opportunity to voice my “well, that happens” mantra. This is perverse, I know: rooting for bad beats just so I can prove to myself that bad beats beat on me no more. But you know what? It helped, and it helps. Now I can authentically say, “well, that happens,” and mean it, and move on.

Maybe “well, that happens” aren’t words that harmonize with you. Okay, fine: What tools can you use to defeat the enemy of your own emotion? It may be some different useful words written on a business card, or some cold water on your face, or a timely phone call to a friend. But do come up with one. It’s a necessary part of our game. Because poker isn’t backgammon, and it’s only partly about cards and odds and bets and pots. The rest is about head and heart and fortitude and spirit. Above all, it’s about tranquility. Dial that in, and everything else pretty much takes care of itself.
In poker as in life, but that’s a discussion for another time. ♠

John Vorhaus is author of the Killer Poker series and co-author of Decide to Play Great Poker, plus many mystery novels including World Series of Murder, available exclusively on Kindle. He tweets for no apparent reason @TrueFactBarFact and secretly controls the world from johnvorhaus.com.