Patience and Gambling

Patience and gambling don’t exactly go together like love and marriage. Gambling is, by its very nature, an activity for the impatient. Working long hours to earn steady income is boring, so gamblers take their chances at making some fast cash in an exciting manner. Casinos make their fortunes off of that impulse, and that is also how professional poker players make their living.

But if you truly want to be a winning poker player, you cannot lie to yourself. Do not pretend that you are playing the role of the “house” when you are actually the gambler who wants to make fast money. Skillful poker playing is only part of what sets apart the winners and the losers. I would argue that patience plays an even larger role in poker success, and that is especially true in brick-and-mortar (B&M) cardrooms. Since we remain in an era of former online players switching to B&M play, I will address those specific players because they are often the ones who most need to develop patience.

It’s fair to ask if many online players ever learned patience at all, or simply took actions to compensate for their impatience. Online poker was extremely flexible in that regard. If you were playing too many hands at ten-handed tables, you could always switch to six-handed ones. If you were still too loose (read: impatient) then you could always play at four-handed or heads-up tables. In other words, rather than make the effort to be patient, you could try to find the format that best fit your impatient style of play. And if you did that, you’re certainly not alone. In the online world, shorthanded tables became the norm rather than the exception.

Along the same lines, multitabling started out as a novelty, but then came to be expected. Do you know any serious online players who restricted themselves to regularly playing one table at a time? If you’re a winning player, you can argue that adding an extra table added to your profits, and that’s almost certainly true if you started with only one table and added a second. But for those who went far beyond that, the question is, did they know when to draw the line? My guess is no. Too often, players had as many tables open as they could follow. They were almost certainly not maximizing their profits, just their ability to be in action.

Now comes the transition to B&M play. No more multitabling or shorthanded tables. Instead it’s just one table, in most cases nine- or ten-handed. Not only are plenty of strategic adjustments necessary, but focus and patience become more crucial than ever. Maybe you found ways to survive online, but in a B&M game with competent players, impatience will be your downfall.

So it’s time to force yourself to be patient. Of course, that’s easier said than done. It took me over a year to truly develop patience, and really it came out of financial necessity more than anything else. Against soft, low-limit competition, I was able to play with a “win fast or lose fast” frame of mind and still come out ahead. If I thought a particular bluff had any chance of working, I’d go for it. Luckily for me, my opponents were slow to adjust, and I did not get the humbling I deserved.

But when I moved up in stakes, it quickly became clear that the patient players were taking turns bringing down the impatient ones. I continued trying to bluff my way out of tough spots, and realized that my opponents were correctly adjusting to me. I needed to put on the brakes, or I would go broke, plain and simple. Even though that meant I had to restrain many of my gambling impulses, I made up my mind that I needed to do whatever it took to win.

For example, I already knew the correct starting hands to play from each position, but I played plenty of inferior hands as well. I justified it by believing that I could outplay my opponents post-flop. In hindsight, I was making an excuse for my impatience. It didn’t take long to realize that those extra hands were costing me money, and I had to stop.

So as much as it pained me, I learned how to fold more often, and to accept boredom as part of the price of winning poker. To alleviate the boredom, I focused as intensely as possible on the action even when I was not involved in the hand, and in turn that improved my skills even more. I didn’t enjoy it then, and I don’t completely enjoy it now, but if the alternative is losing, the choice seems simple.

Different people have had different approaches to instilling patience in themselves, so let me offer a second perspective. Preston Oade is a lawyer and a poker player who takes his self-improvement very seriously, as we all should. Here’s some of what he said on this subject:

“To get better, I practiced patience when not playing poker. I hate to stand in lines for anything, and I tend to interrupt when someone is talking to me. So I willingly got into long lines to practice being patient. I also practiced listening to other people and tried hard not to interrupt until they were done talking. It wasn’t easy, but gradually I was able to be more patient. Now, I sometimes reach the point where in negotiations as a lawyer I can be the most patient lawyer at the table and simply outwait everyone else. It is more effective than talking and also gives me the opportunity to study my opponents.”

In Preston’s case, he was able to work on his weakness away from the table, and it helped him not just in poker, but in the rest of his life as well. Here is some further wisdom from Preston that might also help:

“I don’t play when I don’t have the necessary will to win because, without it, I cannot be patient enough to win. My purpose here is to practice playing well instead of practicing playing poorly. If I am not playing to win, I am impatient and play poorly. That reinforces negative behavior. Sometimes the best decision you can make is to decide not to play. If you want to be a really good player, don’t play if you don’t have the patience to play well.”

In other words, Preston is making the observation that his patience level is not the same every day, and that holds true for all of us. A valuable trick is being able to recognize when your patience is heightened, and to play your longer sessions on those days. On days when you are feeling particularly impatient, you can try to put off playing poker until another time, or at least keep your session short unless you honestly feel that your mindset has changed for the better. ♠

Matt Lessinger is the author of The Book of Bluffs: How to Bluff and Win at Poker, available everywhere. You can find Matt’s other articles at www.cardplayer.com.