Some Quick Tips for the Grind

I received a question for my new column on Cardplayer.com wherein I answer questions sent in to [email protected] asking me what tips I have for reacting to running poorly over long stretches or just being card dead. I realize that this is something that people struggle with on a regular basis. I often hear people say things like “Well, I’ve been getting these cards all night, I figure I’ll just play them.” Or “The big cards aren’t winning, I’m going to play the little ones.” I understand that mindset and see where they are coming from, but, clearly, it’s a flawed outlook and one that can easily be remedied.

First of all, you have to think of what type of player you are. If you’re reading Card Player with the intention of improving, then you take the game seriously and look for ways to improve in all aspects of the game. If you read it for the funny columns or interviews with well-known pros, you are probably playing to satisfy that urge to gamble or to hang out with some people you like and maybe try to win some money in the process.

Either of those, or the millions of other reasons there are to play poker, are valid approaches and should not be discounted. We don’t all get the same thing from poker over our lifetimes, over groups of sessions, or even throughout the course of one session. I take poker very seriously 99.99 percent of the time. Occasionally, I’ll get together with some friends, or when my wife and I didn’t have children, we would go play very low stakes and have some drinks and just let loose and I would play around to satisfy my gamble. So, if this is a session or a lifetime in which you are just playing to gamble, messing around with bad hands because you haven’t been getting any good ones is a worthwhile endeavor to keep you interested and happy. If, however, you’re always trying to improve or take the game as seriously as it will allow you to (Poker has a way of making you shake your head in amazement at the ridiculousness you see), I hope I can help you deal with these stretches.

The first thing that I would suggest if you’re running poorly for a while is to take notes on every hand you play for a session and go over them afterwards, preferably a day later when you can look at them without the emotions of a winning or losing session getting in the way of your analysis. Analyze each hand individually and see if you feel like there were some ways you could have played each one better. Think of different lines you could have taken or ideas you could have implemented as you go over each hand in your notes. Then, when you’re done looking at each hand individually, look at the session as a whole and decide if there are tendencies in your game that need examining. Do you take lines that are too passive? Is your distribution balanced in as many situations as you can hope it would be? Ask yourself these and any other questions that pop into your head. If you feel like your own analysis of a session is pretty well done, let someone else whose game you respect take a look at these hands and offer their opinion. Sometimes we allow running poorly to effect the way we play and it can take a fresh set of eyes to notice because you’re too close to the problem.

In regards to the second question wherein our unknown author is card dead for hours on end, there are a few approaches to dealing with this that I’ve developed. First of all, I try to remember that my whole life is one big session and that if there is a long stretch during one day’s play where I don’t get very good cards, I just remember that there will be an equal number of similarly long stretches where I make lots of hands and can’t seem to do any wrong. This is a long term game and it’s easy to lose sight of that sometimes. We can do our best to combat the boredom of interminable bad cards, but we can’t change them. And that brings me to my second point. Perhaps you need a quick break to help you stay focused. I know that sounds weird, but perhaps you’ve been sitting at the table for too long. Take a walk around the casino. I mean around the casino. If it’s nice enough, go outside and get some fresh air instead of that stale stuff that sits inside the building. This goes double if it’s daytime still and you can see the sun.

Fresh air can do wonders for your outlook and brain function. The sun imparts energy on us. Shake off the bad energy and frustration that you’re sitting on by doing some stretches or jumping jacks and come back to the table refreshed and invigorated, ready for whatever is about to come your way.

Really, the questions that my faithful reader asked about come down to a matter of mindset. Running poorly can affect you or you can ignore it as the figment of your imagination that it actually is and you can take temporary setbacks just as they are, temporary, and prepare yourself for the remainder of your grind as a poker player. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG