Be Prepared

I was going to title this column “You’re Probably Not Prepared,” which is probably true, but undoubtedly harsh, so I went for the softer, more positive, more Boy-Scouty “be prepared” instead. Just trying to stay positive, folks. Just doing my job.

But the fact is that you’re probably not prepared. You probably go into most of your poker sessions without the necessary thought, study, rest, inspection, and introspection you need to be successful. Why? Because you probably play poker “just for fun” and doing all that homework just isn’t much fun. And how do I know that these things are true for you? Because they’re 100 percent true for me, and I figured out long ago that if I think or behave a certain way, probably most everyone around me thinks or behaves pretty much the same.

Still, maybe you’re blameless in this. Maybe you spend two hours before every poker session rereading “Decide to Play Great Poker” (or maybe by now you know it by heart). Maybe you have a strong cohort of intelligent, articulate fellow poker players with whom you discuss your play of hands analytically and dispassionately. If you have such a group, congratulations, for incisive poker talk with your smart poker pals is one of the best ways to get your game sharp and keep it sharp. But let’s not be misled: an exchange of whiney bad-beat stories does not qualify as incisive poker talk, and it’s not at all a part of being prepared.

Being prepared is thinking about poker away from the table. Apart from all your reading and talking about poker, do you mull over poker situations in your spare time? (Or do you, like I do, just zone out in front of the TV?) Do you evaluate your own play of hands, mentally replaying the lines you took and how they worked out for you? Again, I’m not talking about evaluating your luck — how dare that dang so-and-so suck out on you and cost you a big pot? — but rather about your plans for your hands. Did you have good ones? Did you execute them appropriately? Did you make adjustments as the circumstances demanded? Or did you — do you — play your last session or even all your sessions on full auto-pilot cruise control? Many do. Most do. There’s a technical name for the few who don’t: winners.

Being prepared is measuring your bankroll against your game and making sure that your game selection is based on dispassion and logic, not ego. Simply put, if you don’t have a big enough bankroll for the game you’re in, you’re not prepared to play in it. I don’t care how mentally sharp you are, or how much homework you’ve done, if you’re not properly rolled, your not properly prepared.

On a related point, being prepared is monitoring your results over time. Do you know how much you’ve won, in which games and at what stakes, over which span of hours and in which location, going back years? Or do you just amorphously believe that “I’m generally a winning player.” The latter attitude is in no way linked to being prepared. It’s just sloppy thinking and probably false. On the other hand, your well-articulated records will reveal many profitable nuggets of data that you can use to enhance your winrate. I have one young poker pal who documents his sessions obsessively, and crunches his numbers inventively, to see where he’s at in his game. One thing he’s learned (and tell me how this is not wildly useful) is that his winrate goes into a tailspin during the fourth hour of any session and never recovers. Simply put, he gets tired. You probably get tired, too, but do you know exactly where and when that moment takes place? You do if you are prepared.

But being prepared is not just about recognizing problems, it’s also about solving them. My young friend has addressed his fatigue issue in two ways. First, he’s started working out, for he knows that a few hours a week in the gym give him a vitality that keeps him sharper at the tables for longer periods of time. He has also adjusted his sleep schedule, so that his poker sessions are the first business of his day, rather than the last. According to his meticulously kept records, that has made a huge difference. According to me, that’s being prepared.

Look, I know you have a life outside of poker. I do, too. It’s not practical for us to turn our sleep schedules around (though it certainly is practical for us to spend a little more time in the gym). The fact is that we may be just recreational players for the simple reason that that’s all the poker our time, inclination, and bankroll allow. If so, so be it. We must be resigned to arriving at our favorite poker room or home game after a long day’s work, able to draw upon only such resources of energy and focus as may be left over from that long day’s work. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t still be at least better prepared. We can take a few moments before every session to think about our goals for the session, and our strategies and tactics. We can take a few deep breaths to clear our heads. We can pause to remember that alcohol, cigarettes, and other substances may have the opposite effect on our heads. We can go into each game with, at minimum, a strong sense of purpose and a commitment to doing our best.

But I don’t want to kid you or kid me: that won’t be enough. If we want to win at poker, really crush the game over countless hours and endless sessions, we need to work harder away from the table. We have to study more, converse more, think more, exercise more, be properly rested and properly bankrolled, and all so that our commitment to win can stand on a firm platform of confidence — the confidence that comes from genuinely being prepared.

In other news, you will now find my latest novel, “The Texas Twist,” in bookstores and online. It answers the question, “What happens when a con man gets conned?” and if you like the way I put words on these pages, you’ll probably like those pages, too. ♠

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.