Head Games: Poker Wisdom I Wish I Knew Then That I Practice Now

The Pros: Brian Hastings, Faraz Jaka, Daniel Kelly, and Haseeb Qureshi

Craig Tapscott: What piece of conventional wisdom about poker do you feel is the most detrimental to people?

Brain Hastings: One piece of conventional wisdom that I feel can be quite detrimental is the common hand advice that “if you call the turn, you have to call the river.” While at times it can be a useful heuristic due to opponents’ failure to mix up their games properly, I feel that this kind of advice is detrimental to one’s thought process as a poker player.

It certainly is important to have a plan when one is playing a hand, but it’s also important to evaluate each decision rather than acting automatically. In reality, when one gives the advice “if you call the turn, you have to call the river,” what they are saying is — “in this situation opponents are generally going to bluff too often on the river after their turn bets are called, so calling the river is better than folding.” While this may be true against many opponents, think about how exploitable this is if your opponent is aware of your strategy. He can shift to never bluffing the river, and if you don’t counter-adjust you will just be losing the amount of the river bet every time your opponent bets.

The main point I am trying to make is that it’s important to evaluate every decision one is making during a poker hand. Simple rules and heuristics may help to guide one’s choice, but it’s important to not be over-reliant on them and to have sound reasoning behind every decision.

Faraz Jaka: “You should leave while you’re up.” To anyone who’s been around gambling enough to be reading this magazine, this may sound very elementary. But let’s take this a step further. You’ll still hear poker pros say things like “I just need to win a seven-figure tournament and then I’m done.” This can be a very detrimental mindset trying to chase a big score like this. The mindset you should have is looking at your return on investment (ROI) and variance of each tournament. Meaning if you are playing a $10,000 tournament and have a 30 percent ROI, you are making $3,000 in profit every tournament. Then, you must look closely at what type of variance to expect and making sure you are bankrolled for it.

Daniel Kelly: To a serious poker player looking to improve, any sort of conventional wisdom or rule of thumb can be detrimental. Relying on conventional wisdom tends to discourage creative, critical thinking and often leads to auto-piloting, which consists of mindlessly going through the motions of whatever is considered standard at the time.
If your approach to the game is merely, “to do X because so and so said it was good,” you might have some success at first, but it will be difficult for you to have consistent, sustained success without understanding the reasoning behind the plays you are making. In order to keep up with the competition, you should actively be thinking about your game and ways to develop it.

Haseeb Qureshi: I think that the largest leaks most poker players have is through tilt. And a lot of it can be traced to this fundamental idea: that the goal in poker is to play like a robot, to be completely unemotional and perfectly consistent.
On its face, it sounds sensible. After all, we’re fed images of people like Phil Galfond or Phil Ivey who supposedly don’t tilt and always play solid. But in reality, everyone tilts, including the best players in the world. Everyone is affected by winning or losing, and it’s completely normal to be affected by them. There are no robots in poker. If instead of having this idea that you’re not supposed to tilt, what if you actually expected to tilt, and accepted it? The same way you expect to get irritable when you’re hungry.

I think if you remove some of the taboo from tilt — the feeling of “oh, I’m a poker player, I’m not supposed to be doing this,” — and replaced it with “oh yeah, I’m tilting. I should stop,” then a lot of the self-delusion and desperation of tilt would go away. Maybe then you could actually free yourself to work on building up your emotional resilience, rather than simply being stuck in a cycle of shame and frustration.

Craig Tapscott: If you could go back in time to when you first started playing poker and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Brian Hastings: To be very careful with bankroll management. Taking shots can make sense at times, but only if the opportunity is unique and spontaneous. Otherwise, reducing risk in juicy games that are too big for one’s bankroll by selling action is much more prudent. In the first few years of my poker career, action sharing in this manner was uncommon and not something that was widely viewed as an option, but poker players have become much wiser in this regard, and it is now common practice.

Looking back on my poker career, I’ve far too frequently made imprudent bankroll decisions. It adds lots of unnecessary stress and volatility into one’s life and poker results. At this point, we know enough about poker variance to be able to determine when risks are excessive. Checking one’s ego at the door and making prudent bankroll decisions is one of the most important things a poker player can do to be successful.

Faraz Jaka: We’ve heard it a million times and I’m going to say it again — bankroll management. The best way to put it is, sometimes someone can tell you a piece of advice but you won’t truly understand it until you experience it. With poker the swings are so deceiving that bankroll management can take a lifetime to master and is sometimes just impossible for a lot of people.

Every up and downswing you experience, you will learn and understand more about bankroll management. Just keep in mind that a very high majority of people are going to constantly overextend themselves over and over again. There are very few people who are overly conservative to the point where they limit their experiences and never make it to the higher levels because of it. It’s all about finding the balance between the two worlds. If you are the latter, it should be fairly obvious when you’re the one in your group of friends that gets made fun of for being overly nitty just about every day.

Daniel Kelly: As cliché as it sounds, I would advise myself to practice better bankroll management. When I first started playing, the concept of bankroll management was foreign to me. I routinely went through the cycle of starting a bankroll by winning a tournament, taking that money to the highest stakes cash games available, and proceeding to lose it all. For whatever reason, perhaps because I always started off with freerolls or no-deposit bonuses, the money didn’t quite seem real.

But even once I learned in theory how I should manage my bankroll, I still had trouble implementing it in practice. Everything would be going smoothly while I was running well and winning, but as soon as things stopped going my way I would tilt and revert to my old ways.

Eventually, as I matured as a person and player, I learned to stop tilting and allowing my emotions to have a destructive impact on my game. But I could have saved myself a lot of money and headaches if I learned sooner.

To be clear, I am not saying you shouldn’t take shots at higher stakes. Having an overly conservative approach can be just as damaging in its own way. As long as it’s done in a controlled and responsible manner, shot taking is an integral part of improving and growing as a poker player.

Haseeb Qureshi: As someone who’s retired from being a poker player, I can imagine I’d have a rather different answer to this. But I think what I would tell my 16-year-old self is: “Remember that you are always free. No matter how much money you’re making, or how easy poker is, or how much you think you’ll regret walking away, you are your own master. Don’t let poker decide for you. Decide for yourself.”

When I first started playing poker, I loved it. I constantly wanted to play; if I wasn’t dealt into a hand, then it was wasted time. But around 2010, at the height of my career, a lot of that passion had dried up. Poker didn’t hold the same kind of wonder and excitement for me anymore. I stopped enjoying the game. But I knew if I quit, I’d never be able to make this kind of money again. The rational part of my brain — the poker player part — forbid me from walking away. I was stuck — trapped by my own rationality.
But now, years later, I realize all along how easy it would’ve been to quit, and how little any of that money meant. The moment that poker — or even just the game you’re playing in — is no longer enjoyable, then you should quit. No questions asked. Realize you’re free, always free, to just get up and walk away.

It’s scary how easy it is to forget that. ♠

Brian Hastings is a 25-year-old professional poker player specializing in high-stakes cash games. He won the WSOP bracelet heads-up event in 2012. He has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Cornell University. He is an avid sports fan and enjoys playing daily fantasy sports at DraftDay.com.

Faraz Jaka was the WPT Player of the Year in 2010. He has more than
$6 million in career online and live cashes. He is the co-founder of
www.axiscasterboarding.com and can be found at www.farazjaka.com.

Daniel Kelly has cashed for more than $7.5 million in combined live and online tournaments. In 2010 he won the WSOP $25,000 no-limit event for $1,300,000. In 2009 Kelly won the player of year for the PokerStars World Championships.

Haseeb Qureshi was a world-class high stakes heads up no limit hold’em and pot-limit Omaha player. He retired from poker a few years ago and went traveling to rediscover his life outside of poker. He has recently released his first book, How to Be a Poker Player: The Philosophy of Poker which became a quick best-seller. You can find it at www.haseebq.com.