Accentuate the Positive

The other day, I was sitting at a poker table when one player said to another: "I wish I could play like you." It was a comment made with complete sincerity, with a pinch of rue and a dash of melancholy, not about a world-class player, but simply a solid Joe with more discipline and patience than the person making the wish. What struck me was that the wisher was himself no dummy, but a longtime player with a decent understanding of the game – someone for whom such an aspiration would seem the most achievable goal in the world, if only he set his mind to it. The tone of his voice, however, made it clear that he'd long since resigned himself to not being up to the task, an impression confirmed by his head-shaking follow-up: "But I just can't."

The next day, at the same table, a strong player who hadn't dragged a chip in two hours was chatting amiably between hands with a regular sitting next to him. After a hand in which he'd suffered a tough beat, his neighbor paid him the following compliment: "Boy, I wish I could be like you. You're just as cheerful when you lose as when you win." Like the wisher above, wisher No. 2 is an intelligent guy, someone who tends to play well when things go his way, but who often loses his way when the going gets tough.

All four of these players have a pretty fair understanding of the principles and concepts of the game, but only two of them are able to put that understanding into consistent practice. The other two are scattershot, on their game one moment, and off it the next. Clearly, the former react more positively to adversity than the latter. Why? It's a question that would take weeks to answer, and to no one's satisfaction, but this much I know: Consciously or unconsciously, winners tend to define winning in different terms than losers.

Losers tend to be about today, now, the trees; winners tend to think long-term, big-picture, the forest. Stuck badly in a game in which he's playing well, the loser abandons sound methods, desperate for a different strategy in immediate pursuit of a different result. In the same situation, the winning player neither panics nor loses sight of the methods that made him a winner in the first place. His subtext is: If my balance sheet shows a healthy profit year in and year out, in what meaningful sense can any individual session be considered a "losing" one?

Does any poker player in the world get the money every single day? Not in this world, but if your poker logs go back a spell and they're all long on black ink and short on red, what are those non-winning days, if not necessary components of an overall winning process? What sense does it make to get upset and off your game over having to act out the various parts of a proven winning process? Would a cinema owner who loses pennies on admissions but makes a fortune on concessions get sullen and close his doors because the crowd lined up around the block has to buy tickets before it can line up for popcorn? Talk about killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

A consistent winning player may be more even-tempered by nature than a consistent loser, or his poise at the tables may owe largely to the grasping of a simple and comforting truth that eludes his less-disciplined counterpart – namely, that as long as he consistently puts himself in situations of positive expectation, and eschews the negative, he'll never really be losing. Even on the days his stacks are dwindling, he'll simply be acting out part of a winning process.

By the same token, the losing player fails to grasp that when he drags chips in situations in which he's taking the worst of it, he's probably losing money rather than winning it – for dragging those chips will only further cement the notion of a positive value in what is, in fact, a negative situation. Even when his involvement in the negative situation is the result of tilt, and getting lucky improves his outlook and gets him back on track, he's almost certainly reinforcing an idea that will eventually prove costly. Before he knows it, he'll be thumbing his nose, whenever he gets stuck, at the discipline required to afford himself the best chance of a comeback, and start rationalizing poor play in an effort to dig out quickly. Although sometimes he'll get lucky and climb out, more often than not the hole will just get that much deeper. Then what? If getting stuck got him off his game, is getting stuck big-time likely to get him back on?

In case there's any confusion, let it here be said that to trumpet the virtues of "staying the course" is hardly the same as advocating a rigid, predictable style of play. Some of the best players in the land sometimes make plays that can leave observers scratching their heads. Nevertheless, the most creative players still require discipline – and plenty of it – to be consistent winners. Of course, even consistent winners aren't perfect, and sometimes get off their games; what they do not do is kid themselves about it, or allow outcome to cloud their judgment in assessing their own play. The winning player knows the difference between an odds-bucking play born of emotional despair and an unconventional one bearing purpose and design. Should he succeed with the former, he'll recognize his own poor judgment; should he be unsuccessful with the latter, he won't be discouraged.

It's little wonder that consistent winners often elicit comments such as, "I never see him lose," or, "The blankety-blank always wins!" Although the admiration and/or envy that prompts such comments may blind the observer to the fact that such players do of course have losing sessions, there is a profound unwitting truth to such assessments – for in a very real sense, winning players are always winning. Conversely, if you consistently embrace situations of negative expectation, you'll always be on a losing course, no matter how many racks you carry to the cage on a given day.