Years ago, I was taking a martial arts class when a concept was stressed to me about reacting to adverse situations. When your opponent is attacking, it was important to treat his moves like water, and you react like the duck’s back and let the attack roll off of you. If he moves one way, you take his aggressiveness and move through it, using his aggressiveness to your advantage. Especially during a friendly sparring session, the combat is just a game, and you have to play how you know best....the aggressiveness is nothing personal, it’s just your opponent trying to win with the best strategy he sees fit to use. I had forgotten this key lesson in life, and how it could apply to poker, until a SNG I played last night. <READMORE>

The player on my left, who I’m pretty sure was a P5’s member by his use of the "w00t" phrase after a big hand, was playing very aggressively and raising most hands, often times pushing over the top when the flop hit. He was also taking a page from the Tony G School of Table Talk, taunting other players in his pots with comments like "that’s too big of a bet, you can’t call here." Early in the game, on a flop of AT6 rainbow, a player bet, he came over the top, and got called. His opponent showed AQ, “Mr. G” showed 85, and caught runner-runner 74 to make his straight and win a very large pot. Staying in character, “Mr. G” taunted his suckout victim and everyone else at the table (except me, which is another reason why I think he’s a P5s guy).

As the game progressed, “Mr. G” was assailed with a steady stream of “you’re an asshole” and “fuk u” comments from over half the players at the table. He had them on tilt, and he was able to bust them all when they looked up his pushes with mediocre hands. One SNG regular, who is normally a pretty decent player, called a pre-flop push with A9, only to be shown AQ and get busted from the table. After that hand, the decent player said, “I knew you had a good hand that time,” which would normally make me wonder why he called.

Except I already knew why. He was trying to fight fire with fire and get his revenge on the table bully. He was trying desperately to get back at “Mr. G” and shut him up, and that effort prevented him from making the right decisions. He let his ego get in the way with 800 chips left, when the blinds were only 15/30 or so. He took the verbal and chip attacks personally, and it cost him money.

After the second or third player was eliminated and taunted with a “hahahaha, go away, loser” comment, I remembered the duck’s back principle, which for some reason had long escaped my memory. I took the verbal taunts and hyper-aggressive raises as an impersonal strategy that my opponent chose to use, rather than an attack on my character or my style of play. I stayed on my game, focusing on making the right decision every time, and I ended up coming in second in the SNG to “Mr. G.” He kept getting hit with the deck, and with him having a big stack when it got heads up, there wasn’t much I could do when he flopped trip 8s against my pocket pair.

The second-place money, however, is far less important to me in the long run than the big-picture lesson. In online poker, anyone can say anything behind the safety and anonymity of a computer keyboard. Keeping your cool in the face of that barrage, focusing on making the next decision as correctly as possible, and finding your opportunity to counter-attack, makes all the difference between profit and loss. Poker is about money, which means it’s human nature to take it very seriously. But it’s also just a game....it may be business to some, but it’s never personal. Be the duck’s back, let the other stuff roll off of you, and you’ll have an advantage over those who cannot.
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