Poker Articles

By grapsfan | Published Nov 28 2007, 11:18 AM
I have seen more pink elephants in my life than poker players who will admit they have above-average luck.  I can’t go 30 seconds, however, without finding someone who complains about how bad they’ve run since the first time they were dealt a hand.  I’m as guilty of this as the next guy.  Anyone who knows me has heard me complain about my inability to win my perceived share of coin flips, especially late in a tournament. 

Well, no more.  The buck stops here.  I’m exposing the truth to myself, and anyone else who wants to read along with me. 

The reason why we all think we’re so unlucky is because we never embrace the positive luck we receive.  Our egos want to believe we’re good at the game.  We need our knowledge and abilities drive our successes, rather than dumb luck.  If we go deep in a tournament, or have a winning cash game session, it’s because we were playing well and our opponents were all donkeys.  Phil Hellmuth is the high priest of this pathology.  As great as he is in NL Hold’em tournaments, he never attributes any of his success to luck.  In Phil’s mind, it’s all skill that he flopped bottom set against his opponent’s top pair and a flush draw and his hand held up.  Or that he caught trip 3s with a queen kicker against his opponent’s jack kicker.  Or he caught pocket nines heads-up against Johnny Chan’s ace-rag.  On and on, throughout his 20-year career, his success is due to his brilliance.  Just ask him.  He's not shy about telling you. 

His losses, however, are all due to the donkeys who can’t ever fold, who chase and catch miracle river cards, who overplay middle pairs and K-Q.  “If it wasn’t for luck, I guess I’d win every time.”  Sound familiar?   Wallowing in how lucky our opponents are is a common malady, for Hellmuth and the millions who play the game hoping to achieve his results. 

As poker players...as human beings...we are afflicted with emotional turmoil if we don’t acknowledge positive as well as negative luck.  Life is a balancing act; you have highs and lows over the course of time, but for the most part, you’re trying to maintain a comfortable middle ground. If you feel constantly unlucky, it is impossible to find your middle poker ground, where consistency and positive expectation lie.  The complex of self-persecution is at the heart of more players going bust and quitting the game than all other reasons put together. 

From now on, I’m getting off the “woe is me” train.  I’m going to celebrate and revel in the times where I’m profiting, and attribute them solely to being a lucky sonofabitch.  I will start with the story of a tournament I played recently…I won a $10K guaranteed, $20+2 MTT on Bodog, one of my bigger wins of 2007.  Near the end of the tournament, I was railed by P5er RandyLerch.  Randy told me after-the-fact that I eliminated 10 of the last 14 players; I didn’t lose a pot once we got down to the final two tables.  Every hand I caught held up, every play I tried worked.  I semi-bluffed a flop and turn with a straight draw, only for it to hit on the river for the biggest pot of the tournament at the time.  I rivered a flush, knocking out a short-stack who had me dominated pre-flop.  I flopped two sets and got action from both.  I won two coin flips.  I eliminated the last two players as 3:2 underdogs. 

Now, did I play well too?  I think so.  I ran a bluff against the other big stack with 4 to go that would have been disastrous if he called…but I had the heart to made the play...and the read to know he couldn’t (and wouldn’t) call.  I played a medium-stack well over the 2nd and 3rd hours of the tournament, putting myself in a position to get lucky at the end.  I got away from some big hands when I knew I was beat, chipped up at the bubble, and made a couple of loose calls against super-aggressive players that I might not against 90% of the field.  My head was clear, and my decisions were made with aggression and purpose. 

But I didn’t win the tournament because I was better than everyone else.  I won because I was lucky, and because RandyLerch is a rail god. 

By consistently acknowledging the luck I receive, I hope to not be so affected by the luck I don’t.  Because the truth is that when we lose, it’s rarely due solely to bad luck.  In every game, there are chip-accumulation opportunities which pass us by.  Value bets sized too high or too low.  Bluffs to pick off that go uncalled.  Bad players donate their chips to someone else because we wait too long to play a pot with them.   If one bad beat knocks you out of a tournament, chances are you didn’t do as much as you could have to avoid that situation. 

The standard M.O. is to embrace our skill, curse our luck, and overlook our good luck.  Not me.  Not anymore.  I will embrace my inner luckbox, and seriously examine the times when variance is not on my side.  I promise to remain true and faithful to this philosophy…until the next time I lose a coin flip at a final table, anyway.