By
bparis
One tendency that affects many people in all walks of life, especially in games that involve some element of chance, is minimizing risk instead of maximizing equity. This may be because people don't like to fail, or because the immediate impact of a failure can affect you more than the long-term impact of maximizing your success.
For those who seek to avoid failure, poker is not the game for you. A successful poker player must be willing to fail over and over and over again in the hopes of getting that one success that will pay for all of your failures. This isn't to say that you should make a bunch of stupid plays in the hope that one of them will eventually work. It IS to say that focusing on making the right decision every time, the one that will maximize your long-term equity, will be much better for you at the end of the month than trying to avoid failure. It's a difficult tendency to defeat, and it manifests itself in many places.
Let's move away from poker for a bit and look at sports. Let's say you're a football coach. You coach a major football team, a team in a city that has a ruthless media willing to turn against you at the slightest provocation. You have in your hand a detailed research report proving that teams would score more points and win more games throughout the season by being more aggressive on fourth downs and onside kicks. Early in the game you wind up with a 4th-and-2 at about midfield, and your report says go for it. However, think about the practical implications.
If you go for it and make it, you got a first down, one that will likely be forgotten in the aftermath of the touchdown you hopefully get at the end of the drive. If you go for it and miss, and go on to lose a close game, the media will blast you for making an unorthodox decision. It doesn't matter that if you ran the same situation 100 times, the clearly superior play is to go for it. What matters is that failing is more public and obvious than success, so football coaches choose to avoid failure to keep their jobs intact. While this type of thinking is less prevalent in baseball, it manifests itself in managers sacrifice bunting (a strategy that has repeatedly been proven to be -EV except in extreme circumstances), using their closer only in the 9th inning with a lead, and playing known mediocre veterans instead of promising rookies, all to avoid public failure and keep their job.
These strategies, while they may protect you from media bashing, are ultimately self-defeating. Luckily for you, you don't have a throng of hungry media vultures circling around you and scrutinizing your every move, waiting to swoop in for the kill. You only have yourself to answer to. The key is to train yourself to always maximize equity, even if it's going to lead to some immediate and perhaps embarrassing failures. If the button pushes and you're looking at 37o on the big blind with 2.5 to 1 odds, call.
I've seen far too many players fold their big blind getting excellent odds to close the action. It doesn't matter that you have to show everyone that you called with garbage like 37o. What matters is that you're easily getting 2.5 to 1 odds against his range, which is probably pretty close to any 2. Looking like a donk to the untrained eye can also have benefits. It causes others to underestimate you and maybe play worse against you.
Another spot where people will commonly look to avoid failure is on the bubble. Finishing one spot out of the money is an immediate and painful experience. You just played a whole tournament and got as close as you possibly could to making money and now you have nothing to show for it. But really, who cares? It's all one long game anyway, and if taking that risk and busting increased your chances of getting first by a big enough percentage, the play was correct and will pay off in the long run.
Train yourself not to worry about the bubble other than for how it affects other players. (The exception is in single-table sit and go’s, where bubble play is extremely important. In multi-table sit and go’s, playing for first is always the best strategy.) Remember, in a 5 table the difference between 1st and 2nd is 3.5 buyins, and the difference between bubbling and getting 7th is 1.3 buyins. In a 20 table the difference is even more striking. Don't worry about the visible failures; just remember that the long term is all that matters.
While bankroll management is a topic that deserves its own entire series of articles, I will delve into it briefly here. Avoiding failure can assume greater psychological importance when you are playing above your bankroll. Sometimes, if you're under-rolled, you simply cannot afford to go for first every time and must ensure some money finishes just to keep yourself in action. The folly of this approach only became evident to me after a couple of years of playing above my bankroll. If you don't have the bankroll to play optimally, play a lower game.
Others can exploit you ruthlessly if you have to play scared due to being under-rolled. It's far better to play a lower game that you're properly bankrolled for and therefore can play optimally than to play a higher game that you're under-rolled for and must constantly take that into consideration. On a similar note, even if you do have the bankroll to play a certain game, if that game "seems" very high to you then you might try to avoid failure to move up that prize ladder. Try to desensitize yourself to the money, and have yourself adequately bankrolled at all times - it helps a lot.
Think of it this way. Let's say someone offers you two bets, either of which you can take as many times as you want. In the first bet, you win $30 two times out of three, and lose $30 the third time, meaning your expectation on this bet is $10 each time you take it - enough to make you quite a bit in the long term. For the second bet, you lose $30 nine times out of ten, but win $400 the tenth time, for a positive expectation of $13 for each time you take the bet.
If you had a small bankroll, or were following the "football coach" risk-averse approach, you would opt for the first bet - a slow, steady accumulation of money, although not at the fastest rate. But you want to be the guy with a bankroll big enough to be slamming the second bet all day long. Even though you will fail far more often and have to deal with swings, you're making 25% more - a very significant difference over the long term. In real life, the difference won't be this clear-cut or as drastic. The point is that the higher-risk, higher-reward approach pays off, and that you want to be bankrolled to the point where you can actually afford to take this kind of approach.
While this mindset can be difficult to get into since we are winning and losing actual money here, it's essential for long-term success in poker, and even in other, less obvious pursuits. Make the best decisions you can, and let the results take care of themselves. Don't worry what others think. The only one whose opinion matters is your wallet at the end of each month.
Bryan “bparis” Paris is a poker instructor who has had success in high-stakes online tournaments - winning the PokerStars Nightly Hundred Grand and the Full Tilt $60k Guaranteed tournaments. Those interested in receiving poker instruction can contact "bparis" by sending an email to bparis85@gmail.com.