By
grapsfan
Have you ever felt not just persecuted by the poker gods,
but completed obliterated, abused and left for dead? Do you say “Why
Me?” so often that your voice is shot and you’re reduced to writing it
on chat windows and Post-It Notes? Believe me, you’re not alone. It
happens to most players at one time or another, especially those who
study the game, visit sites like PocketFives, and understand how bad
the odds of hitting a 3-outer (or worse) on the river are. Sometimes it
feels like the cards caught just don’t balance out, like you’re on the
outside looking in far more than you should be. The conspiracy theorist
looks at it as the rigging of online poker. I turned to a high-school
English Lit class for the answers.
In “1984”, George Orwell details a sociological system of the Low,
Middle and High. Orwell used these terms to break down society by
wealth, and more importantly, power. In this case, I use it to talk
about poker skill and how it pertains to luck. The Low player hits his
gutshot straight draws on the river and turns a rag to match his lousy
kicker. The Low player cracks your AA with 6-8, despite your big raises
and aggressive play, because he doesn’t know well enough to get out of
your way. The Low player seems to have all the luck, because you
remember their donkey suckouts and clueless calls long after they’ve
gone broke and left your table.
The High player is a master of mixing up his play and understanding
the implied pot odds of hitting a big hand with unexpected hole cards.
The High player has the ability to read opponents and game situations
and to buy pots with rags, as well as the confidence to play his way
out of bad situations, along with the fear factor that comes with that
confident image. The High player cracks your AA with 6-8 because he’s
unafraid of your raises and aggressive play, and because he knows how
to get out of your way if you really have a dominant hand. The High
player seems to have all the luck, because their reputation makes them
known as a player who wins big pots with bad hands.
The Middle player usually understands pot odds, knows the Top 20
Hold’em pocket cards and the benefits of tight play, and they can
usually stick to their guns and make some money when faced with an
abundance of Low players. The Middle only chases when someone makes it
the proper play, always gets rid of hands with bad kickers, and is only
mildly bothered by missed opportunities and folding the best hand. The
Middle player never cracks your AA with 97 because he folds 97 preflop.
The point of all of this is that the Middle player never seems to
have any luck, because luck is rarely a factor in how they play poker.
Their money goes into the middle only when pretty clear that they have
the best of it. There is less gamble to the Middle’s game than the Low
or High, by a large margin. The Middle’s reaction to watching someone
splash around with second pairs and flush draws is almost always
negative....as opposed to the High, who understands that the key to
poker nirvana lies in the ability to get maximum value out of the cards
dealt to them. The Middle’s reaction to a big stack’s rags eliminating
a short stack’s “good cards” is one of disgust....as opposed to the
High, who understands that this is one of the benefits to having a big
stack rather than simply surviving in a tournament.
To the Low, poker is 80% luck, because they don’t know any other way
to play it. To the Middle, poker is 30% luck, almost all of it
detrimental to their game. To the High, this ratio is completely
irrelevant. They benefit the least from pure luck....because they are
making their own, not waiting for the poker gods to bless them with a
river or waiting for lots of big pairs and nut flushes to build a
monster stack.
Just something to think about when trying to analyze ways to take
your game to the next level....or wondering why your favorite poker
site seems to hate you so damn much.