A little more than four years ago, Jack Whittaker won the largest undivided lottery prize in U.S. history. After taxes, Mr. Whittaker took home over $113 million in one lump sum. He is now in the news because, well, he’s broke. He has several outstanding markers with Atlantic City casinos, and he can’t pay a legal settlement on an assault charge against a casino employee. His bank account, business, and vehicles have been burglarized, and he’s been through rehab after a DUI arrest. Talk about a bad swing!

Intriguing is how little Whitaker apparently did to protect himself after winning the lottery. He fell hard into the trappings of success. People knew who he was and they knew he was rich. He became vulnerable to the larcenous. Maybe he was too busy drinking in AC to notice. Whatever the reasons, obviously, the sense of invincibility which accompanies big money and good luck played a large role in Whittaker’s circumstances.

Surely nobody on PocketFives, nobody we know personally, nobody other than MC Hammer, has had a collapse on the scale of Jack Whittaker. To a lesser extent, we have all experienced a similar setback after running well in a card game. We play with the blade once or twice too often, and eventually we get hurt. Sometimes it’s a swift decapitation, sometimes a steady bleeder, and sometimes death by a thousand paper cuts. The end result is always the same if you aren’t watchful when you get that big stack.

Decapitation comes when you play a huge pot with the only other big stack at your table. After a rush of pocket pairs and big overcards, a pair of 9s or 10s can look a lot better than it is. You lead out with a raise, again, and the other big stack plays back at you. In a normal frame of mind, you’d accept your pair for what it is (a coin flip, at best) and muck it. With your invincibility goggles on, those 9s look like every other monster hand you’ve had; the other big stack looks like the biggest bluff machine in poker. You push, he calls with KK, and you’re felted in one swift stroke. When the goggles come off with your head, you immediately kick yourself for being such a donkey. At least you know what not to do next time. Hopefully…

A steady bleeder can best be summed up by a hand analysis from a friend, which started: “I open-raised from the button with J9 suited, just to steal the blinds and antes. The big blind re-raised the size of the pot…. I just knew I could make this hand work in position, so I called.” Your invincibility goggles can make flights of fancy look like the bedrock truth. Yes, you may get lucky again, which only goes to cement those goggles tighter over your eyes. Eventually, if you keep playing big pots as a 2:1 underdog, you’ll double up smaller stacks until you are the small stack. It happens to the best of players; witness John D’Agostino at the final table of the 2004 U.S. Poker Championships. Eliminated as a steady bleeder, your goggles come off slowly and reality hesitates to crystallize. For most of us, however, the truth does sink in and provide a valuable lesson to use as a tourniquet in the future. At least you know what not to do next time. Hopefully….

The most painful way to die is by a thousand tiny cuts. Torturous. You have the stack, the desire, and the aggression in your soul to take that mountain of chips out for a spin and bully the table into submission. A funny thing happens, though, when you raise 4x the BB three or four times a round. Often, people have hands and play back at you, so you’re forced to fold. For every four BB worth of blinds and antes you take down, you’re giving up seven or eight. But the invincibility goggles are still on, and you keep firing away with A9 from middle position. You’re below average by now, and nobody at the table lets you get away with anything. When you’re out of the tournament, you look back with absolutely no idea what went wrong and no clue what to do next time.

A million tiny cut scars permit me a couple of suggestions.

First, raise less. People who don’t want to play hands with you will fold just as easily to 2.5-3x the big blind raises as 4x. If you save the extra BB commitment every time, your raises can be less effective and still maintain or grow your overall stack. This technique is common amongst the blind & ante gatherers, going back to Stu Ungar. Phil Ivey and Gavin Smith are masters of this approach today, with players like Ari and BeL0WaB0Ve doing it best online.

Second, tighten up some. You don’t have to sit on your hands and wait for AA. The need for chip accumulation to stay ahead of the blinds is always there. But you can still grow your stack by being tighter and more successful when you raise than playing like a maniac and folding to re-raises. Let’s say each pot starts with 3x the BB between the blinds and antes (common for most structures), and your standard raise is 3x.

If you can pick your spots and raise three times every two rounds with an 80% success rate, you’ll have an expectation per raise of 1.8 BB…for a total of 5.4 BB every two rounds. If you raise three times every round with a 60% success rate, your expectation per raise is 0.6 BB, for a total of 3.6 BB every two rounds.

The winner is the player with every chip at the last turn of the cards, not during the game.
The next time you find yourself with good fortune and a large stack, be smart about how you protect it.