Lucky vs. Unlucky
I don’t believe in bad beats, and most of the people I know don’t either. In fact, I’d say that most people who do believe in them are limited in their potential for improvement. So when I talk about lucky vs. unlucky, it has little to do with winning a hand or two. In fact, if I had AA the first hand of the WSOP and got all the money in preflop, to me that would be a version of lucky, even if I lost, because it’s hard to be put in a better situation.
I hope that gives a little context on where I am going with this. For the most part, I will be writing about being unlucky, considering that is what I think happened at this year’s WSOP. I can and will write the lucky article when it presents itself again. I would estimate that I have won well over 30 tournaments, and in any one of them, there were certainly times and situations where I got lucky.
Your table mates comprise a great deal of your luck. For instance, if you like to see a lot of flops but you have Gavin Smith on your left, that’s unlucky, as you will have to adjust to a style that is likely out of your comfort zone.
On the first day of the WSOP, I got very lucky on my table draw and also began to run unlucky. The best example of which is this: I flopped 5 straights and didn’t get action on one, not even a called continuation bet. One time I raised with 36, and the flop came 2 4 5, a guy led out, I raised a bit. He folded, showing77 face up. In my opinion that’s a little tight, but he made the right play. I also had AA and KK twice each, but the only time I got action, I lost a big pot to AK with KK. That was certainly unlucky, but I was lucky to have chips, and the person made this gross error because of his fear of me outplaying him. When you have that big of a mental advantage at your table, you are sitting in a good spot, so it didn’t take me long to get those chips back.
This brings me to a point. Professional Poker Players have an investment in making you feel less than them. I won’t name names, but some players would have you believe that they hold the key to Pandora’s Poker Box. In a way they do, and in a way they don’t. For instance, do you think Eric Lynch or Jamie Gold is measurably worse than Phil Hellmuth or Phil Ivey? Let’s say you do think that; what could bridge that gap? Experience? Possibly. Luck? Certainly.
What well known players are good at is drawing from their well of experience, and specifically in the case of Ivey, he is willing to take some extraordinary chances to accumulate chips. He can play with the hand or without.
One thing that is overrated, though, is the ability to play without a hand. What actually happens more often than not is that pros play a lot of hands in the last three spots and defend their blinds with deceptive hands that can make the nuts.
Here is an example of a hand that I played. In the cutoff, I raised with 45 on the third day. The small blind called, and he was a fairly tight player, so I felt like he had to have a big ace or a pair to make that call. Anything more and he would raise me off of the pot, because that is the right way to play, and players like him like to play correctly. The flop brought an ace, and he checked, so I made continuation bet. He check raised me for the minimum, and the board did pair me and leave me with a backdoor flush possibility, so I called. I had him out chipped 3/1, so he could be playing for all his chips. I didn’t need the turn to do too much for me, but it did. Instead of checking, he led it. My card had paired, giving me trips, and I moved all in. This was not uncommon for me, as I play a lot of pots and put people to the test. He folded, and it surprised me a little, given that he had so few chips left, but I was playing him for that exact scenario.
When you play more hands, people want to call you, but they have difficulty figuring out where they are at in the hands and often times they overplay hands like AK because they have been waiting for hours to get it. The fact that he check raised me and led at the pot on the turn would generally mean that it’d be difficult for him to get away from an ace, because it would be hard to imagine that a random 4 on the turn would have hit someone. It is of course possible that after seeing my range all night, he made a good read.
Playing a lot of hands to get lucky or unlucky is not based on your opponents outdrawing you; you can only do what you can do and fate will do the rest. I got lucky on him in that hand, but I didn’t NEED to get lucky, unless he hit a set that pot was going to be mine because I didn’t need the cards to do what I did. That is why calling in the last three positions with a wide variety of 2 gapped suited connectors can put a world of hurt on your opponents, and if you have enough chips to put some gas to the occasional pots, you can win the hands a number of ways. People raise with KQ in the cutoff all the time, and that doesn’t mean they will always hit it. If you can control the pot, a lot of those pots can be yours, and occasionally you will even get a good flop for your hand.
Does this mean that I am constantly bluffing? I actually don’t think I bluff much at all, so don’t go crazy trying to make your hands. Most pros let the cards do a lot of the work, but they can play a bigger range of hands, based on their experience and ability to take advantage of situations.
The other thing that happened to me a lot was getting crushed when I had big hands. I laid down Q6 (hey, they were suited and I was on the button) to a QQ3 board. The first guy led, I raised, and he went all in for a lot more. He had this look on his face like he had my kicker beat, so I gave him the pot. Either way, I hadn’t gotten all my chips by guessing on pots, and there was no need to gamble, making it an easy lay down.
In another hand, I had A8 and the flop came 679. I was in the blind, so I checked after calling a raise against a fairly agro player. There was just no point in trying to outplay this kid, so I decided to try and make the hand on him. The turn brought a 6, and it went check check. The river brought the 2 (which I thought was a fairly safe card for me), he bet, and I beat him in the pot with Ace high. It turns out he went runner runner to make the flush–that was a little unlucky.
Another time, I made an inside straight on the river with JJ, and the player in position made a flush. It was unlucky that I made my straight at the same time he made his flush, because if I don’t make the straight, I can get off of my Jacks easily. That happened a lot where I checked with what I thought to be best hand and kept the pot small only to get unlucky against some unlikely hands.
On 3 of my 4 days (obviously the first day didn’t count), I was at the table with the chip leader. This isn’t always bad, but you do have to watch your step, and for 2 of those days, I played some pretty impressive poker. It is possible that I have never played better than those 2 days, given the fact that I was not a dominate stack and was a factor at all of the tables I played. I also got awful table draws. When you are at a table with the chip leader, and your table is not going to break, you are screwed. You still have to play though, despite your bad fortune. That’s not a bad beat, but it is pretty undeniable that you got a little unlucky. When you are at the chip leader’s table, continuations bets are difficult without some part of a hand.
I sure hope that everyone who reads this article doesn’t feel like I am complaining. I want people to understand that to win a tournament, you need a forward moving motion. You need to take advantage of spots, and you need to recognize when nothing is there. In retrospect, I of course would have played a little differently on day 4. Ultimately, though, I got unlucky that David Woo hit a set of 3’s against a guy that decided to bluff off 500k in chips with A9 (the blinds were 2500-5000). My table would have been one of the last to break, so I decided to play some hands, and for that day, and it just wasn’t meant to be.
Did I play a little sloppy? I probably did, and I certainly didn’t adjust to the table complexion well enough. On day 4, people were going for knockout blows, whereas on day 3, people were dinking and dunking. Trying to outflop people that are raising all in for fear of playing a pot is difficult; by the time I adjusted, the writing was on the wall.
In the end, I want the message of this article to be about having a plan, adjusting your plan, and continuing to fire bullets. I am not saying that I am a world class player, but I do some things right, and if you give yourself a chance to win, you are going to be on a cliff sometimes. Sometimes you fall off of that cliff, and that’s OK too.
In 2004, I came in 152nd at the WSOP ME. This year I came in 258th, and the difference was startling. In ’04, I was mentally wiped out and never wanted to play poker again. This year, I want back in the ring. Mentally I was quite sharp, and I could have played for days on end. What a blast I had, and I promise you that I will write the article when things go lucky for me, win or lose.
