I recently played in a 5-10 no-limit game at the Borgata, and as I dragged my sorry butt to the car at the end of the twelve hour session I knew that I would be writing this blog. I am normally a very aggressive player but as the hands began to unfold I quickly realized that the table was filled with young internet kamikaze’s willing to push their chips in at any given moment. For this reason I decided to play an extremely tight game, choosing my spots carefully. It is a general axiom in poker that if your opponents are playing loosely, you play tight and vice versa.
Over the course of the day I only played about a dozen hands to the river. That translates to only one hand per hour and those of you who know me probably find it hard to believe, but it is true.
On five of those occasions when I played through to the river, I was all-in on the flop or the turn. Each time I got my money in right and each time I lost.
For example, on the first all-in hand I called an under-the-gun raise with 7-5 of diamonds from the big blind after six other players called. The flop was 7-5-2 with two clubs. The original raiser made a large bet and everyone else folded. Assuming that the raiser had an overpair or perhaps A-K my proper play was to reraise, which I did. He instantly shoved all of his chips to the middle. I discounted the possibility that he had flopped a set because I don’t think he would have raised under the gun with a small pocket pair and so I knew that I was a considerable favorite, therefore I made the call. The turn was a club and he excitedly turned his cards over, revealing A-J of clubs. As a harmless card fell on the river I knew it was going to be a long day.
As a playwright I have gotten to know many actors over the years and one truism among them is that when they are working they believe they will always be working and when they are out of work they believe they will never work again.
In a similar vein when poker players are on a winning streak they often think it will never end, and then when they are on a losing streak they think they will never win again. In some respects for poker it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because many players are more relaxed and confident when they are winning, allowing them to play better, while conversely many play much worse when they are on an extended losing streak, either tilting and playing erratically aggressively or by shriveling into a shell and allowing themselves to be steamrolled.
As my opponents know, I have always been the former. In the long term it has worked for me and one of the popular sayings in my old home game was “Uncle Marv is off the mat.” But I recognize the fact that it is a bad plan, and of late it has cost a lot more than it has gained, forcing me to work to overcome my desire to throttle people who are beating me.
So how does a player handle an extended losing streak? The first thing to recognize is that there are going to be days on which you are simply going to lose no matter how well you play. When this happens you have to accept the inevitable without allowing it to affect your future play. Easier said than done for most people but if you keep long-term records of your progress and you are generally a winner then you have to absorb the loss in your mind and just start fresh next game. Of course if your long-term records portray you as a long-term loser then you have to regroup and figure out whether you should even be playing the game at all.
But maybe it’s not just the luck of the draw. Maybe your game has changed somehow, even in a barely perceptible way and if you want to go back to your winning ways you need to identify the problem and correct it. In the clear light of day (not when you are sitting at the poker table) you should focus on the way you have been playing of late. Has something changed. Sometimes slight variations of play can turn a winner into a loser. (And then again - most frustratingly – poker is about change, about not being pigeonholed. For example, one player in my former home game always raised a certain amount when he had ace-king preflop. For every other holding in which he raised he used a different amount. Smart players would vie for position, playing his ace-king raise with any two cards because he always made a continuation bet. Therefore if the flop did not contain an ace or a king, a post-flop raise was always in order and would take down the pot).
But as I was saying, although change is good, unintentional changes may be throwing your game off. For example suppose your strategy when you flop second pair in a limp pot is to never call a bet. Now you have been running very lucky and so you decide to call a bet with second pair. You miss the turn and muck but you do it again the next time and the next. Occasionally your hand improves and you still lose. You have now slipped into a pattern and almost imperceptibly it has begun to cost you money but since it is a small change in strategy you may not even consciously realize that you are doing it.
Another example is your range of starting hands. You normally try to be a tight-aggressive player. You never limp with Queen-rag suited for example. But you have been losing, losing, losing and you need to turn things around. So now you are calling even small raises with Queen-rag suited or 5-6 offsuit or other hands which can only lead to trouble. You are pressing desperately and your fear that you may never win again becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Losing streaks are an integral part of the poker scene. Doyle Brunson once commented that he has probably been broke 600 times during his lifetime of poker playing. And he’s among the best in the world. If you explore your play during an extended losing streak and are convinced that nothing has changed for the worse then you need to understand and accept the fact that the more you play, the truer your results will be to the odds and you need to just hang on, not hang yourself.
And let me address one other thing that has been hotly debated among my poker companions, and that is the efficacy of locking down or playing almost no hands in a game when you are winning a lot. One super-lucky s.o.b. in my home game always locks down if we are in the last two hours of the game and he is ahead. And since I’ve gone from a big winner to a loser in the last two hours of the game three times this month, my friends have suggested I follow the s.o.b.’s play. I could not disagree more with this concept. Poker is a game that never ends. You play, you stop, you eat, you sleep, you do other stuff and you play again. It is a true continuum and when you are running strong (and perhaps playing strong) you want to maximize your results. This does not mean that you should loosen up your game. It simply means that you should play to win when the cards dictate it. On one particular night in the last hour of a game in which I was doing very well I lost back-to-back hands with a flopped set to a straight on the river and a turned set to a gutshot straight on the river. I ended the night in the red but simply because my 80% chances of winning did not hold up. I did not sleep very well that night but not because I thought that I played badly or that I should have been in lockdown. For every instance in which I have gone from a winner to a loser in that situation, there have been four instances of going from a winner to a HUGE winner. If there is a reasonable chance that you will never play poker again and you want to end your career on a winning note then by all means go into lockdown. But if you’re like almost all of the poker players that I know, continue to play as if it were the first hand of the evening. In the long run it will definitely pay off.
