The Poker Grafter

I don’t want to be a doom-monger but this week I thought I’d talk about the horrors of the truly bad run and suggest, tentatively, how to cope with it. When I refer to the bad run I’m not talking about losing 4 coinflips out of 5. I’m not even talking about having your premium pair turned over by a 2-outer three times on the trot. No, I’m talking about the nightmare run of bad luck that consumes a regular player for weeks on end where he can literally do no right. He almost always gets his chips in when he’s in front, but by the river he’s behind. Badbeat relentlessly follows badbeat.

The truth is that only the most regular players, who have played thousands of hours of poker over several years, truly understand how bad the luck can get. I can say confidently that many players would never touch a card again if they knew how unfair things can get at times. I know this because after playing for six months I thought I knew the parameters between good and bad luck. I was wrong. I thought the same thing a year later and I was wrong again. Sadly, the more you do play the more likely it is that you’ll see a bad run of almost biblical proportions.

Although this all sounds very depressing and, frankly, it is, the more experienced player should be better equipped to handle what’s thrown at him. This is because the more you play the more you appreciate the psychology of the game. The technical ability to do well is one thing but managing your emotions can be just as crucial.

I think it’s essential to realise that a player can only determine his success so far. All he can do is get his chips in when the situation is favourable. After that it’s in the lap of the poker gods and you just hope the laws of probability hold-up. Any player who thinks he doesn’t need some luck is either completely crazy or hasn’t played very much. Of course self-delusion is rife in the world of poker. ‘It doesn’t matter if I’m unlucky, I’ll bust you anyway,’ is a familiar war cry. As if Lady Luck was just another opponent to be outplayed by an enormous ego. But how often during a typical poker session do you win massive pots when your opponent has no outs at all when the chips go in? It’s very rare, isn’t it. So the luck factor can always come into play.

Many good players feel that they are particularly unlucky. And there is a logical explanation why this seems to be the case. If you’re competent, you’ll be ahead on showdowns more often than you are behind. It therefore stands to reason that there are more opportunities to be outdrawn than to be the outdrawer. What experience comes to tell me is that your ‘lucky’ days are the times when most of your good hands hold-up, even though that just feels like justice.

One thing that amuses me is how many players devise conspiracy theories when the rot sets in. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen online players question the integrity of the gaming site they use. A badbeat will be followed by the revelation that ‘KK never wins on this site,’ for example. Or ‘you’d never see that in a live game.’ And they really mean it, which is ridiculous. It’s the game of poker that can be really unfair; bad luck happens everywhere. Every site I’ve ever played on has people questioning its integrity, which says it all. Why would a gaming site try and fix the game when they make so much money simply hosting legitimate games? It makes no sense.

I once asked a guy who was constantly repeating his allegations of corruption why he kept playing on the site if he was so sure they were effectively stealing from him. He didn’t really have an answer to this but mumbled something about liking the software. So either he didn’t actually believe his own accusation or it didn’t really matter so long as his virtual game looked nice.

But when the bad run finally does end, after what seems like an eternity, all seems right again. When you’re dealt AA your heart doesn’t immediately sink because you just know you’re about to go out in cruel fashion. If you’re a good player you’ll also probably find that the results have improved again but you’re not actually doing much differently.

Simon Ballou writes for Oddschecker Poker

‘I never bluff,’ a tight player once told me with a clear sense of pride. After frequently playing in the same games as him over the subsequent months it was clear that he was as good as his word. It seems to me that announcing you never bluff is a poor strategy unless you really are convinced that your opponents will be wrong-footed when you actually do bluff. But even that assumes, very naively, that everyone takes comments made around a poker table at face value. But to announce that you never bluff and then demonstrate the point for the rest of your life is surely pure madness. 

It’s a strange quirk of poker that many players see gaining respect as very important. In fact for some it seems more important than actually winning money. This leads to a bizarre attitude to bluffing whereby it’s seen as an unworthy, almost despicable act. ‘Well, yes, I’m out of the tournament, it’s true. But at least I didn’t have to resort to duplicity like that rogue over there…Yes him, the one with the mountain of chips…He should be ashamed of himself.’ 

Bluffing shrewdly is integral to the success of any poker player and it doesn’t just involve throwing your chips all-in with nothing and hoping for the best. There’s a big difference between skilful deception and relying on pure luck. Of course many players can’t tell the difference and a good piece of play will often be criticised by a limited player who can’t think outside the box. 

A good example of this that I saw recently saw an orthodox textbook player opening up the pot with a raise in a late seat with A-Q. A more inventive player, who I know to be quite successful, bump re-raised on the button with A-10. Everyone else folded bar the initial raiser who just called. The flop arrived 10-10-5. Both players checked the flop and the rag on the turn. After an ace on the river the initial raiser bet out with top pair only to be re-raised by the button who had now hit the full house.  

The latter had been undeniably lucky but what really infuriated his opponent was the outrage of a re-raise with A-10. A re-raise with A-10 against him of all people! ‘Don’t you realise that when I raise I always have better than A-10, you fool,’ he barked. ‘When you re-raised I assume you must have A-A, K-K or at least A-K.’ This tells us all we need to know about the aggrieved textbook player. If he was so sure that a re-raise equated to a monster premium hand then why did he call it with A-Q? He was of course wrong with this read anyway, which is another problem. 

The good player who re-raises in that spot with A-10 knows several things. Firstly, he has position. The tentative player is terrified of the bump re-raise and is very unlikely to bet into him. This allows for the possibility of a free card if so desired. However, more likely, is that the re-raiser can make a continuation bet on most flops and the initial raiser folds. Even if the flop comes queen high, the tentative holder of A-Q may throw away the best hand to a re-raise, having already convinced himself that his opponent holds A-A or K-K. 

If the flop comes ace high (with no queen or 10) and the initial raiser is very keen, then the good player can probably still get away quite cheaply from A-10, fully aware of his kicker weakness. After all, he targeted a very orthodox player who is hugely unlikely to bluff a re-raiser. Alternatively, he may yet win the pot with the worst hand if he can re-raise convincingly to represent A-A, or more likely A-K. 

The dream scenario that played out for the wily re-raiser was that the flop came with two 10s. Suddenly he had a genuinely huge hand that was almost unreadable. When this occurred he was able to check the flop to imply weakness, or specifically A-K in the mind of his opponent. The player with A-Q then thought he had hit well on the river and bet. But against the feared A-K he would still have been beaten anyway and should therefore have checked with the intention to call, which would have ultimately saved him some chips. 

It’s yet another example where the player handing out the criticism has also been the one who played the hand worse. He’s just too blinkered to see it. All and all it showed the beauty of what amounted to a well-timed, positional bluff re-raise. What he got for his trouble was an earful of abuse - but a substantial boost to his chip stack.

I was recently knocked out of a multi-table tournament when my 1010 got called by a conservative player holding 7-2o. The call was a ludicrous one and as I prepared to put my head in the oven the player in question apologised. Apparently she was trying to lose her chips because her young daughter had got up sick in the night and she needed to look after her. What can you say to that? It’s disheartening to lose at the best of times but to be beaten by someone who wants to be eliminated…that’s hard to take and could only happen in poker. Shortly after I believe her daughter felt better and she was grateful for her healthy chip stack. What a lovely end to the story.

That player’s apology and explanation was so bizarre I had to laugh but the online etiquette for bad beats is a delicate area. I used to feel that it was just good manners to apologise for a particularly nasty bad beat. But experience has shown me that the epitaph of ’sorry’ is just as likely to provoke the wounded beast; a typical blunt response being ‘no you’re not.’ Well yes, obviously I’m glad about my new bulging chip stack. But I can still be sympathetic to the manner of your losing at the same time.

In one common scenario if we’re both all-in pre-flop and I have KK and you have AA and I miraculously outdraw, I’m certainly not apologising for my play. In an online tournament where time is of the essence I believe KK has to be played as strongly as AA 99 times out of 100. In many respects to lose w KK to AA is almost as unlucky as the reversal, but of course you won’t hear the guy with rockets apologising, and rightly so.

If however a complete bluff turns into a winning hand once the chips are in and the cards are turned over that’s a slightly different matter. A sense of guilt and embarrassment may make a player even more inclined to apologise but let’s be honest the meek little ’sorry’ is very unlikely to be warmly received by the victim in this circumstance. My advice, just say nothing.

Another common online courtesy is ‘unlucky’ (ul). The hot-headed victim will even take this as incitement if uttered at the wrong moment. ‘Of course it was!’ (Add expletives at will). Equally the normally convivial ‘good game’ (gg) may well be met with the stroppy ‘no it **** wasn’t.’ In short, some players are just so unable to take a bad beat that there is literally nothing you can say to appease them. So say nothing… then wait to get abused for not even apologising. You can’t win.

But perhaps the hot-headed bad loser should note the typical response of most top players in the world to cruel misfortune. They get bad beat for $100k, shake their heads in frustration and walk away quietly with their dignity intact. An integral part of playing poker seriously is learning to cope with the game’s frequent injustices. I feel that coping with the emotional side of poker is possibly the biggest improvement my game has seen in the past two years. If you can’t handle frequently losing with the best hand, don’t play.

Of course some players don’t even have to be unfortunate to feel aggrieved. I remember one memorable occasion when an opponent went mad at me because I called with the best hand too quickly. I had AA and the flop came Q-Q-10, at which point my emotional adversary quickly moved all-in. I quickly decided that I still had the best of things and called almost instantly. He turned over K-K and I knocked him out. He was furious that I’d been so disrespectful and naïve. Apparently I should have realised that he was representing a Queen and therefore folded, or at the very least agonised over the decision to call. Of course it occurred to me that he could hold a Queen but I concluded instinctively and instantly that this wasn’t the case. The fact is that when you play all the time you can make quite difficult decisions very quickly, rightly or wrongly. I found it hilarious that a player could be so enraged by an opponent calling with what was the best hand at every stage. Oh the injustice of it all.

Simon Ballou writes for Oddschecker Poker