One source of valuable information that Sharkscope can give you about a tournament opponent you know little about is ‘average stake’. Often you will find that the player in question is indeed playing at a level he is accustomed to but it is extraordinary how often this isn’t the case. I have been struck recently about how often I have taken my place in a $109 SNG only to discover that several of my opponents at that level have an average stake of about $5. Further more, of those cavalier individuals who have suddenly taken a shot at a big money game, the vast majority will having been losing at the very lowest level. Quite simply, they are looking for one great game at high stakes to sort out their debts. To be frank these are good people to find yourself up against. They tend to be unaccomplished and now, thanks to a moment of madness, they are probably terrified.
These people are gamblers. I make a clear distinction between poker players and panicking, desperate gamblers. Poker players wager calculated sums with reason to believe they will see ROI -’return on investment’ in the long term. They have shown an ability to win some money over a period of time that has seen good and bad runs. I have previously suggested that a conservative estimate of what that time period would be is in the region of 1000 games or more. And trust me this is a conservative estimate. I know great online tournament players who have had a bad 1000 games. The swings are more brutal than 99% of online players could ever imagine.
For the gambler leaping up the stakes the phrase return on investment is an unnecessary compliment in itself. Throwing ten times more money at something you have previously been unsuccessful at isn’t investing in my eyes. Sharkscope should show their ROP – return on punt. When I go to the Epson Derby I’m not investing my money because I don’t know the first thing about horse racing. But I might take a punt, based on some ludicrous hunch involving a horse’s trainer being born on the same day as my uncle. In poker, you need to prove that you can win at the low levels in order to earn the right to play for big bucks. Put another way, get a bankroll!
The problem with this is that it can all take rather a lot of hard work, patience and can be rather time-consuming. Given that most losing ‘poker players’ – if I use the term in the loosest sense – are convinced that they are just unlucky, they can easily convince themselves that success is always just around the corner. (Most winning players are also convinced they are unlucky as well and that says a great deal.) Frighteningly, but also brilliantly from my point of view, a losing $5 player will often even conclude that their game is more suited to the high stakes. The rationale here would be that they operate on a level so high that their moves are wasted on other low stakes players. ‘A better player would have folded to my bluff there’, is not an uncommon thing to hear. So off they head to the high stakes where their brilliant play will finally be rewarded.
Delusional doesn’t even begin to cover this mentality. Yes, there is truth in the fact that a ‘move’ can sometimes work against a better player and not an imbecile but one of the game’s greatest skills is learning to play each opponent properly. ‘Don’t try to bluff a player who simply can’t fold‘, is a valuable lesson and one best to learn at lower stakes. These are the players who will pay you off when you really do have a hand. But putting all this to one side, the fact is that you’re probably not good enough to win at high stakes until you are a proven success lower down.
It is temptation that combines with this self-delusion when a player ends up in ‘too big’ a game. I’m sure that a player who has lost $250 playing $5 SNGs is discouraged by the thought that it will take a supremely good run at that level to merely return to even. He will then become intoxicated by the thought that just one good game at the $109 level will wipe out all the debt in an instance. Throw into the mix a sense of injustice having probably lost the previous game with AK against AQ and you have all the ingredients needed to make that rash decision to leap in at the deep end.
Of course, the most likely outcome of this decision is that that our loss chasing gambler will simply accelerate his demise into the red. Even the best tournament players on the internet don’t routinely make the money more than half the time in a standard format. Not over a year or two’s play at least. It is quite possible that the gambler will even play a faultless game. Indeed, I have noted that these stake leapers will often become very tight and put in a competent performance because so much is suddenly at stake. However, in a desperate bid to eradicate poor play they will often become too tight and weak. Suddenly their blinds are available for the taking and they become predictable. The regular high stake players have noted that the newcomer appears too scared to bluff or get out of line at all. Good players will inevitably use this to their advantage.
In the final analysis if the gambler falls short of the money at this level it will hurt more than ever. It won’t ultimately matter whether the crucial moment was determined by bad play or bad luck because the greatest pain will come from having needed a result far too much. Deep down, he will be angry with himself for entering a game that he had no business being in. But wait, perhaps he will make the money and it will all be ok. Possible. But I suspect that the bad decisions will not end there and it will all end in tears soon enough.
Simon Ballou writes for Oddschecker.com