Winning a $290 pot with 5-4 suit is akin to watching “The Day After Tomorrow.” Yeah, you’re a little embarrassed to be there, and maybe you don’t want your friends to know what you’re doing, but if you need to scratch that over-dramatized action movie itch featuring all-time overrated actor Dennis Quaid, then there’s nothing quite like it.
Suited connectors are the same way. Maybe you shouldn’t play them, maybe you should, but when you go to showdown and you see your opponent flip over aces and a flopped set to your 5-4 and a rivered straight, you feel a little guilty. That is, until you snap out of it and realize that you get to rake in enough money to pay your way through college for the next few months.
You throw a few of these hands together-hands that maybe you shouldn’t win frequently-and all of a sudden you’re looking at a pretty substantial run.
There is no feeling quite like making $1,500 in 42 minutes. Repeatedly. In my last article, I wrote about my how time away from the game, and my subsequent troubles getting back into it after a four-month layoff, made me respect the game more than I ever have in the past. While my respect for the subtleties of the game continues to grow, my problems with readjusting have disappeared.
My last three weeks of poker play have been as automatic as they come. I’m playing about as well as I can, the cards are falling my way, and most importantly, I’m averaging over $300 an hour, which has equated to my winnings of more than $13,000 since September 7th. Every time I sit down to play, it feels like I can’t be beat, and every session that passes without losing only verifies that belief. In the words of the character Russell Hammond in “Almost Famous,” I am a golden god.
Do I really think that I’m unbeatable? The answer isn’t as simple as it seems. Probability, which is the Bible of any serious player, dictates that, at some point, I’m going to lose money. A lot of money.
The fact is, even if you’re a great player, you can never outrun the inevitable downswing that accompanies a huge upswing. It just happens. However, in order to maintain the edge that makes you the type of player you want to be, you need to believe that no matter where you sit down, no matter whom you’re playing with, and no matter how much money is at stake on the table, you are the best player that has ever lived.
Maybe you recognize somebody at the table whose talents you respect, but simply by knowing that they have certain skills, you’re displaying your ability to read people. Maybe you just lost a big hand to a suck out on the river, but the fact that he sucked out on the river meant that he was behind on the turn, and most importantly, you should have won.
So, yes, every time I sit down, I believe that I am the best player at that table, and that’s why I win. That’s not the only reason I win-there is still a huge element of number crunching and people watching that is crucial to long-term success-but it is the only reason I win as much as I do. It’s why I’m not scared to push high-risk/high-reward hands to their limit in order to add a few pennies to my bottom line. I am confident enough in my abilities so that I never worry about running into someone better than me. It just doesn’t cross my mind.
Of course, I’m not as good as I think I am. Whether it’s at poker, or anything else for that matter, we all have a tendency to overestimate our abilities and attribute all the good results to personal skill and all the bad to poor luck. But the second any of us let doubt creep into our thoughts, whether it’s in poker, athletics, or academics, we cannot perform up to our potential.
Wednesday night I played a marathon session into the wee hours of the morning and ended up down $400. It marked my first losing day in over a month. What made this session different was obvious-the cards weren’t falling as probability would dictate, and as a result, I was overplaying my hands and ending up in bad spots. It didn’t take much thinking to figure it out, and after a few hours of breakeven play, I decided to call it quits.
As I slipped beneath my covers, still angry at my losing session, and even angrier at the rays of light beginning to seep in through my blinds, I could only think about another quote from Russell Hammond in Almost Famous: “I never said I was a golden god…or did I?”