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Maryann Guberman has been a writer and editor with many gaming publications, including Sports Form, Card Player, Poker World, Player's Panorama and Systems and Methods. She also has written and edited numerous books on gambling.

June 3, 2006

What Can You Do When it Rains on Your Parade?

"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way." -- Juan Ramon Jiminez

Grrr. Yikes! Oh poop!

What else can you say when you can't do anything to defeat the tide of perfect cards flooding into your opponents' hands while you're left holding second and third best? Or what to do when you find yourself getting blinded into poverty because you can't stretch credibility thin enough to make a hand out of the measly cards you're getting?

You can't cry stupid when your suited big slick gets polished off by quad eights. You can't bemoan a bad beat when your opponent flops the nuts and you're left holding the shell. You can't cry fowl when you chicken out after four losing hands in a row, fold your pair of fives and two guys go heads up until the winner's deuces and treys knock out the guy with an eight-nine suited. No use crying over the fact that the little bitty pair would have kept you in action, maybe even put you into high gear. You're a smart player so those fives were just trouble.

Might as well as yourself why glue doesn't stick to the inside of the bottle as to try to figure out why things don't go your way in streaks.

Do you feel as if you're the living embodiment of every one of Murphy's Laws?

Trust me on this one, folks. There's almost nothing you can do but wait it out. Oh, sure, you can start playing a little more carelessly. (Did I hear anyone say tilt?) That's the kind of move your opponents would love. Or you could start examining what happened to you earlier, before you sat down to play. Like maybe a black cat crossed your path? Or you stepped on the cracks on the sidewalk? We know you didn't break a mirror because you wouldn't be playing, for certain, if that had happened. Or you can just keep checking and folding and checking and folding and folding and folding, which gets seriously boring after a while, patience or no patience.

But really, there are no real solutions to the problem, just Band Aids. But, you know how much help that little piece of cushion under adhesive can be when you're bleeding.

For starters, you can do what a lot of pros suggest. Take a vacation. Quit playing, maybe for just an hour or two, maybe a day. Let someone else pick up the slack and become the victim of negativity. Yes. We know. Staying away from poker is like swearing off Ben and Jerry's.Vermonty Python.

Second, you can be a bit of a renegade and pick another game. Give up following the trend. Buck it and try some seven-card stud or (gasp) Omaha. Step down to a comfy limit and see if things don't turn around.

Don't do the obvious. In other words, stay away from the freebie games online because you can't expect to get any feedback about the status of your unlucky streak when nine out of ten (that's you) players go to the river every hand.

Third, and even better than kissing your poker love goodbye or trying to play a game that requires a bit more cerebral concentration, load that copy of Wilson's Turbo stuff or Masque and T.J. Cloutier's goods, or Poker Academy's CD and ride out the wave of bad luck against computerized competitors.

Play high limits. Play tournaments. Play satellites. Play in your darkened office with your cat on your lap, in the nude in your bedroom, on your laptop in the kitchen with a box of Snyder's sourdough pretzels and a diet peach Snapple next to you.

Sooner or later you'll start to recover and chances are you'll come back even stronger. You will have saved a lot of bets and now you can use them against the next poor schlub who just got hit with a dose of hard luck.

And remember not to sympathize because he was the same guy silently (and maybe vocally) cheering when he was taking your money.