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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.

July 08, 2006

Win Some, Lose Some

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. -- Elbert Hubbard

This won't apply to everyone, or at least it won't apply to everyone all the time, but, how many times have you been playing poker, gotten involved in a pot that someone raised, and the raise in turn caused you to some fear? Let's look at this from the point of view of a tournament so we can be more specific.

Suppose you are in the middle stages of a tournament and you are in late position with big slick suited or unsuited and you raise the minimum to get some action. One player calls and another raises an amount equal to the pot (or greater). The rest of the players fold and it's back to you. Now you're in a quandary, aren't you? Did the first player call because he has a very good hand, maybe a high pair, and he is hoping to help build HIS pot? Did he call because he thought you were trying to steal the blinds and he had a decent drawing hand? Is he usually a calling station? You have many questions to ask of him but it's really not his play that has you sitting up and taking notice. It's the guy who raised the amount of the pot.

He scared you.

He scared you because now you have to commit more than you really wanted to commit and if he has a truly strong hand, it's going to cost you a sizeable number of chips.

It isn't going to matter what the flop is unless it's three aces or three kings because it could be 6-8-J and he could be holding a pair of eights, or a pair of sixes, or a pair of jacks or a six-eight suited, or ten-nine, or any other combination of łscary˛ two-card combos.

So what are you going to do now? Are you going to reraise and maybe put all your chips in the pot? Are you going to call to see what the flop brings? Are you going to fold and wait for something more comfortable?

Actually, the question shouldn't even come up because you know how to play that particular hand. But it does. And it comes up because suddenly you are afraid you could lose; your stack could suffer irreparable damage; or you could eventually commit everything and lose it all.

I know all this to be true because it was one of the concerns I had when first playing tournaments and it took a bit of time before I realized that, yes, I was going to lose sometime and yes, I would suffer chip damage sometime, and yes, I might get knocked out sometime sometime but not all the time.

Now, if a person gets bumped to the rain on the bubble, the heartbreak lingers. However, time will present the opportunity to turn the table on that result and nobody is going to bluff you all the time and nobody's going to outdraw you all the time. You will win the right percentage of the time and be happy when you do so.

It's never a happy conclusion when you lose. But it happens and you recover. You just can't be afraid of losing. You can't second guess yourself when you make the right play. That's a fact. Play as if you will win but don't expect to win all the time.

Don't fear losing unless you've committed your entire bankroll to this one shot. Then again, if you're going for all the marbles, you're in the wrong game and you really should be afraid.

There's another tournament tomorrow. In fact, if you're online, there's another tournament within the next minute.