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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.

Sep 16, 2006

Going on Tilt and Loving It

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. -- Scott Adams (Dilbert)

Every once in a while good results emerge as a result of bad moves. I'm not talking about learning from a mistake either because few people really learn anything from their mistakes. Neither am I saying that every bad move produces a good outcome.

Several weeks ago in a small buy-in tournament, I'd been faced with a couple of players who just didn't seem to know the meaning of the world fold. They called every blind, saw every raise, and generally stayed in hands that might make a strong man cry. Yet these two players were winning like crazy with anything from a pair of deuces to a double insight straight draw where the river card fulfilled a prayer.

Meanwhile, I was folding hand after hand. My cards were so bad I couldn't even legitimately think about defending my blind. The deal actually gave me deuce-seven offsuit twice and myriad hands that couldn't stretch to a straight with free elastic, would require the help of St. Anthony of Padua to find a flush or a whole slew of prayers to produce a winning pair. Eventually someone commented on my lack of participation, essentially telling me I would have to play a hand sooner or later. Of course I knew this. Sure, I might be able to let them blind me away for a while but eventually I'd have to make a move because you don't win tournaments by letting opportunities pass you by.

The only trouble was that I hadn't seen any opportunities.

I was running low on chips and patience when I found two sweet ladies staring up at me from beneath my fingers. At last, a hand. I figured I would have to make two moves. First, I'd have to bet slowly to encourage others to stick around and second, I'd have to be willing to accept the fact that one or both of the reckless players would stay till the end and could possibly suck out. Either way, I wasn't going to commit all my chips if I didn't have to.

Maybe because the blinds were now $100-200, both players just called. On the flop, with a gorgeous queen in the middle, I checked, hoping one or both of the constant contributors would bet and maybe get raised. But they didn't! Both of them checked right after me. Hmmm. I was sure the queen didn't scare them because she'd never done it before, and the seven-nine on each side didn't seem threatening. At any rate, I wasn't going to take any chances. I bet the minimum on the turn (a ten) and didn't flinch when both players called. On the river an eight looked scary. It occurred to me that somebody could have stuck around with a jack-eight so I checked. The firs t player bet, the second called and after giving it serious consideration, I called as well. Damn of both these guys didn't have that jack-eight!

Now I was beyond angry. I knew immediately I was on tilt before the next deal but I'd had it. I remembered one of my uncles telling me he couldn't play chess with me because I didn't know how to play. I was mad then and I was mad now. So when my next two cards turned out to be deuce-five of hearts, I decided to go give up. Miracle of miracles, the flop brought ace-three-queen of hearts and the turn brought the four of hearts.

I was all over this pot!

It was good enough to cripple a good player who was holding the kind of hearts and even though it didn't do serious damage to the two guys who drove me make this stupid move, I felt kind of smug.

That will show them.

Of course I was still leaning and on the next two hands, my mind still committed to suicide moves, I managed to get all in by the turn and managed to win the next two hands.

Suddenly my stack had improved. I was actually in second place and in a little while one of the wild and crazy guys was gone. We were down to three, then two, and finally one.