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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.

Dec 09, 2006

Making of a Winning Player

It's kind of fun to do the impossible. -- Walt Disney

As individuals and as groups, we humans have accomplished the impossible, haven't we? Where once we found it difficult to walk upright we now find we can fly. Where the amputee could hope for little more than a stiff wooden leg to get him around from day to day he now can run a marathon successfully with a fantastic, albeit exorbitantly expensive, titanium prosthesis. Where once we had space around us we now have invisible waves because someone envisioned he could transmit sound over and through that air.

The U.S. Army has a slogan that suits these kinds of phenomenal successes: "The difficult, we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer." True, the statement sounds grandiose but when you strip it down to its basic premise, it stands as true as a carpenter's level.

Becoming a winning poker player can be difficult but the only way it can be impossible is if you exhibit a lack of dedication, practice and confident belief that you can, in fact, win.

Unlike many pessimists, I don't believe people are unchangeable. Yes, it's true we sometimes expect too much of each other but I'm not thinking in terms of a wife trying to change a husband or vice versa. I'm looking at changing ourselves and how we need to react to situations in life to achieve an outcome that differs from the present end product.

Let me drift away into the animal kingdom for a moment.

In Southern California there's a man named Caesar Milan who is known as the Dog Whisperer. People call on him to help train their misguided and misbehaving dogs and some of the animals in question seem to need a lot of training. They are barkers and biters, growlers and grovellers, chewers and champers, benders and bounders; in short, they are what most people will call undisciplined animals. Milan, on the other hand, professes and proves that the real problem with these dogs is the owner, and his positive results, even with the perceived meanest dogs in the world, prove not just that people can be trained but that they can be retrained to think in a manner that is totally different from the way they are. If you receive the National Geographic channel on TV, tune in to watch exactly how Milan accomplishes this in a very short period of time. (For more information you can visit his website at www.dogpsychologycenter.com.)

An effort to become a winning poker player is a matter of retraining yourself to follow a disciplined course of action. When a woman tenses up every time she has her dog on a leash and she sees another dog coming in their direction, the dog immediately knows there's a problem. His reaction is always going to be negative. A session of cowering or growling or baring of the teeth won't go away but when the woman learns to be fearless herself, to dominate the situation and walk forward with confidence, this attitude will travel down through the leash and into her dog's psyche. When that same woman looks at an ace king unsuited in her hand and wavers about how to play it because she remembers a big loss from the same hand or because she has a limited number of chips in front of her, that indecision travels around the table to her opponents, and her hand falls into harms way. This action is most easily noted in a casino or cardroom atmosphere but it's also recognizable online, usually after just a few hands.

As simplistic as it sounds, one big secret to turning your game from loser to winner lies within your own ability to discipline yourself. The pros already know how they are going to play any two cards; they know when they might change gears and why. Notice that they do change gears? Just because they know which cards make the best starting hands in certain position, it doesn't mean they will follow the same course every time. Unless there's some compelling outside force that distracts them, the pros rarely have to stop and think about what they are going to do with a hand. Sure they might demonstrate ambivalence, but it's all a show. They are almost always just reviewing their decision and weighing it again, sometimes knowing the outcome is mostly unfavorable. (Calling a large bet for value, for example, often has disaster written all over it.)

A good test of your ability to stick to a decision often occurs in tournament action when you are so close to a payoff that you can taste it. You know that if you simply fold your cards until the blinds come around to you (and maybe after that as well), one or two small stacks will fall by the wayside and you will cash. You don't have a lot of chips but you certainly aren't out of the hunt. Two players have barely enough chips to call a minimum raise. One is in the big blind, thus diminishing his stack already. Another player raises; you look at your cards and find a pair of nines. At this point, without giving it a second thought, you should toss the hand because the big blind is probably going to call the raise (or reraise) and be committed completely. Chances are he will be calling with a sub-par hand, hoping the raiser has one that's even worse.

Sure it's hard to throw away a high-percentage hand but at this point you are hoping to earn money. What happens to your nines if the flop comes king-seven-nine? You think you are going to make a killing, right? But when one of those other two players turns over a pair of kings, you are out of options. Your stack is now one of those that everyone else is hoping will disappear.

Here's what I do when I know I'm getting close to earning a return on my tournament investment. If I'm playing in a casino, I peek but don't let my hole cards register as anything except something to get rid of. If I'm playing online, I hit the fold button immediately. If I have to play, I will play only the premium hands, and in some instances (when more than one player has called an all-in bettor) I won't even play these cards. My object is to move into the money and I can't do that if I risk my chips.

The decision to toss a pair of aces was a tough one to make. But the first time I went out on the bubble because someone snapped me off on the river with a third king, was a real eye opener for me. In that single hand, the player with pocket kings knocked out me and another player. Had I stayed from the aces, I would have cashed. (Some people will definitely disagree with this move but anytime I can earn money, I take it!)

So to start on the road to winning, do the impossible. Discipline yourself to follow a certain path. This can be hard, just like swearing off chocolate or caffeine or cigarettes, but you can do it. But it's not impossible.