In my years as both a poker player, blackjack player and a gambler, there has been one hurdle that still hurts no matter how often you clear it. Losing money is never a good thing but as poker players we are supposed to ride the losses until the eventual gains come along.
If only life were that simple, your wins can never equal the pain that you feel from your losses and this makes poker one hell of a sick game to play. It’s sick because it even feels bad a fair percentage of the time even for successful players. I have always maintained that variance is perhaps the biggest obstacle that any poker player has to face.
A total lack of understanding of it would leave any player seriously handicapped for the simple reason being that they would not have adequate mental preparation for anything negative that went beyond a certain point. Some novice players think that a bad run is happening if they experience four or five losing hands on the trot and a couple of normal outdraws seem catastrophic.
We all have our own definitions of what a bad run actually is but the problems lay in when we perceive that something is happening to us that isn’t just or fair. The underlying problem with many players is that they believe that skill and knowledge has a much greater effect on results than they really have.
This belief leads to utter astonishment when that skill isn’t doing what the player is expecting it to (and this is assuming that the player in question even has ability in the first place). I remember one of the things that I used to keep in my head when I was playing blackjack was that the edge that I had as a counter was akin to playing even chances on roulette but having zero in my favour.
This knowledge made me aware of just how tiny that edge was and not to expect too much in any one session of play. But it’s difficult not to get carried away when all around you are stories and pictures of players who are winning and earning vast sums of money. This leads many players into feeling inadequate with regards to what is happening to them and they then try to over press and expect too much to happen.
Because poker is played by human beings, emotion is never far away from the equation. Even if you started out with the right mindset, you may not stay that way after several hours of play. You certainly don’t have to be on tilt to be emotional when playing poker. Simply being bored is an emotion and it is a negative emotion at that.
This makes you less likely to be able to handle a beat if you are bored than if you are not. But variance hinders your progress in other ways as well. It can make players restructure their entire game during bad runs and can even make players give the game up totally who may have gone on to become successful players.
It can also work in reverse of course and good runs can contribute to players feeling like world beaters and this can lead to players playing too high too quickly before the inevitable bust out occurs.
The less edge that you have in any poker game then the greater the variance will be as they are linked together. This is why having the right skills and knowledge are critical but on top of that we can also add game selection as well. Your success in poker isn’t just dependent on how much you know or how good you are but in how much you know compared to everyone else on your table.
You know the famous quote so I won’t offend you by repeating it. I can personally vouch for the importance of game selection as a lack of it combined with playing at a high level led me to not getting much above break even last year. It was only when I started using Poker Office 5 did my results get back on track to where they should have been.
But you can never eliminate emotion from your everyday life and this means that you certainly cannot do it while playing poker. Sure, you may be able to keep yourself in check for a while but sooner or later your emotions will creep into your play. It is inevitable and something that cannot be avoided. I have seen players who were deemed as absolute impenetrable rocks go over the edge whilst playing poker…….we all have our own individual breaking points.
I think that a possible cure for this is not to try and fight against it but to work with it instead. Know ahead of time that your emotions will creep into your game and prepare for it. Know in advance that you are about to encounter bad beats and outdraws and mentally prepare for them. This isn’t negative thinking but trying to defuse the situation and avoiding the variance monster from ripping you to pieces.