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Losing at Stud
To win at poker, get familiar with the idea of losing; turn
losing into something manageable and small. And another mention of
tilt, because everybody still does too much of it.
We’re all supposed to think of ourselves as poker winners at the table. This is especially true in Stud -- though it’s surely true in Holdem and other forms of poker as well. The truth is that most of the time you’re a loser. So is the other guy at your table. In fact, all of us, most of the time, are losers, not winners. Let’s start by being honest. The sooner you recognize that you are in fact a loser, the sooner you’ll learn the necessary skills to be a winner. Here’s what I mean. By way of analogy, consider yourself to be a beginning skier. What’s the first thing they teach you? It’s not how to ski downhill. It’s not how to turn. It’s not even how to stop or start. The first thing they teach is how to fall. Why is that? Why teach a new skier, who already is afraid of falling, who has little or no confidence, how to fall? Won’t he learn that well enough on his own? Won’t you just hurt his confidence by focusing on the negative aspects of skiing -- the falls and spills that all skiers inevitably take? The answer is that you teach a new skier how to fall even before you teach him how to ski because you need to make sure he won’t hurt himself when he falls, and to let him know that falling is OK and part of skiing. The same is true in poker. We must take deliberate falls -- often. Hand after hand we lose. We don’t win because we elect not to play. If we elected to play every hand we’d have a better chance of winning that hand -- to be sure -- but we’d have a terrible net result by the end of the night, playing to completion hands that have little chance of winning. We must learn to lose correctly. What does that mean? It means that we must learn how to lose in a way that doesn’t hurt our ability to play correctly. Let’s get more specific. You’ve been getting hands for 30 minutes in a typically loose and passive $5/$10 Stud poker game that you know you’re supposed to fold on Third Street, hands like: Jh 9d 3c, (Qs Tc)8d, (7d 6d)Jc, (Ks 9d)8c. At first, knowledgeable as you are, you do what you know you’re supposed to do in a typical $5/$10 game. You keep folding. But then, gradually, impatience sneaks up on you. You start to take a second look at hands like (Ad 3c)6d and (Jc Qc)7s. You start to come up with all sorts of reasons for playing them -- none of them really worthwhile but all of them increasingly more attractive. New players especially are seduced into playing in situations like these because they haven’t learned to lose correctly. They haven’t been taught that when they have a long string of bad hands, and must continuously fold, that rather than start to passively play more hands (or even, at a loose passive table, to start to raise with junk), that they should just walk away for a while. They haven’t learned to fall so they end up hurting themselves when they do, inevitably, take a tumble with a series of bad cards. This affliction doesn’t just happen on Third Street of course. Learning to lose has an even more dangerous bite later in the hand, when more money is at stake than a single incorrect call. Consider this manifestation of the problem: You’re a new player, and you haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that you will lose most of the hands you play. You have learned to play tight, but you have become unduly invested in winning when you play. You, like many new players, abhor risk. You aren’t a gambler at heart -- which is why you took up this game that is supposed to be about skill. If you weren’t playing poker you’d probably be playing chess or bridge. For that reason, you have become afraid to play and lose. This is a serious weakness in your game. Here’s what you do. You fold too often when you should run the risk of losing and call. Here’s an example of this. It’s Sixth Street or the River. You have a mediocre hand that started fairly good -- like a pair of 8s with an exposed Ace kicker, let’s say -- but that failed to improve. You’re in a loose game with a couple of wild players, so after you raise you get three callers. You lead out on Fourth and get a couple of callers. You lead again on Fifth and get one caller. On Sixth you’re no longer confident that you have the winning hand and your betting thus far hasn’t shaken your opponent, so you check... as does your opponent. Finally, on the River, you don’t improve. You have your pair of 8s but that’s all. You check. Your opponent bets. You figure that he must have you beaten, since he’s betting and you started by betting with an Ace -- representing two Aces. You don’t want to lose another $10 and also show that you were overplaying your lousy pair of 8s from Third Street. So you fold. Hey, at least you didn’t lose in a showdown! This kind of weak play goes on regularly because players haven’t learned to lose. A better play would surely be to call, running the risk of losing but having terrific pot odds that would make such a play worthwhile in the long run. Your opponent would only have to be caught bluffing one time in 15 or so for the call to show a profit. Sure, it’s tough to call and lose the many times when you will be beaten. But what a huge mistake if you actually had the better hand and lost a pot with so many bets in it. The good player, who had learned how to properly fall, would gird himself for the likely defeat but know that his call was mathematically correct and make the proper play, tough though it might feel.Stud players must learn to lose on the River. It is something that is especially important because of the five betting rounds (as opposed to only four in holdem) and because of the many loose passive players who tend to inflate pots that become worth calling with just about any decent hand on the River. Tilt, Oh Tilt Here’s one other aspect of losing that players of all poker games need to learn. They must learn to lose without going on tilt, a constant hazard for the new player unprepared for the frequent losses he is likely to suffer. I shan’t take your time to describe the many examples of good and bad beats that send players, especially inexperienced players, spinning out of control. You’re probably familiar with them. But let me tell you what I do to prevent myself from being injured when I fall. For me, losing is inevitable. It will happen nearly every hand. Even so, from time to time I will suffer a tough loss that will upset me. It happens. I lose my composure. When that happens I have a simple solution. I leave the table. Usually just for a few hands. I take a walk -- maybe to the bathroom, maybe to another table, maybe just around the table. Sometimes I stay away longer. I go for a bite to eat or something to drink. This gives me time to cool down and think about what’s happened. It lets me blow off steam so I can sit back down again with an even disposition and a level head. It allows me to play my best game. You see, we’re all losers -- in the short
run. Hand after hand we must concede – and we must often call or bet
and lose. That’s the nature of poker and largely out of our control.
But how we deal with those losses, that’s something completely in our
control. And it will determine whether or not we are winners in the
long run.~~ |
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