Party Star

In poker, the time to hesitate is when you really need more time to resolve a close decision. Often things will occur to you given a little extra time. Or, under the extra pressure, your opponent may provide you with a tell. You might occasionally also hesitate for deception, so that alert opponents can’t determine that your pause always means you have a close decision.

Also, sometimes when you make a final free bet with a big hand, you’ll be more likely to be called if you don’t bet instantly. Well, if you don’t bet ALMOST instantly, I mean. Because both a bet delayed for a few extra seconds and an unreasonably quick one are apt to make your opponents suspicious and more likely to be called.

But, unless there’s a specific reason to hesitate, you should usually make all your free bets, calls, and raises crisply and confidently — because this enhances your image and speeds up the game at Rainbow Riches.

As most of you have probably noticed so far, UB has added a Step Sit and Go program to try and earn your way to this year’s World Series of Poker. In fact you can do it for as little as .10 cents. Starting with Step 1, you try and finish in the top 2 to earn your step 2 ticket. From there on every step is the same.

Get in the top 2, move on to the next step. Finish in the top 3 or 4, and you get to retry the step you were currently playing. The best way to put it is finish in the top 4 of any step, and you lose nothing. Sometimes when you finish 5th or 6th, you just get bumped down a step. So if you are playing a Step 6 and finish 5th out 9 people which is pretty easy to do, you just get bumped down to step 5 and just have to work to get back to step 6. The Step Program is as follows:

Step 1=.10
Step 2=.30
Step 3=$1
Step 4=$3
Step 5=$10
Step 6=$30
Step 7=$90
Step 8=$250
Step 9=$750
Step 10=$2250

When you win Step 10 you win a $12k WSOP Package, and if you finish 2-4th you get a good amount of cash back.

It is important to remember when playing these steps that you aren’t playing to win, and that getting 2nd place is the same as 1st. It is not your job to take people out, just to move on to the next step. If you hold 55 in the Big Blind, with 6 k in chips, blinds are 200 400, and someone with 4600 shoves; you might consider folding if its 3 handed, depending on the other stack size. I’d much rather make someone make a tough call, than make one myself.

There is definitely a flow to these steps. Almost everyone at the table can see that finishing 5th or better is going to get them some kind of ticket, so therefore you can assume that in a 9 handed SNG, the bubble begins at 6 handed!!! Because of this, a lot of people are playing tight.

Rightfully so as the blinds mean nothing. The other side of the coin though is noticing this and exploiting it. Get a feel for who you can 3 bet light. For me it’s normally the guy who has chipped up a little, as he feels he is the most likely to move on to the next step. Anyone who has played SNG’s knows what I’m talking about, when it comes to exploiting the bubble. It’s just in these steps that the bubble occurs so much faster.

In addition to this exciting new way to try and make it to the WSOP, you can also make it to Aruba, by winning Step 1 through Step 10. Start at Step 1 and work your way all the way to Step 10 and win Step 10 and you will get a $8,500 package to Aruba. This promotion is only available to the first 10 people who accomplish this. Good luck everyone, and I will definitely see you at these Steps.

There are few better situations in poker than to enter final table play as the big stack. However, there’s a big difference in coming to the final table with the chip lead and in knowing how to use your stack to take control of the final stages of a tournament.

There are many players who don’t slow down once they reach the final table with a big stack. I’m not one of them. By the time I reach the final table, I’ll have already played a number of hands against about half of the other remaining players. I’ll have developed reads on their games, and they will have done the same with me, which makes this a good time to switch gears. If I’ve been hammering away aggressively before the final table, I’ll often slow things down and go back to playing a more tight-aggressive style than I had been just a short time earlier.

Even more important to my success here, however, is that I begin paying very close attention to the size of my opponents’ stacks. I want to know who’s likely to be playing conservatively in order to try and move up a few spots, and who is short-stacked and looking to get their chips in the middle with any two cards. I’m more likely to play pots against the conservative players and avoid the gamblers.

Let’s says the majority of the players are sitting on somewhere between 40 and 50 big blinds each, but the short stack only has about 15 blinds in front of him. He’s going to be looking for any chance he can to double up, which means I’m not going to raise his blinds unless I’m holding a hand where I can comfortably call his all-in re-raise. While doubling the short stack up probably doesn’t hurt me in the long run, the reward I get for knocking him out of the tournament may not justify risking chips that I can put to better use against other opponents.

When there’s a log-jam of players who all have about equal size stacks, I’m willing to play a fairly wide range of hands against them, so long as I’m in position. For example, say I’m chip leader with about 100 blinds and a smaller stack with about 40 blinds open raises for 3x the big blind. I’ll call this raise from the button or from late position with hands like 4-5 suited, 7-9 suited, or J-10 suited if I think I can pick up the pot after the flop.

I know that I’m not often going to flop anything better than a single pair – if I connect at all - when I call with these kinds of hands, but I’m still comfortable making this play because I know my opponent will miss often enough that I can steal the pot with a post-flop bet. This is especially true against players who completely shut down their games if they miss the flop, because you can use your big stack to force them to commit a sizeable portion of their stack if they want to contest the pot.

When I do decide to play against the short stacks on the final table, I’m looking to do so from position and with hands that aren’t going to be easily dominated. If I don’t have to worry about someone entering the pot behind me, I’ll play coin-flips against the short stack all day long because I know I’ll win enough of these hands over the long run to be profitable.

The times I won’t make this play with my big stack are when I think someone else may try to squeeze me out of the pot by raising all-in behind me, or when doubling up the short stack could drop me from being the chip leader back down to an average size chip stack. In these cases, I’ll look for better spots and let the shorter stacks fight amongst themselves.

While having a large chip stack is a weapon in itself, you’ll get better results if you know how and when to use your stack to your best advantage. Apply pressure to the conservative players while avoiding unnecessary confrontations with the short stacks, and you’ll turn your chips into something much valuable when the tournament is over.

Say you’re playing in a low-stakes ring game. The blinds are $.50 and $1, and it’s folded to you in middle position. You find a nice hand - pocket Tens - and bring it in for a standard raise of three times the big blind. It’s folded around to a player in late position, who re-raises the minimum amount, making it $5 to go.

I’ve seen this sort of play repeatedly in the past few months while researching my next No-Limit Hold ‘em book by playing in low-stakes games. Every time I’ve been faced with a minimum re-raise, I’ve been up against a monster - pocket Kings or Aces.

A player who opts for the small raise may think he’s being crafty by getting me to put a little extra money in

the pot while he holds a big hand. But this is not a profitable play. There are two major problems with the minimum raise.

I’ve already mentioned the first problem: My opponent has telegraphed his hand. And making good decisions is pretty easy when you know exactly what your opponent holds. The second problem is mathematical. My opponent is giving me 5 to 1 to call the additional raise. (In this example, my extra $2 will give me a chance win $10.) When I make the call, I know that I stand to win a very big pot. My implied odds - the money I stand to make if I hit my hand - more than justify the call. If my opponent started the hand with a $100 stack, I could get paid at a rate of 50 to 1.

So I call and see a flop. If there’s no Ten on the board, I’m done with the hand. And if there is a Ten, I’m going to wipe my opponent out. As I said, poker is a pretty easy when you know what your opponent holds.

What’s the proper play when you hold Aces and a player has raised in front of you? Find the “Bet Pot” button and click it. Put pressure on a player who you know is starting with a second-best hand. Who knows, if he’s got pocket Queens or A-K, he may be willing to put his entire stack in pre-flop. If he holds something like Jacks or Tens, your big raise will minimize your opponent’s implied odds.

You should be wary of minimum raises at other stages of a hand, as well. Say you raised pre-flop with A-K and one player called. You hit top pair top kicker on a K-8-4 board. You bet out the size of the pot and your opponent min-raises you. At this point, you need to be very concerned that your opponent has hit a set. You have to wonder why he’d be raising an amount that almost begs for your call.

My advice here is twofold: first is that you should all but eliminate the minimum raise from your game. In some rare circumstances when you hit a full house or quads, it might be appropriate, but that’s about it. Second is that alarm bells should go off whenever you see a min raise. Your opponent probably has a big hand and you need to proceed accordingly.

A day of poker can be seen as a long, drawn out battle. In that battle are many short confrontations that set the tone for future battles. After all the smaller battles have been completed, someone will be broke and going home. Keeping a cool head throughout every single individual battle is the only way to be victorious in the long run. Once you lose your patience and focus, it’s all but over.

What I’m talking about is tilt, but really, it’s more than that. Going on tilt is the ultimate way to lose your money. Nobody I know will claim they play better when they are on tilt. If they say so, use some of Joe Navarro’s insight to figure out if they’re telling the truth. Going on tilt affects your thought process, gets your adrenaline going and will eventually force you to make a mistake, if you don’t control it.

Just as a quick example, you have just been two-outed on the river. The guy across from you smirks, claps, jumps up and down; he just rubs it in your face. The very next hand you have K-10 under the gun. That same player reraises you, so you decide that you want revenge and push all-in. He insta-calls and shows pocket kings, which of course hold up.

Now, if you weren’t on tilt you would not have:
(1) Raised under the gun with K-10,
(2) Reraised him all-in with K-10,
(3) Let your emotions affect your decisions
Clearly, this is an exaggeration, but I promise you that players whom you have played with have felt angered by a beat you have put on them and have wanted to get their chips back instead of finding a better source.

Admit it. We’ve all done it. The guy at the table whom you just don’t like has taken a pot from you. Instead of looking at one of the weaker players to steal and slowly grind back up, you go right back after your “enemy.” And, instead of winning the next pot, just give him more of your lifeline. Part of avoiding tilt comes from the experience. You’ve been there before, the beat will happen, and when it does, you have to move on. If you feel that you aren’t ready to move on, don’t play another hand. Take a break. Walk away from the table or even get up to go. Nobody is forcing you to play that next hand and of all people, you need to convince yourself that you are in no shape to ante up.

If this is a tournament, you need to think differently; you can’t just leave, but you can walk away. You risk missing an opportunity to pick up a big hand, but even then, what’s to say that the hand will hold up? Getting blinded away is a better decision than playing while steaming.

So how do you keep a cool head?

One strategy to use is to remember that each hand is only that, one hand. After each hand, mentally, start over. Give yourself a check list. Count your chips, take a deep breath, get dealt your cards, act on them.

When it comes to a “rival” player, you need to take this out of the equation. You do not have a rival player. The only time you need to focus on defeating one player is when you are heads up. Besides that, everyone else at your table is trying to take your money, and if you aren’t paying attention, they will.

Every player should be deemed as the same. Yes, some will be more talented than others and there will be some that you know you can take advantage of. Quite simply, that is an informed decision. For that reason, you should pick on this player if you know you have an advantage. If you don’t feel that you have an advantage and are going after a certain player out of spite, you are making a mistake.

Don’t let your emotions get the best of you. If you really want to get back at your opponent, make sure you’re the one who takes home the most money. After all, isn’t the best way to get revenge to have someone else take care of your dirty work? Let the action on the table dictate itself. If you happen to end up knocking out your hated rival, great. If not, hopefully you enjoyed watching him sulk as he walked away from the table.

Kid Poker has stated that the key to organising a tournament in which players with particular skill in post-flop play prevails is to ensure that there is time to play before it becomes “a shovefest”.

In his blog, Daniel Negreanu said that tournament structure had to be properly planned and cited PokerStars recent competitions as good examples of how it should be done.

He said the recent Heads Up event allowed four levels of play before games began to become “prickly”.

The winner of four World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelets commented: “The key to offering a heads up tournament where post flop skill prevails is to make sure the structure gives the players enough time to play before it becomes a shovefest.”

Negreanu has cashed 30 times in the WSOP and has finished at the final table in 12 events.

By Mike Caro and Doylesroom.

I first wrote the following column five years ago. It’s one of my most important life lessons, and I’d like to share it with you today. Just don’t tell anyone…

Years ago I stopped bragging about my poker skills. Well, maybe I didn’t stop, but I slowed down a bit. I’m 51 now, but when I was lots younger it just drove me nuts if anyone thought they were a better player than I was. I knew, deep down, I mean really deep down, that it couldn’t possibly be true. I understood in my heart that given enough time, nobody could beat me, provided our bankrolls were theoretically unlimited.

Having this conviction, and being so young, it hurt my ego if anyone even suggested that they might be able to outplay me. I was ever ready to risk my entire bankroll on a heads-up match, anytime, anywhere. It wasn’t a matter of winning the money. The opponent needed to be punished for merely suggesting that he might have a shot against Mike Caro. While I won most of these ego matches, I didn’t win all of them, and I ended up dead broke more than a few times, having to recover bit by bit in smaller games, building back my bankroll.

A contest. Hell, it got so silly I started a 25-words-or-less contest circulating around Gardena, California (then known as the Poker Capital of the World). The entry form said, “Mike Caro is the greatest poker player in the world, because…” and contestants could fill in the rest. Yes, I gave away real money!

One day while I was nearly broke and rebuilding my bankroll in smaller games, a guy challenged me to a $10,000 freeze out heads-up match I couldn’t afford. I wasn’t going to back down and relinquish my pride, though.

“You couldn’t even afford the stakes I want to play for,” I told him.

“What you wanna play for?”

“Let’s just sit down with 500 chips each and play till someone has ‘em all,” I suggested.

“For how much?”

“The chips are free,” I told him.

“That don’t make sense,” he responded, shaking his head. “You can’t play poker with nothin’ at stake.”

“I didn’t say nothing’s at stake. I said the chips are free. What if the loser kills himself?”

Then we just stood there, in the middle of the card floor, poker tables surrounding us. He tried to figure out whether I was serious. I would not break our gazes. I did not blink. He would not break our gazes. He did not blink. So we wouldn’t break our gazes, and we didn’t blink until a very subtle and skewed smile appeared on his face.

“You’re kiddin’ me?” he said, more as a hopeful statement of fact than as a question.

Not kidding. I just shook my head slowly and proudly. No, I’m not kidding, this conveyed. I don’t know if I would have played this match, but I felt brave right then. Additionally, I felt invincible. I had images in my head of beating him and then just saying, “Hey, you don’t have to pay this off. You owe me one. Go have a nice life.” Something like that.

I was sort of nuts back then. I would have played anyone for anything. And I really thought I could prove at the poker table in a short period of time that I was the best in the world, especially one-on-one.

That day, we finally just walked away from each other and sat in normal games. His was, unfortunately, a bigger limit than I was prepared to play, so we didn’t compete against each other. But I felt satisfied that I’d made him surrender, that I had been willing to play for stakes he couldn’t afford. Yes, he had challenged me to a match beyond my bankroll. But I had made him back down. And I was proud.

More matches. That was actually the incident that started me challenging other players to “suicide matches” anytime I got my feathers ruffled, anytime someone would question my skills or my nerve. Nobody ever accepted, of course, and most players took my challenges only half seriously. But at times I was sure that if someone ever did call my pot, if someone did accept my dare, that I’d go through with it. At other times, I wavered.

In any case, my youthful bravado, my quest for a suicide match ended abruptly when one particularly mean-looking guy from out of town listened to my challenge and said, “Kid, you wanna play serious, let’s play.” He calmly unzipped his fly and gestured for me to follow suit. Then he took a pocket knife out, unfolded it and flung it on the table. Then he motioned for me to sit down, saying simply, “Deal.” Well, the symbolism was hard to miss.

I finally began to laugh, and so did everyone else. Well, almost everyone. The guy wasn’t laughing. So, I said, “Sorry, I don’t have that kind of bankroll.” A man needs to learn when not to call a raise. I think that was the beginning of my mellowing out.

Today, I realize you can’t prove who’s really the best poker player in the world, because all the best players are too evenly matched, and it might take years for one player to come out clearly on top. I still believe, privately, that I can beat anyone - especially heads-up. But others feel the same way, and we’ll never be able to settle the argument. Except for a night, maybe. Or a few glorious days. But the victory doesn’t usually last.

And that’s the truth about poker, my friends. Egos often get in the way. Nobody will ever prove who’s best. And eventually you grow wise and you live with the greatest poker lesson of all time:

You win some you lose some.

Is it the Law of Averages? Certainly not! Well, surely it isn’t The Law of Gravitation? No. How about the Law of the Jungle? Funny, guess again! Oh, I see. You’re tired of guessing because you don’t know what the question is. Okay, I’ll repeat it:

“In a poker game among eight equally matched world-class players, what very powerful law dictates who will eventually win and who will lose? ”

You’re thinking, “Who cares? How often am I in a poker game made up of eight equally matched world-class players?”

Ah, but this principle has a much broader importance. It ranks among the most powerful laws in the gambling universe. Great poker pros are governed by it. So are Henry, Jack and Felix at your Friday night game. So are blackjack players and golfers, craps shooters and backgammon superstars.

The black hole.
I’m talking about The Power, baby. It’s a black hole in the poker table that can suck up all your chips and send you home whimpering. I’m talking about a merciless, ubiquitous, universal law that will never leave you alone until you honor it.

I’m talking about Caro’s Law of Least Tilt. Exactly What is Tilt, Anyway? You might not know the meaning of the phrase “going on tilt.” Turning to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language (unabridged), we find on page 606 that “going on tilt” is not defined.

A pity. But checking a more credible source, Doyle Brunson’s Super/System - A Course in Power Poker, we see that the term “on tilt” is defined on page 539. Quote: “When a player starts playing bad (loses his composure), usually after losing one or more big pots, he’s said to be on tilt.”

There are other slang ways to express this phenomenon. Vegas regulars call it “steaming.” In my favorite Denver game, we used to say a man had “flipped a pancake.”

It happens to players and pinball machines.
Going on tilt describes it best. What happens to a pinball machine when you shake it too hard? The lights go out, its normal mechanical functions are short-circuited, it stops playing its normal game, and suddenly the word Tilt flashes on its scoreboard.

Isn’t that what happens to a poker player when you shake him too hard? Most players can take their bad beats graciously for a while; but when they suffer one blow too many, something usually snaps. Their lights go out, their brains malfunction, they cease to play their best game and, if you look really close, you can see the word “Tilt” etched on their foreheads.

Suddenly the most dedicated scientific poker players are babbling and bluffing and barging into pots with inferior hands. You’ve seen it happen, and it’s a pitiful sight to behold.

The law defined.
Write this law on a piece of paper, tape it to the wall and study it. Caro’s Law of Least Tilt: Among similarly skilled opponents, the player with the most discipline is the favorite.

Gee, that seems too obvious to bother saying. Obvious, hell! Ask around and see what the best poker players think is most important. Their opinions will vary. To save you the trouble, I actually surveyed ten tough players. My question was: “In a poker game among players whose ability is about equal, what do you think is the most important winning edge?”

Using a little judgment, I placed their answers into the following categories-

Knowledge of mathematics: 4
Psychological skill: 3
Knowing when to quit: 2
Alertness: 1

Had I undertaken a larger survey, other things would have appeared. But the point is made by this small sample. Incredibly, nobody mentioned the Law of Least Tilt! Everything listed is important.

Knowledge of Mathematics. A very weak player who knows nothing about probabilities or mathematics will be at the mercy of a knowledgeable opponent. However, a player with an outstanding grasp of odds and statistics is only a small favorite over a player with a pretty good understanding.

Of course, in some poker games even a small difference in mathematical ability can be critical. Seven-card high-low split is such a game.

Psychological Skill. Very important. But, in a game involving contestants of equal overall talent, is it likely that there will be much difference here? No.

Knowing When to Quit. For a bunch of reasons which I don’t want to discuss now, it’s better to quit when you’re losing than when you’re winning. Most players get this backwards and play longer when they’re losing. Anyway, seldom does one player secure an important edge over his peers by quitting at the correct times.

Alertness. You’ll seldom find a game among equally skilled foes where one is substantially more alert than his opponents.

Tilt by Mutual Agreement.
Tour the card rooms of Las Vegas, the poker parlors of California, the private games in Texas. Try legal seven-stud in Washington and Oregon. Play Hold ‘em in Montana.

Yep, poker’s booming everywhere. Look for the toughest, meanest game in the area. Ask around, you’ll find it. It’s usually a medium or high-stakes contest and it’s often comprised of the same regular players night after night. Sometimes there’s a stranger to throw off some money; but usually it’s survival of the fittest - hometown heroes battling for regional honors.

I’m talking about a poker game where players of approximately the same expectations wage a war of egos. Listen to me, you seven-card stud superstars - I’m talking to you!

Almost every ego contest I’ve witnessed has an unspoken rule that goes like this: Weak players are timid and we’re not weak, so let’s bet our hands like crazy. Nobody will get hurt if everyone does it.

There’s more to this tacit understanding. Any player who suffers two bad beats in a row is expected to play more recklessly than usual.

Oh, I almost forgot, there’s another part. If a stranger gets in the game and tries to take advantage of our generous bets and raises, we’ll play conservatively.

This last part is consistently violated. Take these poker pros and near-pros aside and ask what they’d do if a solid, talented player from Milwaukee sat in their game.

“We don’t give action unless we get action.” Snail slime!

The sad thing is, these guys really believe this! Gosh, you take your skilled sever-stud prayer from Topeka and put him in the $30 and $60 limit seven-stud game at the Sahara and . well, I like his chances.

Ego, Ego, Raise ‘em Up!
The talent in this game is awesome. Gathered here at the Sahara is some of the keenest seven-stud talent that ever sprouted West of the Rockies. But, yes, they do play too recklessly and when they lose too many pots and get on tilt they play really recklessly.

Naturally, you’d expect this to stop when Fred from Sacramento sits in the game. You guys remember Fred, don’t you? Following my instructions he won $3210 in one session. You probably don’t remember, since that isn’t a milestone win. And, of course, you don’t remember Charlie since he won only $1530.

These players were sent in the game as an experiment; and they both reported the same thing. The regular players did not lighten up on their raises. Instead, they made these new players a target and tried to intimidate them with a barrage of irrational raises.

Following my advice, both Fred and Charlie called timidly for the first several pots, letting the aggressors establish an image. Then they counter attacked for three consecutive hands. They’d been instructed to get the last bet in at every opportunity (within reason) no matter what cards they held. Although Charlie managed to lose all three pots, Fred won two of his, once making an inside straight down the river against queens-up.

Controlled Tilt - the Cruelest Weapon.
According to plan, Fred and Charlie never got out of line after that. They had established an early reckless image. The image stuck, even though they played solid poker from then on. The regular players felt confident that the tacit loose-play agreement was not in jeopardy. No one, they reasoned, was taking advantage.

Although these two sessions are not significant enough to prove the point, let’s make believe they are. What the hell, we’re talking about more than 400 hands, and only a statistician would demand a larger sample.

What it proves is this: In a game where everyone goes on tilt some of the time, the player who spends the fewest minutes on tilt wins the most money.

(Since some tilt plays are horrible and others are merely bad, you could argue that it isn’t the time of tilt, but the quality of tilt that determines the winners. It’s really both.)

Controlled Tilt is simply doing the things that a player on tilt does, while being motivated rationally rather than emotionally. The strategy is to appear totally berserk while remaining thoroughly in command. This is the cruelest, most profitable tactic I know.

Ideally, everybody who was knowledgeable in some field or who had a hobby would pledge to walk up to complete strangers at least twice on this day and offer some fact of interest. Each fact would begin with the words, “Did you know” The use of those exact words was very important, because — as you know — it is otherwise rude to suddenly get in the face of someone you don’t know and start talking seriously about an important fact. “Did you know” was intended to put the person thusly assaulted at ease. The assaulted person would know that the intrusion was sanctioned by Congress.

Well, the concept lost favor after the first year and hasn’t really been popular since. Criminals used the opportunity to put their victims at ease by pretending to be offering a tidbit of knowledge. Beggars tended to irritate everyone everywhere with their, “Did you know I haven’t had a good meal in two days?” and “Did you know I could use a dime for a cup of coffee?”

Crime soared on the first DYK day. In Cleveland, five armed men crashed through a bank door and their leader shouted, “Did you know we’re going to blow your brains out if you don’t give us all your money?” While this might have been an unusual incident, the fact that it was seen in headlines nationwide tended to make the whole DYK Day concept less popular. It was not revived the next year, although it remains on the books as an unofficial holiday.

So, let’s play DYK.

Did you know that you can lose a pot by betting? When you journey beyond the basics of poker, you start to think about strategy more intricately. You realize that by not betting hands in key situations, you cannot only cost yourself extra money, you can sometimes cost yourself the whole pot.

Sometimes, on an early betting round, you check and the player behind you checks. On the very next card, that player connects for an inside straight. It’s a tragedy for you, but one that you would have avoided had you bet. That opponent likely would not have called a bet in an attempt to make an inside straight. He wouldn’t have been around to receive the card that brought you misery. So, in that case, betting would have saved the pot.

The most obvious event in which betting wins an entire pot is a bluff. That’s what a bluff is all about, right? You’re probably going to lose in a showdown, so you bet and hope that your opponent doesn’t call. If that happens, you win. Again, an entire pot has been won by betting.

What if you have a medium-strength hand and you figure that your opponent does, also? So, there you sit on the last betting round, holding a hand that seemingly is not quite strong enough to bet or maybe even to call with if you check and your opponent bets. You might win in a showdown, but you might not. Now what? Now, you should often consider betting. Notice that I said consider betting. It isn’t automatic that you should bet, and — in fact — you probably don’t want to bet most of the time. But sometimes, you should make a daring bet in this situation.

Why should you bet? You should bet because, although you don’t have an advantage in strength — which is the most common reason to wager — you have your opponent trapped in a situation in which he may not call. It takes the right kind of opponent to justify this bet, and it takes the right kind of action leading up to the bet. Often, the bet is a good idea if your opponent is in an analytical mode, off tilt, and has reason to suspect that your hand may be strong.

If he perceives the situation the same way that you do — that you’re both holding about the same strength hand, the bet will be futile because he will just call and hope to win. The pot will overwhelm the size of your bet and, therefore, he will be gaining much more if he calls and wins than the cost of a losing call. In limit poker, the pot odds dictate that you usually should call with any reasonable hope of winning.

Fine. But if this opponent has reason to believe that you probably have the best hand, he may fold a hand that would have won in the showdown. That sometimes makes your bet worthwhile. It can be much better to risk, say, a $20 bet into a $100 pot if it means that your opponent sometimes will fold than to just see the showdown and hope. Even when your opponent calls, you still have an excellent chance of winning.

Your chance of winning in this bet-call showdown isn’t quite as good as it would be in a check-check showdown, however. That’s because, presumably, your opponent will tend to fold the hands at the lower end of the spectrum of possibilities and call with the hands at the higher end.

Let’s say that by betting and being called, you win only 40 percent of your showdowns, but by checking, you win 50 percent. That sacrifice still might be worthwhile if your bet occasionally causes your opponent to throw away the superior hand. Another thing that’s good about betting is that you sometimes can make extra money. If you do have the best hand and your opponent does call, that’s an extra bet that you would not have earned had you checked.

It gets more complicated. The analysis gets even more involved than this, and there are other powerful reasons why betting is sometimes the best choice on the final round when you think that you have about a fifty-fifty chance of holding the better hand. You should even consider betting hands that have less than a fifty-fifty chance of winning in a showdown — and I’m not talking about bluffing. The fact is, you don’t know if you’re bluffing, so you’re betting for a different reason — or a combination of reasons.

There is another risk of not betting. If you check, your opponent might bet and you might not call. This should not usually happen, because if you have a borderline betting hand, you should almost always be willing to call in limit poker. The size of the pot so dictates. But, in actual games, many players check the weaker portion of their medium-range hands and then fail to call. That could be a disaster, and another reason — if you’re so inclined to make the mistake — to simply bet rather than check.

In spite of all of this, I believe that many experienced players bet too often in some key situations. There are many advantages to checking, but that’s beyond the scope of what I want to discuss today.

Returning to the DYK question. I think you’re convinced by now that betting in some marginal situations can be profitable. OK. But that wasn’t the key question for DYK Day. Remember that the question was: “Did you know that you can lose a pot by betting?”

How? I’ll tell you how. When you make the kind of daring bets that I’ve just described, you’d better make sure that you’re against a predictable player. That sort of aggressive betting with fifty-fifty or worse hands only tends to work in the long run against players who are not especially deceptive.

If you bet a somewhat worse than average hand into a deceptive opponent, you may be met with an unexpected raise — one that you might not call. Again and again, this aggressive bet backfires against deceptive foes. If you check and they check, you might win the showdown. In fact, let’s say that you have substantially worse than an average hand for the situation. You check. Your opponent holds a truly miserable hand and decides not to bet. You win the showdown.

But what if he’s a deceptive opponent. You think that both of you are weak. You bet that same substantially worse than average hand, hoping to drive out a hand that might be better than yours. The deceptive player raises. You fold. You’ve lost the entire pot by betting, and this happens quite regularly when certain types of opponents collide. It’s in the chemistry.

To take this concept further, there’s a danger in bluffing when both you and your opponent are very weak. You won’t be able to justify a call if raised, and you might win the showdown if you check and your opponent doesn’t bet. But, you’re saying, if the opponent is apt to raise, isn’t he also likely to bluff if I check to him? Probably, but not always.

The more deceptive this opponent is, the more likely he is to raise with nothing when you wager your weak hand, but that doesn’t mean that he will bluff just as often. There are some situations in which knowledgeable deceptive opponents fear that you’ll call in an obvious bluffing situation — after they’ve been checked to. Still, if you bet, they think that you might be bluffing or weak. They figure that their raise might secure the pot, and they’ll try it. This happens more often than you might suspect in the bigger-limit games against sophisticated opponents.

I’m not saying that in general, you will lose more pots by betting than by checking. I’m just saying that it’s something you need to consider. Betting can win you an entire pot sometimes — and sometimes it can lose you an entire pot. Think about it.

I’ve been thinking back about my life as a poker player. Today, I’m so involved with my University of Poker, consulting, producing publications and videos, and doing research that I play only about 50 times a year. I usually play from $75-$150 to $200-$400 limits, rarely higher, stakes that I can easily afford. My lifestyle is never going to change for better or for worse as a result of a single night’s poker play.

I’m older and wiser than I was as a kid, when I would risk my entire bankroll at the hint of a challenge, like an Old West gunslinger called out to Main Street for a showdown at sundown. Someone must die. It must not be me. No practical reason for this fight. Ego against ego. No reason. Risk it all. Be a man. No reason. Be strong. No reason. Yes, I remember, but I survived those days, and now those days are dead for me. Their passing many years ago made me feel more secure, but sadder. There were exhilarating moments mixed with monumental risk. I liked it then. But I like things better now.

And now I sit down to list for you the things I would do differently if I were to live my poker life all over again. Let me think. Well, I’m betting that I won’t be able to list everything, but I’ll try to hit on as many things as I can. Here’s the list:

1. I wouldn’t enter games that I worried about. In old Gardena, cheating was rampant. You dealt your own cards, and not everyone dealt fairly. Not every deck remained unmarked. Collusion among players was legendary. I was reckless. As an honest player, I didn’t believe the cheaters had any right to be in my game. Even when I was quite sure that I was being scammed, I simply stayed seated and seethed. I vaguely knew what was going on, but I hated to be run off.

Sometimes I’d spend months building a comfortable bankroll in an honest game, only to be lured into a crooked one. If I had to do it over again, I would run away.

2. I wouldn’t consider cardroom management to be adversarial. There’s a partnership that exists between a professional poker player and cardroom management. Both make money off the same business, and they need that business to be profitable. In my early years, I thought of management as an outside force, with different interests.

If I had to do it over again, I would make lasting relations with casino management from the very beginning, and I’d go out of my way to help make the cardroom successful.

3. I wouldn’t give women money to gamble in order to skip the preliminaries. In the ’70s, it was easy to pick up women. One-night stands were common. I wasn’t looking for lasting relationships. Weird time. Different planet. You had to be there. One of the quickest ways I knew to skip even the basic preliminaries of getting acquainted was to tell women I had faith in them as players and give them money to play poker. I usually agreed to keep half of what they won.

The problem was, they almost never won, and I came to believe that I wasn’t always getting an honest count. Also, all of these short-term relationships began with a lie — that I believed they could win at poker. Usually, I didn’t. If I had to do it over again, I’d spend a little extra time, save a little money, and go to dinner and a movie like everyone else.

4. I wouldn’t write books. Believe it or not, I never wanted to write poker books. I did lots of research, and it was time-consuming. It made winning easy. I didn’t want to share this information. But in 1977, two-time World Poker Champion Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson talked me into contributing to his soon-to-be bible of poker: Super/System — A Course In Power Poker. After that, my vow of silence was broken, and I decided to continue to help players who didn’t have the opportunity to do research win.

It’s been rewarding, and I enjoy teaching, writing, and lecturing. But if I had to do it over again, I think I’d just stay off stage and not let opponents know what strategies I use. Of course, that’s assuming I would want to remain a relatively obscure poker player for the rest of my life. There are, I admit, financial advantages to the path I’ve taken. Still, poker was simpler before I shared secrets.

5. I wouldn’t have gone through my FPS phase. I teach avoiding FPS, which stands for Fancy Play Syndrome. This is where you often choose the fanciest play, rather than the most profitable, in order to impress your opponents. I suffered from this myself for many years.

If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t try to impress poker opponents. I’d just be satisfied with winning their money.

6. I wouldn’t gamble above my bankroll. When you gamble too big for you bankroll, you frequently lose and must rebuild. The net effect is that you win less money than you would if you were more cautious.

If I had to do it over again, I would seldom risk more than 10 percent of my bankroll on any single poker session. Usually, the amount would be much smaller.

7. I wouldn’t spend too much of my bankroll. Poker players tend to underestimate the amount of money they need to cover a bad run of cards. They build a bankroll to $40,000, spend $25,000, lose $15,000, and find themselves broke, even though they won.

If I had to do it over again, I would be much more miserly in keeping my bankroll ridiculously padded. I believe extra profit comes from that extra comfort.

8. I wouldn’t flash money and get robbed. One of the big thrills for me was carrying around $40,000 in my pocket while doctors and lawyers might not be able to produce a single $100 bill. This made me feel rich, and I loved to flash money. Of course, many of my opponents had much more money than I had when I was young. They just didn’t carry all of their assets in their pants pockets.

This youthful exhibition of false wealth caused me to be tied up and robbed at gunpoint twice. And I don’t think it impressed many people. If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t flash money. If I hadn’t, maybe I wouldn’t have been robbed.

9. I wouldn’t be embarrassed to jump down in limits. One of the worst things players can do is test a larger limit because that limit looks profitable at the time, then refuse to return to their previous limit when the conditions worsen. Ego causes us to think of ourselves as a $5-$10 player or a $20-$40 player or a $200-$400 player. Once you’ve established yourself at that limit, it can be psychologically damaging to jump down. Jumping down is embarrassing. That’s how it often was for me when I was younger.

If I had to do it over again, I would just find the most profitable game at any limit my bankroll could justify, and if it turned out to be a smaller limit than I could afford, I wouldn’t care what anyone thought. Often, there can be more profit in a $40-$80 game than a $200-$400 game, or in a $2-$4 game than a $10-$20 game. It depends on who’s playing.

10. I wouldn’t burn money. I’m known for taking a match and burning $100 bills at the poker table. I’ve done this to convince opponents that I don’t care about money and, therefore, to gain psychological dominance.

If I had to do it over again, I’d burn only $20 bills. It’s more cost effective and accomplishes almost the same thing.

11. I wouldn’t have been the Harlem Globetrotters of poker. Many times, I’ve played poker just to put on a show. Sometimes I even do that today. I like to prove my superiority by doing magical things that nobody else ever envisioned. I call this “putting on poker exhibitions.” While I’m usually able to win, despite the sacrifice, I wish my nature were a little more conservative.

If I had to do it over again, I’d almost always play purely for profit, not to show how good I am.

But, on the other hand, if I hadn’t done all of those things, I wouldn’t be writing this to you today. I wouldn’t have met and married Phyllis; I wouldn’t have a University of Poker; I wouldn’t enjoy the same friends. Maybe I’d have a different wife, live in a different town, read a different newspaper, and drive different roads to the shopping center. Maybe I wouldn’t be known as a poker player. And I wouldn’t be me.

We’ve all had moments in good old fashioned brick and mortar casinos where our senses become overwhelmed by an environment that we have no control over. From uncomfortable chairs to overflowing A/C to the guy sitting next to you who obviously hasn’t bathed since the last time the Cleveland Indians won the Series, playing live poker can be a less than pleasant experience at times. That’s why one of the biggest advantages of playing online poker versus live poker is the ability to control your environment. By standardizing all the variables of game play and setting your poker playing environment to your liking, you can maximize your focus and take that next step toward becoming a winning player.

So how do you control your environment? Well, let’s start at the beginning. If you’re anything like me, you’re going to be very anal about your poker playing environment. That means you turn off your phone and shut down whatever program you use for instant messaging. Even if you’re just playing for fun, you should still be taking poker seriously (unless you’re just looking to flip away your roll). Along those same lines, make sure to turn off the TV, stop surfing the web and answering emails. This is about minimizing distraction in an effort to maximize focus, and one of the pitfalls of online poker is all the readily available procrastination devices at your fingertips.

Now that you’re distraction free, tune the other variables in the house to your liking. Is the temperature in the house comfortable? Check. Do you have water and soda within reach and a tasty meal ready to go in the fridge? Check. What about music? I always like to have some music going in the background, but nothing too loud or distracting (if you’re singing along with the lyrics, it means you’re not focusing on poker).

So you’ve got all the peripherals taken care of, now comes the game play itself. Go through the options in the game lobby and set everything to your liking. Most of it is up to you, but personally, I like to roll with the animation off (so the game runs smoother) and “highlight bet amount” turned on. For those of you who don’t know, when you turn on “highlight bet amount” it makes it so the bet amount is always highlighted when it’s your turn to act. That means all you have to do is type in the amount you’d like to bet when it’s your turn − no having to manually highlight the number yourself or fumble around with the bet slider. I also like to set the game background to plain brown, especially when you’ve played down to the final table. That bright blue “hockey rink” final table background can be distracting, so I always switch it off.

Once again, you’re doing all of this because it’s to your advantage, not just because you’re a control freak. By controlling your environment, you give yourself the best chance to maximize your focus on the game and be a winning player. This is far and away one of the biggest assets available to all online poker players.

After honing their games online for awhile, many players decide to take the next step and test their skills in a live poker room. For some, the transition comes easily but, for others, the differences between playing at a computer and at a live table can be difficult to overcome.

For many online players, one of the hardest adjustments to make is to the speed – or slowness – of live play. Where you may easily see 50, 60 or more hands an hour if you multi-table at home, you’ll be lucky to see 20 or more hands during an hour of live play. The game just doesn’t move as fast. Some players adjust to the “boredom” of live play by listening to music and zoning out while they’re not involved in a hand.

While I don’t personally object to listening to music at the table, I prefer to chat with some of the players seated near me during the game. First of all, there’s a nice social aspect to playing live – if you have a good table – that you just don’t get online. Secondly, chatting with your fellow tablemates may help you to determine what kind of players they are. Is the guy next to you just killing time at a $5/$10 table while he’s waiting for a bigger game? Is he in town on vacation and just playing a little poker for the fun of it? Is he a regular?

These little bits of information can help you categorize your opponents and determine what kinds of players they might be; serious, casual, aggressive, etc. Remember, the more information you can gather, the better decisions you’ll be able to make when you’re involved in a big hand. This brings me to another important distinction between online and live play – focusing on your opponent.

When you’re playing online, you’re working with a much more limited amount of information than you are live. Sure, you may be able to calculate how often a player raises or re-raises from the button and keep track of their statistics, but when you get right down to it, you’re playing your game based on your two hole cards and the patterns you can establish about your opponents. When you’re playing live poker, on the other hand, you have a lot more information that you can factor into your decisions.

How is your opponent betting or sitting at the table? Are they confident? Do they look scared? Does your opponent’s demeanor change when they’re involved in a hand? Do they talk more? Less? Are they tilting? Drunk? Loose? Because of all of the extra information available to you at a live game, I believe it’s much easier to make reads on your opponents and, in turn, to put them on a very specific range of hands – or hand – if you’re really paying attention to what’s going on at the table. One of the biggest mistakes I see many online players make when they first start playing live is that they overlook this extra information and play a very “general” game rather than focusing in on a specific opponent.

My advice for these players is simple; slow down, focus, think. While you don’t want to take two minutes to contemplate every single play, there’s nothing wrong with going into the tank every once in awhile during a live game or tournament. If you’re paying attention to the action and your opponents, there’s a lot more information that you have to process and this sometimes takes some time. Think about how the hand has played out – and about how your opponent has played the hand – and you’ll find that your game will improve.

If you don’t think poker is a competitive sport, chances are you’ve never made it to the late stages of a major tournament where the only thing higher than the blinds is the pressure of playing for thousands - or even millions - of dollars in prize money.

As a former basketball player, I can compare the pressure of a WSOP final table to the final minutes of a playoff game where every play is crucial and any mistake can mean the difference between walking away a champion or a runner-up. From the crowds on the rails to the lights, TV cameras and reporters running around the floor, everything around you is amplified. Let the pressure and the circus atmosphere distract you, and you can easily watch your tournament slip away.

Pros who have been in these situations before - whether they’re athletes on the court or players on the felt - understand the key to wining in this atmosphere is to maintain focus on the task at hand and to block out everything else that doesn’t matter. TV cameras? Forget ‘em. Railbirds? Block them out. Bear down and play, and let the rest take care of itself.

Unlike other sports, poker has one more X factor that you have to learn to deal with - the money ladder where finishing just one spot higher can mean thousands or even hundreds of thousands of additional dollars in prize money. For players who haven’t gone deep in major tournaments, thinking about the short-term money jumps can be just as distracting as any TV camera. Succeeding at this stage takes focus on a single goal. For me, that goal is winning.

In my experience, tournaments can be divided into two distinct parts; in the money and out of the money. Before the bubble, my goal is to make the money. I want to cash and, hopefully, put myself in a position to win. After the bubble breaks, I aim to win. For me, and many other pros, the real tournament doesn’t start until after we’ve reached the money and its here where I really try to concentrate on making the smartest long-term strategic decisions I can in order to secure a win.

A hand from Event #1 of this year’s WSOP illustrates my point. We had reached four-handed play where the difference in finishing first and fourth was more than $500,000 when I got involved in a pot with Andy Bloch. I was holding pocket 7s and led out at a flop of Q-Q-3 only to have Andy make a pot-sized raise behind me. Though I don’t know what Andy was holding, I’m guessing that he may have had over-cards and, possibly, a flush draw. While my two pair of 7s and Queens may have very well been good, it would cost me my entire stack on what was essentially a coin flip in order to find out. In the end, I laid my hand down and looked for a better spot.

Why, you may ask. Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, I had a big enough stack at this point that I wasn’t committed to continuing with the hand and, while folding to Andy cost me some chips, I could still fold and sit comfortably in second chip position at the table. Secondly, and even more importantly, even if I was ahead of Andy on the flop, my read gave him 13 outs (approximately, a 40% chance) to make his hand. With my tournament life on the line if I called, I just wasn’t getting the odds to gamble.

While making the tough hero call in front of friends, family and the ESPN cameras may have been a great poker moment that earned me a few minutes of glory, I did my best to block all of that out of my mind and concentrate on the task at hand - winning the tournament. By focusing on the game plan I devised earlier, I was able to walk away from a marginal situation with only a small loss and move onto the next hand.

In the end, my decision to pass on the possible short-term gain I could have realized in this hand paid off, as I went on to defeat Andy after we reached heads-up play. I’ll take a WSOP bracelet over a few minutes of television glory any day.

Poker is a game of choices. Some of these choices are fairly straight forward and simple while others take a lot of thought. The thing is that when all is said and done, there may not be just one correct path to winning a given hand; it’s all up to you to decide what road to travel.

With that in mind, we asked Team Full Tilt’s Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson to share their thoughts on one of poker’s trickiest decisions – the coin flip. Should players be willing to put everything on the line in a coin flip situation? Here are two different sides to the coin flip question:

Chris Says:

For the most part, coin flips are something that I tend to avoid. You never want to take on a negative EV proposition, so you can pretty easily fold a hand like A-K when you’re certain your opponent is holding a high pocket pair like Jacks or Queens. Some players are willing to take a negative EV coin flip early on in a big tournament in order to accumulate chips, but this is an incorrect decision (unless you’re trying to catch an early flight or make like Ivey to the golf course).

Of course, there are a couple of situations where pressing a coin flip can be the right move. For example, if you think your opponents are better players than you, then it might be correct to take a coin flip. When you’re outclassed in a game and are certain that you’ll be outplayed after the flop, taking a coin flip can help even the playing field.

By that same token, you should be willing to press a coin flip situation every chance you get against a player who thinks he’s better than you. Make him avoid taking the coin flip by raising and putting a lot of pressure on him to make that decision. If he really thinks of himself as the superior player, he’ll want to avoid that situation and keep folding until he gets the chance to try and outplay you after the flop. He may think he’s the better player, but if you put a lot of pressure on him, you may end up outplaying him.

Howard Says:

I think people try to avoid them too much, especially after they’ve already committed chips to the pot. If the pot has 1,000 in it and you have to put your last 500 chips in to make the call, you’re getting 2-1 on your money – yet people dodge this situation all the time. It’s just wrong; you should love to take 2-1 on a coin flip even if you only have a 48% chance of winning.

When you have a hand like A-K and you could be running into Aces or Kings, committing chips to a coin flip is obviously not something you should be looking to do. But at the same time, when you’re getting 2-1 on your money in a likely coin flip situation, I think its right to take the flip. It’s a pretty big disaster if you’re holding Jacks and don’t want to flip against something like A-K, but it turns out your opponent has pocket 9s.

The whole point of a coin flip is that yes, sometimes you have the classic A-K versus Queens race. But what about all the times you have A-K and the other player has A-Q. When you have a hand where you aren’t in a coin flip, you likely have your opponent dominated, and you should take that proposition every time.

With that said, there are obviously times when you should not be looking to take a coin flip. When you’re in a situation where you have a lot more chips than your opponent, this is a good time not to take that flip. The more of an advantage you have over the other player, the less willing you should be to take the coin flip. Avoid that situation by not committing too many chips to the pot and waiting until after the flop to outplay the competition.

As you can see, there’s no one right way to approach a coin flip situation. There are always two sides to every coin.

Most players, even serious one, suffer much greater poker losses than they should. That makes me sad, so I’ll try to fix it. One reason is that their losses are “reversed manufactured.” Now there’s a fancy term. What does it mean? Reverse manufactured means that those losses are the necessary byproduct of trying to manufacture a winning streak.

Oh, fine, but what does “manufacture a winning streak” mean. Ah, now we’re getting right to the heart of it. You might have manufactured some yourself and not realized it. You’re probably manufacturing a winning streak (and, in fact, manufacturing wins) if you like to brag about the number of times you’ve won in a row. If you go around telling anyone who will listen, “I’m on an 18 day win streak,” more likely than not, you’re manufacturing wins.

How can you manufacture a win? It’s amazingly easy. All you have to do is refuse to settle for a loss and accept small wins whenever you need to. The only requirement is that you fight back when you’re behind, hoping to break into the plus column, then quit happy if you succeed, rejoicing in the notion that you overcame adversity, struggled to restack your chips, and are now going home to rest victorious. It will feel like a proud accomplishment to you, but it shouldn’t.

How you won

Let’s look at how it might have just happened. You’re a medium-limit player, not competing quite large enough to make a good living, but large enough to supplement your income or to barely get by without a job when required. In this way, you’re like the majority of winning poker players - somewhere between just eking out a profit and professional wage-earner status.

Anyway, today you sit down in a $10/$20 hold ‘em game, supposedly hoping to make a profit by showing off your Sunday-best poker skills. Sad stuff happens right away, though. Down goes a king-high heart flush, which you flopped, when a player holding the ace of hearts and deuce of diamonds sees a fourth heart come on the river. Next you flop three jacks, but they finish third when two opponents hit straights. Then there’s that devastating hand where you got bluffed out of your birdcage by Bruno, who never, ever did that before. And it gets worse. The little medium hands that can go either North or South, all go South. Losses pile up. Misery surrounds you.

But somewhere deep, deep inside, you maintain your faith and conviction, and the spirit strikes you. You fight back. Hours pass. You grow weary. Hours pass. You fight to stay alert and wait for your luck to change. Hours pass.

It’s now 3:40 in the morning and you need to be up at 8:30. Suddenly several pots are pushed to you. Then a small setback. Then you win more pots. After a string of pots go your way, you win a really big one. Is your recovery complete? You don’t know, because you haven’t had time to count your chips.

“Deal me out one hand,” you tell the table. You need to stack these newly won chips, count them, find out where you stand. Down $135, put 10 of these $5 chips here, down $85 now, put these two $25 chips off to the side, down $35, oops, three more $5 chips under a $20 bill, exactly even, and that leaves these three $1 chips, change from the rake, so up $3! You did it! Your winning streak continues!

Time to go

“Deal me out!” you announce. “It’s getting later than I thought.”
“Don’t you wanna play till your blind?” someone asks. “You’ve got another hand coming.”
You’re tempted, after all, you can just fold everything except aces - even aces if you really want to. But you just wave away the suggestion. “Nah, deal around me.” And within minutes you’re cashed out and on your way home. As you’re leaving, a friend asks you how you did tonight. Your chest puffs out proudly and you say, “I won a tiny bit. Nothing that matters, but that’s 19 winning days in a row.”

Signs of trouble, my friends. Bad signs of trouble. You’re manufacturing that win streak just so you can make yourself feel good about it. But you’re not manufacturing profit. Sure, you think you’re making profit, but really you’re putting your bankroll at risk. You have tallied a lot of wins - a couple when you got off to a fast start and kept on winning, a few short ones when you started fast, but faltered and quit before you found yourself in the negative column, some where you’d come from behind and quit when you got ahead. And, of course, tonight when you’d stuck it out and turned a major loss into a tiny win.

Speaking of tiny wins, that’s exactly the kind you’re likely to have when you strive to extend a winning streak. That’s simply because you’re willing to settle for them. You’ll quit with small wins when you’ve been winning more to keep from dropping below break even. And you’ll gladly cash out with a small win if you’ve been losing and get ahead. However, there is no such thing as a small loss. You won’t accept one. It’s either a win or a big loss. You need to keep that winning streak alive if you can, right?

The wrong time to play

But, all together, this strategy means you’re playing more hours than you should when you were losing, because you’re trying to catch up. And it means you’re playing fewer hours when you’re winning, because you’re eager to cash out and add to your win streak. By manufacturing a win streak, by forcing small wins, you’re also putting yourself in grave danger of manufacturing huge losses - you simply won’t experience them as long as your luck holds and your winning streak is extended.

You see, when you try hard as you can to dig yourself out, you risk digging yourself deeper. It’s like that popular advice, “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” I think those words were tailored for poker. Beware! On the few occasions that you won’t be able to experience the glory of cashing out with that $3 profit and puffing up proudly, you’re likely to suffer painful losses and depart pitifully from the poker table, all chance of recovery now hopeless. Maybe chance of recovery tomorrow will be hopeless, too. You will have lost way more than you should have. And I’m not talking about a magic stop-loss or predetermined limit on how much you should risk in a game.

Listen closely. I’m saying something different. I’m saying you lost much more than you should because you played poker in the worst of circumstances. When you’re winning, opponents are usually intimidated by you. They’re less likely to play their best games, less likely to make daring bets and raises with winning hands and extract every penny of profit from you. This means you can make value bets that can push your profits to the limit. Opponents who are intimidated usually keep calling in frustration, but seldom raise with anything but obviously strong hands. In doing so, they neglect to take advantage of all their edges, so you rule the table, and your profit soars.

Conversely, when you’re losing, opponents are inspired. They play better against you specifically. They think, “Hey, there’s someone I can beat. There’s someone who’s unluckier than I am.” And they single you out for money extraction.

So, I don’t like to hear about long manufactured winning streaks, because I know that those invite huge manufactured losses, too. And, in the long run, long winning streaks usually mean that you’ve played most of your time under bad circumstances and limited the time you’ve played under good circumstances. And that isn’t a smooth path to poker profit.