Lucky Me

"...when it comes to hold 'em and stud, I already know everything there is to know..."
-- Mason Malmuth, renowned author/publisher & veteran professional know-it-all, 2+2, 2002

"...I know everything there is to know about luck..."
-- Sgt Rock, obscure poker philosopher & novice amateur know-it-all, rec.gambling.poker, 2001

We used to fly 866 miles, or drive 1150 miles, and pay big bucks for nice hotel rooms, to play 20/40 at the Mirage, then 30/60 at Bellagio.  Now we drive 2.1 miles from our home to Diamond Lil's, both in Renton, WA, and play what today are probably the only daily 20/40 games this side of Vegas, LA, or the SF Bay.

Nowadays there's poker pretty much EVERYWHERE, but so much of it is No Limit, or Spread Limit, or tournaments, and we just have no clue about any of that stuff.  And of course there's Low Limit all over too, but I've explained before, in detail, why I can't afford to play games like 4/8.

So am I lucky to have the 20/40 game I want to play so ridiculously close to home?  Yes.  EXTREMELY LUCKY.

The day, lo those many years ago, that I first met Mrs. Rock, a chance encounter, is another, even better, example of getting EXTREMELY LUCKY.  And we got hitched way too quickly, barely knew ourselves at that age, much less each other, and had different nationality, race, culture, language, different every damn thing.  So the initial probability for our marriage to survive?  Low.

But it all turned out way better than I ever deserved.  It's like I put up a live straddle, was dealt pocket aces, and even hit the flop.  More extreme luck.

Those are examples of Getting Lucky when a single major life event or circumstance has profound effects, maybe for years and years.  Bad luck can come that way, and be that profound too.  Like if Soccer Mom is driving through an intersection, and gets T-boned by a cement truck that ran the red light at 50 MPH.  Ouch.  REALLY bad luck.

In a gambling venue like the WSOP Main Event, getting lucky can be a one-time life-changing event too.  I mean, let's face it, some of the World Champions who won that bracelet over the years had lots of talent, and earned it, but more than a couple are just bozos who got real lucky that week.  And took home millions.

In the daily grind of playing limit Hold Em, luck does not have any such long term effect.  The examples above are all single random events with far-reaching impacts, but the daily game is a series of many independent random events, and no one of them should effect more than a single pot.

I've posted before about how "running good" or "running bad" are such bogus concepts, and how fascinating is is that the average player seems to be so clueless when it comes to luck and randomness.

We know that a pocket pair will flop a set around one time out of eight. Yesterday I was dealt pocket nines three times, and pocket Queens twice.  Played them all, and each one of those pairs hit a set on the flop, and won the pot.  Most of them filled up.  Lucky, huh?

We also know that Pocket Aces and Pocket Kings will each come to us once in every 221 deals, on average.  This summer I played 30/60 at Bellagio during WSOP, and for the first five days played maybe 12 hours/day x 34 deals/hour x 5 days = 2,040 deals (conservative estimate) and never saw either of those big pairs in the hole even once.  Bad luck.

So was there some special significance to those streaks, something I should have done in the midst of them, some adjustment maybe, to maximize my win or minimize my loss? No.  Nothing.  "In the course of random events, streaks happen."   Those particular streaks were a little deep, so were slightly remarkable, but certainly not *amazing.*

What is *amazing,* at least to me, is all the guys who believe that they can be ON a streak, and if they flop a set five times in a row, or don't see those biggest pairs five days straight, like me, that HISTORY influences the likelyhood of (probability for) those events on the next deal.  You would think I should have gotten over this by now.  I realize that I should have gotten over this, and just come to expect it, by now.  But no, I still just can't for the life of me understand why the amazingly simple concept of RANDOMNESS is so difficult for so many players to grasp or to accept.

But just because I can't understand it doesn't mean that I don't love it.  I do.  I deeply love that so many players in these games embrace superstitious beliefs, find imaginary "trends" in random events, and even think they can benefit by exchanging one bucket of random numbers for another (different!) bucket of random numbers.  Change the deck!

In the second example above, in addition to not seeing Aces or Kings, I was just plain "card dead" those entire five days.  Didn't get beat up too badly when I did get a playable hand, but got one so rarely, that it was a struggle just to win enough now and then to cover the blinds that kept coming around.  And that's basically what happened; I went pretty much nowhere for nearly a week.

And ya know what? Being card dead is actually a good thing.  Huh?  WTF is he taking about?

Well, look at it this way.  When you go hours and hours being dealt agonizingly few playable hands, remember that the same thing happens to everyone else just as much as it happens to you.  So it's a Performance Delta Opportunity.  Delta as in Difference.

Inevitably, your opponents will experience those same streaks of crappy starting hards that you do.  If you can maintain discipline and resolve anyway, where they get impatient, maybe tilt a little, and make poor preflop decisions, play hands they shouldn't, if only out of boredom or frustration, then that is your Delta.  It's your chance to play (Perform) differently (better) than they do.

OK, so maybe I don't exactly rejoice when dealt 7-2 offsuit nine deals in a row.  But I do smile inwardly, and remind myself to patiently wait for the run of real good cards that's going to come sooner or later.  And remind myself also that my opponents may, in this situation, be less patient, and how that's a Delta that can potentially help me beat them over time.

If you think I'm wacky to call being card dead a good thing, try this on for size:  I also like to "suffer" bad beats.  The badder the better.  Lay it on me!

Say somebody chases a shitty draw against me, like a 2 or a 4 outer, getting bad pot odds, but they get lucky and suck out anyway.  Should I get upset?  What, like I wish they would play better and not do that next time? If I were RESULTS Oriented, then yes, that would be an unhappy Result.  But being PERFORMANCE Oriented means not only trying to optimize your own Performance, but also, well, *liking* it when the other guy's Performance is bad, no matter the Result.

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The Book

If beats and bad luck don't annoy me, there's still a few things that do.  One is writing usenet or blog poker posts, but then having to censor myself.  More than once I've written something, then looked at it and realized, hey, have I said too much here?  Do I really want to share this with my opponents?  Some of the guys I play with read my blog.

So I try to just be entertaining, tell some jokes, maybe get philosophical or thought-provoking some, but nothing too deep.

OK, fine.  But what about those strategy gems that beg for discussion? Can't. Frustrating.

So I started putting all those things into an unpublished draft document, and now it has grown to become kind of an outline or skeleton for what could maybe be a book.  Lots of rough and unpolished, but real, content.  Do's and Don'ts, Tips and Tricks, Q&A, Concepts, Strategies and Secrets, all trying to be real and serious "Beat the Game" information.  Some if it may even have a little value.  I'm not sure.

Trouble is, I wouldn't want The Book published until after I'm dead, or at least DONE playing.

I mean, imagine this:  You write the bare-your-soul tell-all poker book, hold nothing back, explain everything you know, or think you know.  Then one day you sit into a game, and there's some guy you never saw before, with a big stack, and upon seeing you he points, and smiles, and says "Hey, I know you! I read your book!"

Sheesh. Guess I'd have to get up and leave.

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A Golden Oldie, eight years old.  Worth repeating?

Character and Psychology for Everyone

Everyone's true character shows itself sooner or later in the poker game.  Good, bad or ugly, every opponent will eventually show you what they're really like, deep down inside.  You may not like what you see. If you're there to win money, then you're there to take advantage of the other guy's character flaws, his tendency towards denial, his emotional instability (tilt), and sometimes, his simple stupidity.  This is why Abdul advises us to "Surround yourself with idiots."

Everyone knows that poker is a combination of math and psychology.  Most think that the "psychology" part pertains to your opponents— reading them, deceiving them, psyching them out, and defending yourself when they try to do those things to you.  Yes, that stuff is important.  But even more important is understanding that the player who can do the most psychological damage to you, your game, and your bankroll, is the one you see when you go to the restroom and look in the mirror.

-- Sgt Rock on usenet:rec.gambling.poker, May 2001

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Pucker Factor

Do you know that slang expression?  Basically, it tries to quantify how severely the anal sphincter involuntarily constricts, when one is under extreme stress.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pucker+factor

I heard it a lot in the Army, but not so much any more.  Back then we used to say that the ultimate PF maximizer was: Landing a jet fighter, on an aircraft carrier, at night.  I guess being shot at was way up there, too.

Mrs. Rock didn't know the expression, never heard it, but came up with a pretty decent ESL equivalent of her own, without hardly even trying.

We drove round trip to Vegas for WSOP this year, June 12 thru July 12.  I do most of the driving, but she switches in for an hour or so now and then.

Thing is, she's a little acrophobic, and gets freaked out driving on a highway with a steep drop over the edge, like along a canyon rim.  So I do those roads, but this time, on the way home, I inadvertently let her drive, and took a nap, forgetting that were approaching Yakima, WA, where there is just such a road.

After a while I wake up, and look over to see her with a two hands white-knuckle grip on the wheel, staring straight ahead, not daring to look to the side, and maybe even perspiring a little.  Uh oh.  I look to the side, and yeah, we're on the edge of the mountain, sheer drop, and I just know she's not liking it at all.

"You OK?" I ask.

She's concentrating too intently to answer right away, but after a long pause she manages to say:

"My rectum is tingling."

And that, friends, is Pucker Factor.