• Running Good, Running Bad

  What’s the difference? You can’t help but hit a flop when you are running good. Even if you make a bad decision you are rewarded for it. When you are running bad you can’t win for losing. You make every correct decision and still give away your chips.

  One is top of the world the other is a nightmare you can’t wake up from. Unfortunately, for poker players the yin to the yang is always a card turn away. The rushes never last long enough and the losing streaks are always too long.

  However, both trends, both extremes in luck can be harmful. One breeds overconfidence and sloppiness, the other initiates results-oriented thinking and the tweaking of things that don’t need to be adjusted. The hardest element of poker is trying to reconcile and evaluate your performance when luck, usually a short-term swing, can be the most influential determinant.

  You can play terrible and win. You can play perfect poker and grind away your chip stack. As a player learning endurance in tough times, learning self-assurance and patience in the valleys of variance, and recognizing your own mistakes when everything turns out right are often missed in the moment of living through the swing.

  How many times have you questioned yourself in a hand that turned out wrong when you did everything right. The result is terrible, a guy hits a one outer, and you are wondering if you could have lost less or gotten out of the trap easier. In the WSOP Main Event quad aces ran into a royal flush and you just know the guy with quad aces was questioning getting all his chips into the middle, maybe not openly, but in the back of the mind, a little niggling questioning of his decision was going on.

  It’s luck… it’s out of your control, but what you have to work to control is things you can control. Even when running great, step back and admit where you got lucky, perhaps realize where you got outplayed and the deck was in your favor for once. Learn from your mistakes not from your results.

  When playing bad, it’s little comfort or consolation but know that you could be playing well. Don’t make your downswing longer by changing the elements of your game you are doing right. And also, seek counsel from others to prod you in the right direction if indeed you are doing things wrong.

  If we all ran good all the time, there’d be no money in poker.

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2 Comments

1. #1 Mike says:
   July 31st, 2010 at 12:46 am

   I consider myself a very very good poker player but is poker for me.I found myself all in on four different ocassions here they are.
   1)2009 WSOP ME KK vs JJ. QQ vs JJ
   2)hometown final champ tourney QQ vs 33
   3)HPT ME AA vs KK

   I am all in and got the best of it preflop in every scenario and get sucked out on.
2. #2 betandwin says:
   July 31st, 2010 at 10:09 pm

   Poker is for you. You got your money in well ahead. Dealing with bad luck in the short run seems overwhelming, but long run you keep putting yourself in those situations you’ll end up a winner. A problem with tournament poker is the win rate is so low especially in massive fields like the Main Event, but the more times you play the more likely your hands will hold. Take breather and come back to play another day. Or overcome variance by increasing your volume and playing online poker maybe even multiple tables at once.