Almost There with Success and Failure

Note: I have been extremely fortunate to meet and play with some of the best poker players in the world. For this issue, I decided to ask my friend Darrell Dicken (aka Gigabet) to share some of his knowledge as my "guest columnist." I really think that having friends who share a passion for poker is the best way to bring your game to the next level and help you see things from a different perspective.

Throughout my years of playing poker, I have found that the most common reason for the "failure" of poker players stems not from lack of ability, but the fear of "failure." Where does this fear come from? Let me start with the two words that are pertinent here, success and failure. These are words that mean such different things to each individual that to use them to label your accomplishments, or lack thereof, is setting yourself up for a long, arduous journey that most won't finish. Success and failure are just ideas created by society to improperly judge others against ourselves. There are no successful people, or I should say, using these words, there are no failures, and everyone is a success.

"Everyone will eventually run worse than he thought was possible. The difference between a winner and a loser is that the latter thinks he does not deserve it." - Craig Hartman

This statement is truer than I believe anyone can know (even though I think most people reading this do know, it just seems impossible for me to believe that someone else can truly understand). The problem with the statement, however, is that thinking about winners and losers in this manner will keep you from attaining a more complete game. There are no winners and losers; to think that is to let yourself be affected by negative variance. If you are not on the plus side for the day, then you are, in effect, a loser, and so the downward spiral begins. All of those negative ideas must be eliminated from your mind or you will not perform to your potential. The trick is recognizing these negative ideas.

Because there are so many and they are so commonplace in our society, it is a large task indeed to sort them out as real, or just ideas created by the masses. Our labels for winners and losers simply identify individuals who play the same game a different way. Just because one person doesn't achieve the same goal for which I am striving doesn't make that person a "loser." Everyone is the same, and everyone has the same potential; some just direct their energies in a different direction. The sooner you can get that idea into your head, and really believe it, the sooner you will start to have a real understanding of the game.

I really believe that everyone has the psychological fortitude to manage the vicissitudes of this game. It is simply a choice - a choice to change the way that you think about results. Stop thinking in terms of winning as good and losing as bad. The two concepts should be grouped in your mind exactly the same. When God "blessed" mankind with shame, failure became a real entity with which we had to deal. That is what we are trying to achieve when we label a person as a failure, we are attaching shame to a meaningless act. Throughout my life, I have been around lots of people whom most would classify as "failures," and knowing them personally, I would say that none of them seemed any different than myself.

The problem comes to life when people start a downswing, which most would classify as "losing." They begin to suspect that they may "fail," and rather than become susceptible to the shame that comes with "failure," they decide to quit.

They stop playing because they fear things that aren't even real. The people who come to realize that these negative labels aren't real, either concretely or intuitively, are the same people who do not give up, no matter how bad things seem to be running. Eventually, they become the "professionals" in whatever walk of life they choose.

You have to find your own way to deal with these thoughts that have been ingrained in your mind your entire life. Identifying every negative thought as it creeps into your mind is a start; it takes practice to monitor your thoughts, but you cannot eliminate what you do not recognize.

I try very hard not to allow any negativity into my life; just ask anyone who has played next to me for any length of time how irate I get when, after playing and struggling for hours on end, that person utters those deadly words, "I can't win," as I am certain you have done at one point in time or another.

You might think that you can avoid this trap of psychological betrayal by turning your "noise filter" all the way up. While that will work for a time, the noise builds and builds, until everything that you have blocked comes pouring out at one time, which creates the very worst tilt imaginable. Believe me, I have been there many times. I have come to realize that it is much better to acknowledge the negative or angry thoughts as they arrive. That doesn't mean just noticing their presence; when they approach, actually talk to your mind and announce their arrival, then identify the reasons behind the thoughts. As your mind comes to realize how trivial and meaningless these thoughts are, it will eventually stop creating them in the first place. It takes a lot of time and effort to do this, but the long-term results will be well worth it.

So, How Does This All Relate to Poker?
The game that most of us play is really very simple. You get two cards, five cards come on the board, and you do a little betting here and there. The best five-card hand wins.

In a game this simple, why do so many people have so much trouble ending up ahead of where they started?

The real game is about people, not the cards in your hand. If you know a person well enough, you can read his hand, and once you know what he's holding, the game becomes a cakewalk. The problem is, we have predisposed ideas of who a person is, based on ideas that have been placed in our heads by our society. You have to be able to eliminate all of these ideas. Once you train yourself to be completely judgement-free, you will become a more complete player.

Anyone can read a person's hand based on his actions and seeing common tendencies; that is, a beginning player will commonly bet small when on a draw and big when he has a made hand. What about more experienced players? What does it mean when they bet two-thirds of the pot one time and then pot the next? They certainly are experienced enough to know not to bet the same pattern for the same types of hands. So, how can you figure out what they have?

Well, get to know them, watch them play. Try to figure out what they're thinking, as they have to be thinking something.

Put yourself in their spot; what kind of hand would you have if you were betting like that?

Now, do this for every hand of every player who is in a hand, for every player at the table, and if you're playing online, for every table that you are playing (try to eight-table while doing this exercise). Put effort into every single hand that is played out at your table, not just the hands in which you are involved. Every time there is a showdown, and the losing hand is mucked, open up the hand history file and see what it was. Go through a hand again and see if you can figure out why a player willingly showed down a losing hand (something that rarely should be done).

I called this an exercise, but it should be done on every single hand that is played out at any of your tables for the rest of your poker career. This is how you become a real player. Post-flop is where the real game is at, and it is fun to play.

Use your bets to pull information from an opponent, and then when you know what he has, trust your judgement 100 percent. If you think he is on second pair but will not fold unless you bet your whole stack, bet your whole stack (unless, of course, you have a better hand than second pair, which is unlikely, since players like us can rarely beat bottom pair), even if it means your tournament is over if you are wrong. Practice trusting yourself; you will be wrong enough in the beginning to doubt yourself, but don't let that stop you.

There is a strong possibility that I am the most active player in the world, and I can honestly say that this is something I do on nearly every hand. Imagine playing 6,000 hands a day on average, and watching and learning with no predisposed judgements of the other players. That is what it takes. Bad beats are no longer bad beats; they are just the cards coming out randomly, evening themselves out over time. What is really important is learning the thousands of languages that different people speak through their actions at the table. Believe me, it isn't some spiritual science, it is listening and learning without prejudice.

Play online with Scott on his new site, www.thefishtank.com. Enter his referral code, scott88, for a bonus, and look for him at the tables under the screen name ScottFischmn! Scott welcomes questions, suggestions, and feedback, and can be contacted via e-mail at scottfischman@thefishtank.com.