People in the poker community often come up to me and ask about whatever is on their mind. Some of these questions are good questions, and some are bad beat stories in disguise. I’ve been through quite a few things in my poker career and I like to help whenever possible, and in this new Card Player series, I’d like to share my experiences and knowledge. Feel free to ask any poker-related question, and I’ll do my best to answer it in the space below.
Question: A player I label as a “grumpy gambler” (not crazy, but definitely bets without regard to odds) said, “I expect to lose” after a board ran bad.
I thought this was interesting for several reasons. Primarily, it tells me that he looks at his session as polarized. If he is up, it’s an unexpected pleasure and he’s happy. If he loses, he expects it anyway, so he just shrugs it off and comes back the next day. What do you think of this sort of attitude?
Gavin: It’s interesting to think about why different people are attracted to playing poker. I came from a sports background and, like most people, I was terrible at poker at first. I forced myself to get better because I am competitive and I generally don’t like to play games where I consistently lose. I’m okay with losing sometimes, but when it’s clear that I’m outmatched, I either stop playing or learn to get better. I never originally intended to be a professional poker player, but here I am 10 years later. It keeps me mentally stimulated most of the time and provides some interesting (albeit generally simple) logic puzzles for me on a regular basis.
I know other people who play just to gamble. They enjoy the rush they get when they win a big pot and they continually seek the feeling they have when they win big. Most either ignore the fact that skill is a factor in poker or refuse to believe it, instead thinking that some people are just luckier than others. They will keep coming back because they remember the few times they won a huge amount and not the many times they lost.
Some people play because they like to bluff. They get a huge thrill out of making someone fold the best hand and they almost always show when they bluff with a really bad hand. Obviously, bluffing is a part of the game and every winning player bluffs sometimes or else they wouldn’t be winning players. However, this type of player doesn’t care whether he’s bluffing in a way that makes sense or if his distribution of bluffs to value hands is accurate. All he cares about is getting you to fold the best hand and then showing you how big of a mistake you’ve made. The worse his hand is, the better.
Still others like to play just because they like the social aspect of the game. They like to sit around a table with people they can see on a regular basis and talk about sports or politics or whatever else there is that they want to talk about. They couldn’t care less about how much they win or lose, though they’d obviously prefer to win, and poker is more of a diversion to them than a focus. They typically slow down the game a little bit, but they are pleasant to have at the table and go a long way towards making a game enjoyable.
The player that you have described as a “grumpy gambler” is one I like to call a confirmationist (I know that I’ve made that word up). They are only in your poker game to confirm that they have terrible luck. They think they’ve had a pretty bad lot in life and they keep coming back to the poker table for punishment. They are often the type of player that might lecture others on their bad play because they couldn’t possibly imagine that they are making any mistakes. Each bad beat is a confirmation of their poor luck and each hand they win or, God forbid, winning session is just a delay of the inevitable persecution the cards will deal them the next time.
Each of these types of people has a reason for why they play and I think I’ve done an okay job of discerning what these reasons are throughout my career as a poker player. I’m not particularly concerned with this players’ attitude except for how it relates to how I can beat him at the table. I often commiserate with these players to an extent, telling them “tough beat” or “I know how you feel,” to let them know that I’m on their side. You can often take advantage of them by bluffing almost any scare card because they knew that the beat was coming and it couldn’t possibly have gone any other way.
Understanding why players do what they do at the table and what makes them keep coming back is a great way to learn more about how to beat them. If you can put yourself in their shoes, however painful and uncomfortable, you will find that the strategy for beating them doesn’t follow too far behind.
If you have a question for Gavin, send it to editor@www.cardplayer.com.
