He's baaaaaaaaaaaack.
After nine months at Poker Digest, I'm happy that I can count myself among the lucky few PD writers for whom Card Player Editor in Chief Jeff Shulman decided he'd make room in a magazine that is now stronger and deeper than it was when I left last year.
If you remember me from the old days at Card Player, or read me in Poker Digest, you know what you'll be getting in "Inside Straight": a poker potpourri of humor, instruction, anecdotes, dramatic tournament tales, and more than a little philosophy that I believe players at all levels will utilize to improve not just their poker results, but the way poker fits into their lives. If you find the philosophy useful, and it spills over into other aspects of your life, so much the better. I'm trying to turn you into a winner in more ways than one.
I called my return "lucky" above, but putting modesty aside, I'd have to be at least reasonably good at what I do to have been asked to return to Card Player. So, while I do consider myself lucky, this is another of those instances when one of my favorite quotes applies. It was first attributed to Branch Rickey, the general manager of the then Brooklyn Dodgers: "Luck is the residue of design."
My "design" is that I've loved writing ever since I was about 7, and poker ever since I was about 17; it probably didn't hurt that I had a bit of a natural gift for each, too, so it's natural that these two loves came together.
Despite those natural gifts, and the love of what I was doing, I've learned through experience that talent and desire are not enough for true success, at least not for me and probably not for you (there are probably a few savants who can get by just on those two qualities, but I wouldn't advise you to count on being one of them). There's an old, old joke about a tourist who stops a passerby in Manhattan and asks, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" The tourist is expecting street directions, but gets an unexpected twist when the answer comes: "Practice, practice, practice."
I learned about the importance of practice when my large writing ego took a look at a book I wrote about 15 years ago. It was well-received at the time, but when I look at it now, I feel ill. The first thought I had when I pulled that book out after not having looked at it for a long time was, "That's awful writing."
It wasn't awful, actually, just not anything like the job I could do now as a much more experienced writer, and even though I felt a little embarrassed that my first book was that "dreadful," I eventually decided that life would be pretty awful if we reached the peak of our skills at a young age and couldn't look forward to improving, but rather only to stagnation or decay.
Because you're reading Card Player and not Writer's Digest, you're probably wondering what my improvement as a writer has to do with you improving as a poker player. The answer is "a lot," and the explanation for that answer is not because I'm now gifted enough to teach you brilliant lesson after brilliant lesson (although I hope that will be true, and it's certainly one of my goals).
Instead, my own experience as a writer provided me (and I hope you) with a metaphor for my (your) poker playing. When I wrote that first book (it was about how to succeed in law school), I thought I was a great writer. Looking back, it's obvious to me that I wasn't even particularly good. I still don't believe I've reached "great," but all the writing practice I've had during the last five years, during which time I've made writing my career rather than my hobby, has at least gotten me up to the "good" level.
Succeeding in poker doesn't work all that differently, because like successful writing, successful poker requires intelligence, craft, creativity, discipline, patience, ability to withstand defeat, desire, study, and, perhaps most of all, practice. Practice, practice, practice. At least in poker I don't have to deal with rewrites, although there are certainly some hands I wish I could rewrite!
My records, as well as my memories of some inexcusable errors, make it clear to me that even as little as a month away from the tables hurts my game. I had some stretches last year when I was so busy writing or being ill that I had very little time to go out and play poker, and it showed very clearly in my results, when I made mistakes in areas I thought I had mastered long ago.
If you're reading Card Player, you probably don't have a lot of stretches when you don't play for a month or more. You probably play quite often, and therefore think you're getting plenty of practice. Maybe you are, and maybe you're not. Effective practice isn't just a matter of playing regularly. It involves playing regularly with awareness of what you're doing: what's working, what isn't working, and if you're lucky enough, having a friend or friends with whom you can share your thoughts about what's happening.
If you want this sharing discussion to mean something, and if you want to avoid seeing people run in the opposite direction when you approach, please don't share your bad-beat stories. Your friends have heard enough of those. On the other hand, if you approach a friend describing a hand or situation, and ask not just for feedback about what you did but instead how he or she would have handled that situation and why, now you're not just playing poker. Now, you're practicing. Now, the experience you're gaining is likely to stick.
I remember on one of my first trips to Atlantic City to play poker, I looked pretty young, and as I was scooping in a fairly large pot, the loser couldn't refrain from making a remark. "You played that hand terribly," he said. "You play this game for 40 years like I have and you won't make mistakes like that."
Even though this was fairly early in my poker career, I had already figured out that it was very bad for business to antagonize the weak players at the table, so I didn't say anything back. I don't remember the hand well enough to know if I played it terribly or not, but I do remember that it was very clear this older gent wasn't as good as me, and also remember thinking that I wanted to say, "If I play this game for 40 years the way you do, I'll lose millions of dollars."
Although my irritated opponent had much more experience than me, it was obvious that he either had a pretty low IQ or (more likely) had been practicing his mistakes for 40 years. He'd learned poker, gone out and played a lot of it, and assumed that this wealth of experience was making him a better player. No doubt, his poor results were due to an absolutely unbelievable series of bad beats.
I don't know for a fact that his 40-year results were poor, but he played pretty badly that night. Further, with a few exceptions for some great players who just can't hold their tongues, it's usually safe to assume that anyone who criticizes the players he perceives as weak probably isn't very strong or successful himself. A good fisherman doesn't scare away the fish, and he doesn't teach them how to avoid the hook, either.
If you want to be a successful poker player, you need to log a certain number of hours at the table on a fairly consistent basis (just how many hours that is, and how you should define "fairly consistent," depends on your own unique nature). Logging the consistent hours isn't enough, though. Athletic coaches grow furious when their teams practice poorly, because it's a harbinger of bad things to come when it's game time.
You should apply those same standards to yourself. If poker is purely a social matter for you, it's fine to spend time in between hands watching TV, chatting with your neighbors, and all of the other loss-of-focus activities that pros look for when they're trying to select the best game to get into. If, on the other hand, you want to win and improve, the hours you log at the table have to be effective practice, not just practice.
Stay aware and remain open to the possibility that there might still be something you can learn (either about the game you're playing or about particular opponents). Take time between hands to mentally review your play in the last hand you played, whether you won it or lost it: Many players review only their losing hands, and miss opportunities to improve their strengths or fail to realize that they made a bad play and got away with it.
If you do that, and remember that while "staying in the moment" of the game you're playing right now should be your prime focus but not your only focus, you'll find yourself at Carnegie Hall soon enough … and I'll go looking for another table when I see you sitting down waiting for me.