Countless players say, "I've been running bad," but only a handful say, "I've been playing badly." You rarely see that pattern in other games. Golfers don't say, "I've had terrible luck lately; I keep getting bad lies." They say, "I've got to work on my putting and chip shots." Tennis players don't whine about bad bounces, they practice their strokes or take lessons to improve them.
The critical difference is that players of other games accept responsibility for their results, while too many poker players blame bad luck. Golf and tennis clubs encourage people to criticize their own play and work on their skills, while casinos and the gambling culture emphasize luck. That's one reason so few poker players develop their abilities. I'll go further: You can't improve your game until you stop blaming bad luck and accept responsibility for your results.
When I make that point, many players get angry because they want to avoid that responsibility. In fact, when I interrupt complaints about bad luck and ask, "What are you doing wrong?" the usual answer is: "Nothing. I'm playing very well." Then, they try to "prove" that bad luck is the problem by telling me another bad-beat story, but I won't listen.
I'm a psychologist, not a bartender. If you want sympathy, walk over to the bar, buy a drink, tip the bartender, and tell him your troubles. If you want to win at poker, accept responsibility for your play.
Mike Sexton's "Wake Up and Smell the Coffee – Part I" (Card Player, Aug. 16, 2002) showed why he is a champion. He criticized his World Series of Poker results, then wrote: "It's apparent that I need to adjust my style." Please note that his style has been very successful; it has put him in the top five at the WSOP for "number of times in the money." But he wants more, and he is not blaming bad luck for his disappointment. Instead, he's accepting responsibility, looking at himself, and preparing to make those painful adjustments.
That's what you've got to do. You've got to take your game apart, identify your strengths and weaknesses, learn why you play the way you do, and work on your game. And you won't take those stressful actions if you think you're just "running bad." So, let's analyze why so many people whine about their bad luck.
Bad Beats Don't Matter That Much
They are extremely frustrating, but they are definitely not the reason you lose. In fact, the idiotic actions that cause bad beats greatly increase your profits. For example, someone on TwoPlusTwo.com's Psychology Forum posted: "The past month or so I'm down about 130 big bets, 85 percent of which are from people hitting four-or-fewer-outers or having their 7-2 hit a Q-7-2 flop vs. my K-K."
That statement is nonsensical, but his type of thinking is quite common. It's caused by faulty information and selective memories. When someone misses a long shot, we don't even know it. He quietly mucks his hand. But, when he beats us with a miracle card, we can't help knowing and remembering it, and we may even bore our friends whining about it. Since we can never know the bets we win from missed long-shot draws, but vividly remember the pots we lose when they hit, we naturally think we lose money to them. To determine your net profit, you must count the bets you win from people paying to make long-shot draws as well as the ones you lose when they hit them. Since you can't count the bets you win, you are certainly miscalculating the effects of people playing bad hands against you. In fact, you, I, and every other sensible player are dozens or hundreds or thousands of bets ahead because of those stupid calls.
Over any significant period of time, EV (expected value) comes close to results. If people are making negative EV plays against you, you are going to beat them. If you are making negative EV plays, you are going to lose. It really is that simple.
Anyone who understands poker and probability theory knows these facts, but angry people ignore them. In fact, we've all heard people insist: "Don't give me that long-term BS, people are always sucking out on me." But poker is a long-term game, and over the long term, EV is approximately equal to results. If you can't accept that fact, don't play poker.
Denial is the Real Problem
Insisting that bad beats or bad luck in general are killing you is just an obvious way to deny reality. Let's look at a few other kinds of denial.
You don't play that well. I am absolutely convinced that most people do not play as well as they think they do. In fact, research in many other areas proves that most people overestimate their skill and performance. For example, hundreds of studies show that workers at every level believe they should get better performance appraisals than their bosses have given them. Virtually every teacher knows that students think they deserve better grades than they receive.
This type of denial is particularly common in poker, because luck has such a huge and obvious impact on short-term results. So, before blaming bad luck, ask a few talented, objective people to assess your playing skill. You will probably find that it is significantly lower than you think it is.
When I suggest that someone doesn't play as well as he thinks, I may get my own words thrown back at me: "Didn't you write recently that Mason Malmuth and Mike Caro said a player could play well, yet still lose for 1,000 or even 4,000 hours?" Of course I did, and perhaps you're playing well, but are having an extraordinarily bad run of luck. However, it is extremely unlikely.
If you've been "running bad" for weeks or months, there are two possibilities. First, you have had incredibly bad luck, but the odds against it are at least 100-to-1, and probably much higher (depending upon how long you've been "running bad"). Second, you're not playing that well.
You should focus on your play for two reasons. First, estimating odds is a central skill of poker. If you don't estimate them accurately and objectively, you must lose. Since the odds are much greater that you're playing badly than just being unlucky, it makes more sense to focus on your play. Concentrate on the more likely cause, not the low-probability one.
Second, if you focus on your play, you can do something positive about it. If you focus on your bad luck, all you will do is make yourself miserable, and that feeling will cost you dearly. Many people claim that their feelings don't affect their play, but it's just another type of denial. If you feel sorry for yourself and whine about your bad luck, you can't play your "A" game, and the other players will sense your vulnerability and exploit it. If you feel and talk like an unlucky loser, you will play and be treated as a victim, not a winner.
You select the wrong games. If you don't know how well you play, you can easily select games you can't beat, then blame bad luck for your losses. Ask those same people to help you to pick games you can beat. In fact, the simplest, most obvious action to improve your results is to play against weaker players.
Some people object that their cardroom spreads only one game at their preferred limits. But, if you're losing steadily, you should seriously consider moving down, and there are usually more games at lower limits. If the convenient cardrooms don't provide enough choices, choose from the dozens of online games. Card Player's online newsletter will help you to select good ones.
But here again, we see denial in action. Countless players insist that they can't beat lower-limit games because people won't respect their raises, will play any two cards, and will do all of those other idiotic things that cause bad beats. The fact that idiotic plays improve their EV and results disappears because of their frustration about bad beats and their overestimation of their own skill.
But what about people who have won nicely year after year, still play in the same games, and have gotten rotten results for six months or longer? Doesn't their track record prove that they are running bad?
Absolutely not. My next column will show that your track record proves only that you once had the ability to beat that game. Perhaps you still have it and are just running bad, but you have probably lost your edge.
If you would like to learn more about yourself and other players, you can order Dr. Schoonmaker's book, The Psychology of Poker. See the Two Plus Two ad on Page 107.