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Pokerati weighed in.

I am not the best poker player in the world. I am above-average compared to the competition against which I play the most. Fortunately, this fact lends itself to winning more money than I lose, which is the basic goal in poker. Unfortunately, if I want to ever make some serious money at poker (and I do), I need to improve my game. I need to improve it a lot. A whole lot.

One thing I have noticed in poker and in life is that the first step toward improvement is simply admitting the need for improvement. My life was once a complete dead-end, and it was destined to continue that way because I was unwilling to admit that my previous decisions were bad decisions. Once I was willing to admit that there was a better way to live life – that my previous decisions were both wrong and reversible, I became open-minded. Over the course of a couple years, absolutely every single aspect of my life improved. The most obvious (but not necessarily the most profound) improvements were: losing 30 pounds, finishing a marathon, joining a church and dating (and eventually marrying) the greatest woman in world, Jane. Like most improvements, these improvements were contagious. That is, this step-change in my life only spawned more and more and better and better changes. It was a good time to be me.

I also went through a revolutionary change in my poker game around 1999. I stopped viewing poker as a gambling and started viewing poker as a game of skill. I recognized that only hard work and study would lead to winning results, and the result was very positive. The timing could not have been better as the poker boom was nigh and, I was prepared for the kill. I not only honed my general poker skills, I spent most of my timing mastering the art of sheering the sheep – a discipline that requires some very specialized poker skills.

My subsequent three year’s profitability was only surpassed by my last two year’s malaise. As discussed here before, I was slow on the take when the field changed from fish to solid poker players, and I consequently suffered. I made a few changes about a year ago that have helped. But alas, help is relative. I was doing better than I would have without the changes, but I was still well short of where I wanted to be. To rehash some old posts, those changes were:

1. No longer assuming that all (or most) of my opponents were unskilled newbies ripe for the picking.
2. Not drinking (well, not drinking during a real poker game. I am still unafraid of drinking heavily when the buy-in is less than I would tip in a real game.)
3. Limiting online play and focusing on B&M play where my player-reading skills would be more handsomely rewarded and my general tendency toward boredom would be mitigated.

Lately, I have been trying to identify remaining leaks in my game. I had been unsuccessful at this identification for a while, but lately I have realized what these leaks are. I was a little bit surprised at their nature when I figured them out, but now that I have them figured out, I am going to be steadfast in my resolve to plug them. They are as follows:

I don’t play well when I am losing. A lot of people don’t play well when they lose, and it would be erroneous to lump all causes in the same category. You have your Matusow Meltdown-types who take a bad beat and then completely implode. That ain’t me. I am not completely calloused, but I sincerely do not think that I am vulnerable to emotional meltdowns. So what is my issue with losing? My basic issue is that I still have a tendency to ring-fence results and get too concerned about whether I win or lose in any given session. If I buy in for $200 and find myself down to my last $40, I will play like an idiot who is intent on either going broke or winning big. This is poker suicide. Not only is it inherently stupid to play “tournament poker” in a cash game, there is another, bigger reason to not do this: your opponents catch on to your desperation and adjust accordingly. I have been aware of my “it’s better to burn out than to fade away” attitude for a while, but only recently have I pegged the root cause. The basic reason why I don’t just cash out, pack it up and go home when things aren’t going my way is simple: My busy life does not allow me to play all that often, and packing it up means missing an opportunity to play.
I need to plug this leak in a bad way.

SOLUTION 1: Walk away. When things aren’t going well, leave. Pack it up. When things are just starting to not go well, get up from the table, walk around, think about what makes sense from a long-term perspective on your bankroll. Stay focused on the long-term.

SOLUTION 2 : Be Über-staked. One way to avoid the “gonna lose it all anyway” mentality is to have much more than you can possibly lose. I always have a sufficient ultimate bankroll* that is high relative to the stakes of the game, but my immediate bankroll (i.e. what is in my pocket for B&M or what is deposited online for online poker) is often insufficient to bear some early beatings. From now on, I will always walk into a gun fight with a bazooka. Maybe I won’t need it, but the gap between my immediate bankroll and my ultimate bankroll is wide and is causing some dysfunctional results. So, I’ll narrow the gap.

I make it easy for opponents to trap me. I learned in “New Manager Training” five years ago that most weaknesses are actually over-applied strengths. If that is actually true, then my biggest strength (sensing weakness and attacking) is often over-applied and becomes one of my biggest weaknesses (attacking when I shouldn’t.) Good players recognize my “go for the kill” style and know to play possum when they figure to have me beat. Very good players will be patient over a couple of streets, waiting for me to bet, and they will wait for the check-raise until the river (when I am pot committed). This is absolute kryptonite to the professional poker player’s mantra of “tight but aggressive”, and I need to do something to address it.

SOLUTION: Continue to be aggressive, but understand the risk that you are being played. Think through Mike Caro’s advice on tells and notice the difference between a tell that is intended to be noticed versus an inadvertent tell. Remember Harrington’s advice on probe bets only needing to be 30-40% of the pot (any thing higher achieves the same end with only bigger downside). Take every poker author’s advice on varying play so as to put doubt in your opponent’s mind that a slow play is a sure play against you. Let them know that you can also give up a pot.

I am still very quick to get a feel on a game, but dang it if I ain’t the last one to notice when the game has changed. First impressions carry for sure, but with me they seem to carry the day. I am absolutely certain that I have earned more per hour in the first hour of each game I have played in than in all play after the first hour. I am hyper-alert when I sit down, but I fall into a poker trance and stop noticing my opponent’s behaviour. That needs to change.

SOLUTION: The solution is clear, but implementation will be a challenge. Once an hour, I need to pretend as if I just sat down at the table for the first time. I do well at a casino where I keep getting bumped from the “must move” game. This forces me to refresh my view regularly. But, once I get to that main table, I fall asleep. It is very easy to beat a player that is asleep at the wheel. I need to stay alert.

So, there you have it. I have taken the first step and admitted I need help. Hopefully the second step was robust. That is, I hope I took an appropriate inventory of my leaks. Last, I hope that the identified solutions are the right solutions. We will see.

* To be clear on what I mean about “ultimate bankroll”… I have never been one to keep all my poker winnings in a shoebox and pull them out when I go play. I know the opening scene in Rounders makes this seem like a very cool way to live your poker life, but I find it a bit stupid. Personally, I manage my poker cash in the same way I manager non-poker cash: I keep x% in the checking account, y% invested in very liquid money market or similar short-term securities and the balance in investments with a long-term horizon. I know that one (of many reasons) that some players keep a physical bankroll is to avoid the risk of spending the winnings as well as to avoid the risk of gambling the rent money. Since my biggest winning and losing years represented 1.5% of my household earnings that year, I am not terribly concerned about either of these risks. Simply put, I don’t gamble all that much, so I keeping a poker fund seems less important than keeping a baby fund (which is proving to be more expensive than my poker habit!) Regardless, I have, as stated above, learned that being more liquid at the poker table has its advantages, so I will reduce the X, Y and Z percentages so as to increase my immediate poker bankroll.