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Whether you are playing $1-limit
poker at the kitchen table or pot-limit poker at the Stardust in
Las Vegas, whether you are playing poker for fun or for a living,
once a week or every day, you have to understand that the object
of the game is to make money. That's where the profits are. That's
where the fun is. That's the way the game is scored. Jack Straus,
1982 poker champion, has said he'd bust his own grandmother if she
was in a pot with him, which is pretty much the only attitude a
serious poker player can have when he or she sits down behind a
stack of chips. Whatever the environment and whoever your opponents
happen to be, you must play the game tough; you must play the game
to win money. That does not mean you cannot joke or socialize, whether
at the kitchen table or in a Las Vegas card room. Quite to the contrary.
In a public card room people seem to mind losing their money to
a sociable person less than losing it to a mole. However, when the
cards are dealt, you are no longer a grandson, a friend, or a nice
guy; you are a player.
To say a poker player is out to make money does not necessarily
mean he is out to win pots. Of course, you can't win money without
winning pots, but attempting to win every pot or too many pots is
a losing proposition. If you win $100 in one pot but lose $120 trying
to win four others, you have a net loss of $20. You may occasionally
be in a game where the best strategy is to win as many pots as possible,
but such games are exceptions. In most games the bets you save are
as important as the bets you win, because your real goal is to maximize
your wins and minimize your losses. Ideally you want the pots you
win to be as big as possible and the pots you lose to contain nothing
more than your ante. You must remember that reducing losses - by
not making the calls, for example, that a weaker player would make
- adds that much more to your win when the game is over.
Many players don't follow this precept, however obvious it may seem.
They play as though they want to win the pot, an individual pot,
at all costs. The worst of them, to put it bluntly, are the suckers
in the game. On the other hand, a good player develops the patience
to wait for the right situations to play a pot and develops the
discipline to release a hand he judges to be second-best. Just as
it is important not to think in terms of individual pots - not to
chase money you have contributed to an individual pot so it is important
to realize you are not playing in individual games. Each individual
game is part of one big poker game. You cannot win every game or
session you play, anymore than a golfer or bowler can win every
match he or she plays. If you are a serious poker player, you must
think in terms of your win at the end of the year or the end of
the month - or, as sometimes happens, of your loss at the end of
the year or the end of the month, which, of course, you want to
keep as small as possible.
Thus, whether you are winning or losing on a given night is not
in itself important, and above all it must not affect your play.
It's easy to get steamed, or disgruntled or discouraged, when you're
losing. However, you must be disciplined enough to play every hand
correctly, regardless of how you are doing. Similarly, you should
not allow the fact that you are winning or losing to affect your
decision to stay in or quit a game. From a money making point of
view the only criterion for playing is whether you're a favorite
in the game or an underdog. If you're a significant favorite, then
it's a good game, and you should stay in it; if you're an underdog,
then it's a bad game which you should quit. Never quit a good game
as a small winner just to ensure a winning session. By the same
token, don't continue playing in a bad game Just to get even.
Even for tough professionals, quitting a game, particularly when
they're stuck - that is, when they've lost money - is sometimes
a hard thing to do. So long as you remain a big favorite, you should
stay, even if it means using toothpicks to prop up your eyelids.
But if the game has changed so that you're an underdog, you should
quit whether you're a winner or loser. When you're stuck, you should
examine the reasons why you're stuck. It may be just bad luck, but
it may not. Are there too many players better than you? Is there
cheating going on? Perhaps you yourself are playing worse than you
normally do. Are you tired or distracted? Are you thinking about
the football game you bet or the woman who's been "busy"
the last four times you asked her out? Are you shaken up over a
bad beat earlier in the session when someone drew a fourth deuce
to beat your aces full? Making money is the object of poker, and
making money involves saving it on bad nights as well as winning
it on good nights. So don't worry about quitting a loser. If you
have the best of it, you will win in the long run just as surely
as a roulette wheel will win for the casino in the long run.
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