The games go on, as ever. Poker mourns no one, especially so at this oblivious table, which barely manages a murmur beyond the obvious bad beat jackpot whimpers. When he returns, DZ gets involved in another multiway pot. Has the pro slowed down time for himself? Has he come back afresh? Now, as you might deduce, his stack has been leveled to not much more than 100 bigs, a far cry from the big winning day he must have been savoring as surely as tonight’s hook up. So when he overlimps in middle position (oh boy), then calls the straddler’s exasperatingly undersized, predictable raise, it’s as if DZ had picked up his cell phone not for a break but to slip in a phone call before the yellow light turns red. His demon of not paying attention to the stack to pot ratio rises to the surface, horns first, when the flop comes A86. The straddle leads out into the four way pot, and DZ is left with two reasonable bets. There will be no river play, which is a situation, if you are still learning, that means you are doing something wrong with your speculative hand. What exactly was DZ doing on that break of his?
When DZ makes the call, there are two types of holdings that he can have, and is skewed toward having one (I’ll let you guess): either Ace rag suited or one of the open-enders. The turn is the seven, and the straddle now moves all in, naturally; the call was weak, and I hope for DZ’s sake that I’m completely wrong and that he’s sandbagging the fish with an incorrect but successful set mine. It’s immediately apparent, unfortunately, that he is not. Instead, he bites his lip. That ever so slightly sickly skin looks moister. He shifts one leg under the other. DZ is in outer space, between profiles, no good options available. If he had somehow binked the seven to pair his kicker with the ace, the money would be in. So what he has here is now a seven and a draw, as many as thirteen outs and being offered somewhere south of three to one. It’s a breakeven spot.
DZ is exasperated, not because the decision is impossible, but for the same reason you are angry when your wife is angry that you won’t ask for directions. When DZ puts the money in and misses, the straddle shows A9o and claims a full buy in from the beleaguered pro. DZ stares at the A9, especially at the nine, I think. It’s an embarrassing hand to lose to, because his own holding, though unrevealed, is exposed as possibly misplayed against someone who has gone nuts and been rewarded. DZ never should have been in this spot. He just paid off a weak player with his day’s investment. He knows it, and stands up, wild eyed.
When is a walk not a break, but just a promenade? When it’s a programmed action, something to do, because, well, that’s what you do. The problem with a walk or a quick break or a smoke or whatever you do, is that it’s often mere lip service to your mental anguish. It’s the pause button, when what you need is rewind, review, and most importantly: a new course. “How did I get here? What kind of player am I? Is this how I beat the games?” To counter an adverse action, make a decision, and then react. Action, decision, reaction. Skip the middle part and you are being played, not playing.
Whoever tries to tell you results don’t matter is a pedantic and irritating fool. If you depend on the game for any sort of income, obviously, the results matter; you are, in fact, in the results business. Further, you likely care about results even if you are gambling for entertainment. There is no anesthetizing the highly selfish nature of the game. Though many of you are fat and happy, you are not actually Buddha. The real choice DZ had, flooded with negative emotions, was how to react to the bad news that his paycheck was yanked away and torn up. “I expected something like this, maybe not this bad. Now what am I going to do? Who am I?” Without a real plan to slow down and ask yourself very fundamental questions, it can be very difficult, even for an old hand, to reestablish one’s game and strategy. I don’t think DZ really decided what he was going to do and who he was going to be during that cigarette break which was not a break. His anger was not really released or conquered, just lessened and left simmering. That’s ok, that’s good. Careers can be made out of that kind of moderating self-control. It’s just not always going to be good enough. The story of his day.
Check, bet, call. Action, decision, reaction. Strategy and mental game are bookends. In order to live up to this harrowing simplicity, you will have to treat your mental game as seriously as you treat your strategy. Not having a plan to deal with all aspects of rungood and runbad is no more reasonable than spending all your time studying at Masteronlytheturn.com. (If you belong to a coaching website with no mental game component, you are already a member there, whether you know it or not.) You need to be prepared when the donk in the straddle builds the pot pointlessly. You don’t have to slip into the vortex of your mistakes. You can grasp that the slippery slope really is a concept, as annoying as that is to concede. You could decide to plug your ears or tie yourself to the mast before you hear the siren call of Variance, so that as tempted as you might have been, you don’t give Her the chance to save you (it’s the last thing She wants to do for you). “This situation is against me”: Swipe. “Ah, that is the kind of player I am. I remembered.” Swipe. Swipe. Swipe.
