Changes

“I watch the ripples change their size, but never leave the stream…”

The International Man Of Mystery went borderline apoplectic when I told him about the strategic change I had made.

“No! Kat! You’re costing yourself money!”

As the battered air molecules struggled to regain equilibrium, he transitioned seamlessly into an anecdote about band camp and Hilary and Haylie Duff. I missed the denouement as I returned to removing the bits of onion from my burger that I had specifically asked to not be there.

It all started with The Downswing.

As is well-known to RCP members, downswings are an inevitable fact of poker life. Since they are also associated with upswings experienced by long-term donators to the game, they play a crucial role in keeping poker profitable for long-term winners. It’s also a statistical inevitably that the longer you play poker the longer and more vicious your worst downswing will be.

(The mathematically pedantic may now like to proceed directly to footnote [1].)

The Downswing of October 2015 was one of those events that should be accompanied by Weather Channel field reporters wearing bright yellow clothing as they cling to the nearest palm tree. Overflushes were promptly followed by oversets that occasionally morphed into overboats. The only thing that refused to be over was The Downswing.

In the past I have managed to develop a stoic detachment from such events, but this one was pushing me to the edge of panic. I decided to text Doug from the table.

“~!@#$%” I said.

“?” said Doug.

“Downswing from the Ninth Circle.”

(The literary pedantic may now like to proceed directly to footnote [2].)

“Bad variance or bad play?” said Doug.

“One tends to lead to the other.”

“Nit up. Book a win.”

This seemed like a solid idea, albeit a somewhat painful one since I’d been spending the previous six months working hard on finding profitable spots to play more hands. But as I reviewed my session notes I noticed a lot of my losses shared a common theme: getting stacked early, then playing either defensively or simply poorly.

I then realized that with my confidence shattered and my play spotty at best, nitting up was going to require positive action.

And then it hit me. If I bought in for 100 BB instead of my usual 150 BB I would be forced to play tighter. The reduced stack depth would make speculative hands unprofitable. Additionally, if the Poker Gods were determined to continue with their unique sense of humor, an early stacking would be less expensive and thus less emotionally damaging.

I confess that the strategic change felt like a step backwards, but I quickly realized it dove-tailed with something else I had been trying to accomplish. My goal of playing more hands relied sensitively on developing better reads on opponents. In any given session this obviously takes time, and I had been attempting to play tight for the first hour in order to build player profiles. Frankly it hadn’t worked. I just couldn’t resist making plays in “good spots” early on, despite the fact I was often flying blind. The reduced buy-in had the added benefit of compelling me to stick to the script.

Having taken one positive step I decided I could squash The Downswing completely by a self-diagnostic. To this end I started re-reading Tendler’s “The Mental Game of Poker.” I’d got as far as page nine when Tendler sunk my battleship. It turns out you are a mental game fish if you:

“1. Change a proven winning strategy because [you] are running bad/hot.”

I tossed the book across the room.

“Dammit Louis, I’m a mental game fish!”

Louis gazed at me impassively, registering some spark of curiosity at the word “fish.” I suspect his disinterest stemmed from the fact he doesn’t play poker. Plus he’s a cat.

I extracted the book from the wall where it had become lodged and stared at page nine. First freaking item. Mental. Game. Fish. Now what?

At its cold, dark heart, the game of poker is about making decisions, whether it be to raise or fold, or the broader strategic decisions that go into planning a session and ultimately a career. And so I made a decision. I gave myself short-term permission to be a mental game fish with the proviso that I would work on that aspect of the game as hard as ranging opponents and analyzing flop textures. Perhaps most importantly, I decided to treat The Downswing as an opportunity for personal and professional growth.

I just looked at my financial records for the last month. I’m not sure if The Downswing was a double-dip number, if it’s over, or if I’m at the beginning of Downswing II – Variance Strikes Back. It really doesn’t matter. It is the nature of swings that you never know where you are in them until they are disappearing in the rear-view mirror. The ripples of variance change their size, but never leave the stream. We may think that we’ve become good enough to wipe out the bastards, but… Hmmm. I wonder if David Bowie plays poker…

“Every time I thought I’d got it made, it seemed the taste was not so sweet.”

And to quote another wordsmith, the late Joseph Heller: “Everything passes. (That’s what makes it endurable.)”

[1] There are a bunch of caveats to this statement. Poker variance occurs about the mean win-rate and win-rate for winning players tends to increase with time as they get better. Consequently one can construct a monotonically increasing function W(t) (win-rate as a function of time) such that the worst downswing does not occur at large t. In the real world, however, win-rates at a given limit get capped, and/or players move up in limits so their skill edge is less, thereby resulting in my original statement being true. Told you the point was pedantic. Just be glad I resisted the temptation to expand on it using Fourier series.

[2] I’ve never actually read Dante’s “Inferno,” but being somewhat intellectually honest I felt I should check what the Ninth Circle is. Turns out it is Treachery. So… Yeah, whatever I’m a retired astrophysicist.