Although so few people win, cardroom and online poker are flourishing. The losers pay the winners and the house billions of dollars every year. They do it for the kick of gambling, the experience of challenging better players, the fun of socializing, and a host of other reasons. Regardless of their reasons, not focusing on results virtually guarantees losing.
Winners focus on results because they are intense competitors, and poker success is measured very simply. Results are the only thing that counts.
You get no points for style, grace, knowledge, or anything else. A loser may feel good about winning luckily or outplaying a better player. Winners ignore these pleasures because they know that the scoring system is very simple. If I am a nicer guy, know more theory, make fancier plays, and tell better stories, but you end up with more money, you’re a better player, period, end of story.
Their commitment and focus make winners subordinate everything else to winning. If something doesn’t affect their long term results, they ignore it. It would be more pleasant to relax, gamble for fun, and focus on other things, but they sacrifice these pleasures to maximize their profits.
The Dangers of Focusing on Short-Term Results
Focusing on short-term results is the natural thing to do. Psychological research proves that short-term rewards and punishments have much greater effects on feelings and behavior than longer-term ones.
Because luck has such huge effects, winners know that short-term results can be extremely misleading. A good decision can cost them money, whereas a bad one can yield a profit. You must therefore look beyond the immediate results and focus on every decision’s longer-term consequences.
It is a fundamental premise of the game that you must make correct decisions and not concern yourself with consequences.... Whether you are right or wrong in the current situation makes no difference. What matters is that your judgments are sound, based on the best information available to you. If your judgments are better in the long run than those of your opponents, you will be taking home the money in the long run.23
Losers react to impulses—including quite foolish ones—then feel vindicated if they get lucky. The immediate kick prevents them from seeing that their decision-making process guarantees that they will be long-term losers.
For example, a loser may foolishly play weak cards, get lucky, and win a huge pot. Instead of recognizing his mistake, he may congratulate himself for being brilliant, intuitive, or courageous. Of course, people who play terrible cards will certainly be long-term losers, but they may look very good for a little while. They may even feel contempt for the “cowardly” or “unimaginative” people who play the percentages, study strategy, and wait for good cards.
Expected Value Equals Long-Term Profit
Poker winners focus on maximizing their long-term expected value (EV). They know that their long-term results will be close to their EV and that making negative EV plays will ultimately be disastrous.
Winners apply the same general principles as casinos. Their operators actually want people to win huge jackpots or get hot at the crap tables. When someone wins big, an operator puts his name and picture on billboards or television. Those rare, highly publicized wins bring in more suckers, and casino managers know that—because the odds favor them—the more money people bet, the more the house must win.
Poker winners think the same way. When suckers make a bad play and get lucky, the suckers get a huge kick. Winners don’t correct their reasoning. Instead, they say, “Well played!” or “You really have a lot of courage.” Winners want suckers to keep making–EV plays because their bad decisions increase the winners’ EV and long-term profits.
They constantly think in terms of EV. They would like to win this hand, of course, but winning it is much less important than maximizing their EV. If they can get a favorable expectation, they know they must ultimately win.
Mathematical expectation has nothing to do with [short-term] results. The imbecile [who makes a foolish bet] might win the first ten in a row, but . . . it makes no difference whether you win or lose a certain bet or series of bets.... If you continue to make these [+EV] bets, you will win.24
The central feature of the professional attitude [is]: The awareness of the need to focus, not on short-term results, but on the quality of your play.25
Losers dream of getting lucky and making brilliant moves, but poker rewards disciplined, +EV play. The courageous (actually foolhardy) gamble that wins against the odds may make your heart pound and other players applaud, but those plays don’t improve your bottom line. It’s another case of the tortoise defeating the hare. The steady players end up with the money. Most profits come from other people’s mistakes, not brilliant moves, and certainly not from–EV plays.
I Play Too Well to Beat These Idiots
Countless losers have this silly belief, and they express it in many different ways:
• “I’d rather play against good players than bad ones.”
• “I’m moving to bigger games so that people will respect my bets and raises.”
• “That game is ‘too good to beat.’”
• “Nobody can beat that game because they call with anything.”
• “No matter how well I play, somebody always draws out on me.”
No matter how that belief is expressed, it is utter, absolute nonsense. It is much easier to beat weak players than strong ones, and you gain from every one of your opponents’–EV plays. However, you must adjust to the way these opponents play. If you try to bluff calling stations or make subtle moves on clueless players, you will lose, and you will deserve to lose.
These beliefs and complaints are based on short-term frustrations, not long-term EV. It is frustrating to have suckers draw out on you, and the more suckers in a game, the more often it will happen. However, winners know that they will be paid very well for that frustration because their profits increase when people play bad cards.26
So stop kidding yourself. Every time your opponents make–EV plays, they increase your EV and long-term profits. “If you do not win in the long run, it is not because your opponents are making too many mistakes; it is because you are.”27
Subtler Short-Term Satisfactions
Some losers commit another type of shortsighted stupidity. They criticize opponents for making mistakes. For example, if someone wins a pot with a miracle card, a loser might say, “That was really stupid. The odds against catching it were 22:1, and you were getting only 4:1.”
He gets the short-term satisfaction of expressing his frustration and perhaps impressing or getting sympathy from other players. But the long-term impact is quite negative. First, he educates his opponents, making them harder to beat. Second, he may embarrass weak players, causing them to play better, move to another table, go home, or even stop playing poker.
A key part of a long-term focus is making short-term sacrifices of other satisfactions. For example, you may start by playing very aggressively to create the impression that you’re a wild player and then take advantage of that image by playing very conservatively. Chapters 16 and 17 will tell you when and how to be deceptive. Now I will just give an example I read over forty years ago, but never forgot.
Oswald Jacoby, a great bridge and poker player, once put chips on his hole card every time it was an ace in five-card stud. After his opponents had spotted it, he stopped doing it, and he even folded a few times (which cost him money) to preserve the illusion. Finally, he had one ace up and one in the hole. After waiting until all the cards had been dealt and knowing that his hand was unbeatable, he pushed in his stack. His opponent was sure Jacoby was bluffing and called. The small cost of setting the trap earned him a huge profit.
Personal Development
“Although they focus on the long term when discussing how to play hands, many poker