JV'S KILLER POKER:
DISCIPLINE

BY: John Vorhaus

I don't care how good your strategy is, if you're not disciplined enough to stick to it it's worthless. You swear not to play bad aces, but somehow bad aces creep into your play. You solemnly plot not to get trapped with small pairs, but small pairs keep getting you stuck on hands that have no business sticking to a good player like you. Because you've become a good player. You've enjoyed a strong upward trend in your learning curve. That's good. But now where's the upward trend in your discipline curve? If your game's not carved in granite (the nice flexible kind that allows you to adjust for opportunities) you're still not where you need to be. But you're close. You're getting nice and close.

I saw you go at it last night, late stage of that no-limit tournament, and you were really catching cards. Of course it always helps to catch cards, but you've seen timid players squander their big tickets and you haven't let that happen to you. I loved the way you raised on your big blind into a field of five callers, certain in the knowledge that they'd all lay down - and damned if they didn't all drop. You had them read; you were on top of your game.

Once you had a big stack you became a juggernaut. You seemed to recognize (and the other players silently ratified) the responsibility of the big stack to stomp out the small stacks and move everyone else closer to a money finish. The medium stacks got out of your way! They stood aside and let you pummel the weak and the wilting, and you did, moving your stack with confidence and consciousness. You were terrific.

You ran so well that you thought you were invulnerable, no kryptonite out there anywhere. So when you picked up A-3 suited on the button, you got a little frisky and raised. When the big blind raised back, what did you think? That she'd come after you with nothing? Not that foe, and you knew it. Why did you not put your opponent on the hand she had?

Meditate upon this, for it's basic strategy and also basic discipline: Put your opponents on the hand they have, not the one you wish they had. You should have folded. You know you should have folded, but you called, and caught a flush draw on the flop, and then really got ugly-stuck on the hand. It cost you a big bunch of chips.

And set up your moment of truth.

For on the very next hand you picked up pocket queens, and you figured you were in the perfect position to make a legitimate bet look like a steam raise. But someone raised in front of you, and a strong, tight player re-raised. Still smarting from your failed flush draw, you were tempted to go to war with your queens. But your good discipline reminded you that this strong, tight player would only re-raise in that situation with pocket aces or pocket kings, so you quietly slid your queens into the muck.

Play of the tournament! It was your critical juncture. After that your vision cleared and your play stabilized and you went back to work using your big stack to dismantle the table. Appropriate moves at appropriate times, abetted by genuine awareness of your opponents and their predilections, led you to a big money finish. Bravo! You rule!

But let's take another look at that key situation and see how it relates to winning, losing and tilt. Remember that the appearance of tilt can sometimes work in your favor. If you've just taken a bad beat, and you're fortunate enough to get big cards on the very next hand, you've wandered into an exploitable situation, one where you can make big tickets look like big whining. It doesn't happen frequently that you have a bad beat immediately followed by a good hand, but it does happen enough to make being prepared worthwhile. If there hadn't been a raise and a reraise in front of you, it would have been perfectly valid to play those pocket queens as if on tilt. Probably would have worked, too.

When I've taken a bad beat, I never go on tilt but I always appear to go on tilt, just in case one of the next few hands complements the (putative) image that the cards have bestowed upon me. You might hear me whine something like, "Now I'm steaming - I'm raising the next hand no matter what." Then, if I get a big hand my big bet looks like a steam raise. And if I get a hand I don't like, I can toss it away, saying that even I, in my current feral state of mind, can't play garbage like that.

And so it goes. The eternal cycle of poker: big blind, small blind, button, late position, middle position, early position, endlessly repeating, like the seasons of the sun, as we try to convert our time and skill into meaningful money.

(John Vorhaus is author of the KILLER POKER series and News Ambassador for UltimateBet.com.)