JV'S KILLER POKER:
EDGE

BY: John Vorhaus

Do you have an edge over your foes? Do you play better (stronger, shrewder, more fearlessly) than they do? Or do they routinely outplay you by forcing you to make decisions you don't feel comfortable making? If you answer honestly (not filtering your reply through ego or through fear) your response is probably mixed. Probably there are some players you can whale upon consistently, while others just seem to have your number.

But here's the secret of subjective reality: What you see depends on where you stand. When it comes to measuring your relative advantage against an opponent, your own state of mind is the critical delimiting factor. To put it simply, if you think you have an edge over your foe, you do. If you think he has an edge over you, he does. And if you're not sure, he has the advantage too.

Let's break it down. Suppose there's a foe you know you can beat. How do you go after him? You play strongly and aggressively, and try to put yourselves in situations where your superior skill or decision-making ability is matched against his. In the long run, of course, you'll both get the same number of good cards and bad cards, but you'll do better with yours because you're playing with the confidence and fierceness required of a winner.

But if you don't know - really know - that you're superior to your opponent, this will affect your play. You'll be more timid, more tentative. You won't push the edges that you have, because you're not sure whether they're real edges or not. Result? You lose aggressiveness and confidence; your play degrades.

And, of course, if you're certain that your opponent is superior to you, then you're just lost going in. You might as well write the gal a check. Why? Because she'll be playing poker at you, but you'll be playing hit-to-win back at her. Fearing that you're outclassed, you'll fall back on the soi-disant strategy of waiting for good cards and hoping they hold up. As we've discussed so many times before, players who need good cards to win can't win. Not in the long run.

So... three states of mind: confident, fearful, and unsure. The only winning state of mind is the confident state of mind, the calm certainty that the opponent you're up against cannot take your money away from you. Obviously this is a consummation devoutly to be wished... but how to achieve the goal?

Some steps are easy, so pathetically easy that I don't know why we don't all take them all the time. First, get away from good players! I've said it before and I'll say it again: "Don't challenge strong players, challenge weak ones; that's what they're there for." If you're up against a bunch of players whom you know can destroy you, why would you give them a chance? Maybe you're trying to prove a point to yourself, about how you can play with the big boys. Maybe you're telling yourself, "I'm not scared." But you are scared, and you know it. Be honest with yourself. Drop down a level. Find a softer game. Go home! Don't be a chump. Let someone else be the chump for you.

Something else you can do, of course, is improve your game. Read your poker books. Run your simulations. Hone your craft. In poker, as in almost any line of work, you can't hope to succeed, really succeed, unless you're better than 90% of the other people trying to do the same thing. Or look at it this way: If you're in a universe of generally superior poker players, there's no place for you to run or hide. Improve or die. It's as simple as that.

Third solution, most important: Change your state of mind. Start with the assumption that no one - no one! - can beat you when you bring your best game. You may be wrong, and when you're proven wrong, don't be afraid to retreat. But the fact of believing you're right will give you a significant edge over those of your opponents who don't know whether they're better than you or not. In other words, the more sure you are, the bigger edge you have over foes who are unsure.

Of course, the great majority of your opponents (and this is the beauty of poker) don't even ask themselves whether they're better or worse than anyone else. They're sleepwalking, and they don't even know it. It's true. The poker world is filled with sleepwalkers. They simply are not self-aware. Thank heaven for that: People who don't even know themselves can't possibly know their poker.

So try this mantra on for size: The only one who can beat me is me. Repeat it to yourself when you're driving to the club. The only one who can beat me is me. More crucially, repeat it to yourself in the heat of combat when things don't go your way. The only one who can beat me is me. Remember that you are at risk on every hand. At risk for playing sloppy. At risk for being inattentive. At risk for letting pride or fear intervene. At risk for turning a bad beat into major tilt. At risk for sheer stupidity. Constantly guard against these risks. Constantly monitor your own state of mind. If you are confident and concentrating, then you're in great shape. But if you've become fearful or wishful, or even uncertain, your game has taken a turn for the worse. You've lost your edge. You need to get fixed or get out.

The only one who can beat me is me. You know it's true. You've seen the evidence of it. When you play monkey poker, you get crushed. But when you play Killer Poker, when you bring all your fearlessness and focus and skill to bear, then you are unstoppable.

The only one who can beat you is you. Now the only question is: Are you going to let that happen or not?

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