JV'S KILLER POKER: EXCESS!

BY: John Vorhaus

Nothing exceeds like excess. With that in mind, let's examine three words that can comprise a sentence of death for the Killer Poker player, and those words would be greed, fear and hubris. I'm sure you know the words, smart you, but I recapitulate their definitions thus:

Note, as I'm sure you have, clever you, that the common denominator in these definitions is the word excessive. Note and be warned, for excessive anything can kill you. Eat too many pies at once and your stomach will explode. Run too many marathons and your feet will fall off. Make too much love and... well, no; perhaps that is the exception that proves the rule.

Said Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street, "Greed is good." I have no inclination to argue the point, nor would I, not with Gordon Gecko, who raised greed to a high art and could probably kick my skinny white butt if he were so inclined. But I sound the cautionary bell that excessive greed is not good, at least not in poker.

Consider: You're playing against a total weakie, and it's surely only a matter of time before he shipwrecks himself upon the rocky shoals of your superior play. All you have to do is wait for his own weak mistakes to catch up to him. But you don't want to wait. You want his money and you want it now. Greed makes you rush. Greed makes you press thin edges or possibly nonexistent ones. Next thing you know, your unworthy opponent has taken advantage of your greedy impatience, caught lucky and gone home with your dough. Your greed, alas, has brought you low.

Superior play wins money, but greed defeats superior play. Don't yield to its siren song. Resist, resist! Paradoxically (one might even say ironically) the more you resist greed, the more money you will win and the more satisfied your greedy impulses will be, greedy you. Why? Because poker played greed-free is steady, solid, well-considered poker; Killer Poker, in short. All I can say is practice patience. The money that's rightfully yours will ultimately come your way.

Okay, that's greed, now let's look at fear. Fear, in certain circumstances, is a healthy quality. Fear keeps us from sleeping with spouses not our own or exposing ourselves needlessly to enemy weapons. Reasonable fear – folks call it caution – keeps us on our toes. But excessive fear provokes mistakes, and Killer Poker wants no part of that.

Consider: You take A-J into a flop of J-6-3 with one heart. You bet the flop, as you should, and winnow the field to a single caller, a player you know to be reasonable and sensible. The turn is a second heart, the 8. You bet, as you should, and get called. The river is a third heart and suddenly you're scared. Then you do something dumb: You check. The fear that your foe caught a runner-runner flush caused you to check. Where did that nonsense move come from? Remember, this is a reasonable, sensible player. She's most likely not in the hand on the strength of a backdoor flush draw. Fear made you give her hand too much credit. Fear made you miss a bet. Your fear, alas, has brought you low.

Don't let it happen! In all instances, base your decision on the likeliest scenario, not the worst-case one. I've said it before, but I'll repeat it for those of you whose synapse gaps have widened of late: If you're the sort of player who fears worst-case outcomes then you have no business practicing Killer Poker and you should not attempt to use my tools. "Fear," to quote Frank Herbert in Dune, "is the mind killer." Please don't let it kill yours. Please. I'm asking you nicely.

Now we come to hubris, and hubris is worse than greed and fear put together, because it's so close to its cousins confidence and arrogance that it's hard to tell where they leave off and it kicks in. However I know the difference, and if you were as smart as me then you'd know too (now that's hubris!)

Here's confidence: You look around the table and see a lot of familiar faces. You've jousted with this crew before and bested them before. Available empirical evidence, plus your meticulous and detailed records, suggest that you can kick their collective heinies, and with confidence, and maybe even arrogance, you proceed to do just that.

Now here's hubris: You look around the table and see a lot of unfamiliar faces. Not having observed anyone's play for any reasonable length of time, you unreasonably conclude that you can best them all, on the strength of your Killer Poker acumen and dazzling good looks alone. Know what? You may be right. But then again you may be wrong. And you won't know for sure if you don't study them closely and see them clearly, two things which hubris will prevent you from doing. Seen through the filter of hubris, all foes seem weak. But not all foes are weak, and thus does the danger lurk.

So there you have them: greed, fear and hubris, the three horsemen of the apocapokerlypse, just waiting to strike you down. Each is reasonable in reasonable circumstances, but ruinous if left unchecked. I'm sure you're not at risk for this, smart and self-aware you, but there's always room for improvement, so here's homework: During your next session, track the underlying motivation for the moves you make. Do you see a reasonable opportunity to punish a weak opponent, or are you just in a big fat hurry to bully someone's money away? Do you follow through with appropriate aggression, or does something make you flinch in the moment of truth? Do you credit your opponents with the abilities they have, or do you imagine them to be houses of wood or straw to the big bad wolf that is you? And once you've tracked your findings, record them. Write them down, so that you can remind yourself how greed, fear and hubris can leech into your game.

And do your homework, darn it. I don't think these things up for my health. Nothing exceeds like excess, and it won't be my fault if it exceeds all over you.