JV'S KILLER POKER: LUCK!

BY: John Vorhaus

Man, don't even talk to me about luck. Luck is for losers. Luck is for the unenlightened drone sitting next to you who thinks that poker is about having the best hand. Luck is for the whimpering simp who plays to break even. You don't play like that, do you? Of course not. You play Killer Poker. You're beyond all that. You don't want to break even. You want to crush; annihilate! And you don't do that with luck. You do it with muscle. With out-of-position raises and re-steal bluffs. You do it with the cool, certain knowledge that boldness is the road to poker glory, and that luck won't save the simps when Killer Poker takes control.

I don't like luck. You shouldn't too. The only thing luck has going for it is that it keeps weak players in the game. Remember that when they beat you – by luck – they're really only borrowing the money that will eventually, inevitably, be yours. You don't have to be lucky to win. You don't want to be lucky to win. Because luck makes you think you're better than you are, and how can anyone win with that lie floating around in their brain?

Luck? Yuck!

People change seats for reasons of luck. Don't they know that a seat is only lucky as a function of the butt that's planted in it? Haven't they been told over and over again? And yet they live in ignorance. People, you're wallowing! Wise up.

I know, I know... sometimes people talk luck to disguise strategy. "This seat is soooo unlucky. Guess I'll just move over there to the left of the big raiser..." If that's deception, my friends, it's fairly weak deception. I'm not fooled, and neither are you. In most cases it's the real deal and not strategy anyhow. People who change seats "for luck" are as incapable of higher-level strategic thinking as a fungus is incapable of reading French.

Shut up about your bad seat! Shut up about the bad beat! Shut up about the unlucky deck. And most of all, shut up about the dealer! The dealer doesn't hate you. The dealer doesn't even know you're alive! The dealer is doing his job and doesn't give a rat's ass if you win the pot or not (unless you stiff his tip, you piker, in which case you deserve all the bad luck the dealer can send your way, which, alas, is none).

People get mad at me when I get lucky. Truth! Last night I held K-Q suited with a flop of J-2-T, with the jack and the deuce to my suit. The turn was a brick, leaving me with (count the outs) nine flush cards, six other straight cards, and four other shots at an overpair likely to be boss in that case. 19 outs! Almost half the deck! I hit an out and won the pot. Was that luck? No. Hitting an inside straight is luck... moronic luck. The Killer Poker player never puts himself in a position to need it.

Please, let me put this in terms you can understand: You're born broke, you die broke; everything else is just fluctuation. And fluctuation isn't luck. Fluctuation is the natural, random distribution of outcomes. Call it luck if you want, but don't imagine that yours is better than anyone else's, because it's not. It's just the same. We're all the same. And if you think you're different, you're wrong. Sorry, but you are.

And you're in danger! Your attention to luck can ruin your game. If you're thinking about luck at all, then you are hooked on outcome, and no one can play Killer Poker if they're hooked on outcome.

You think I'm kidding? You think I'm wrong? Then track this target with me:

You're playing Omaha/8. Because you have trouble looking at all four cards without flashing them to prying eyes, you peek at them one at a time. That's fine, I have no problem with that. If you have clumsy hands (as I do) you take what steps you must to protect yourself. But here's the problem. If the first card is an ace, you immediately start hoping for the second or third or fourth card to be a deuce. You're hoping to catch lucky and thus are you hooked on outcome. You're no longer playing the hand you have, but rather the hand you hope you have. And if that deuce doesn't come, you feel disappointed, unlucky, and then you're at risk for playing the hand even though it's not playable. And if that deuce should come, you're no better off, because you're momentarily high on your own luck. You hoped for an outcome and you got it. Nothing can stop you now! From this point forward, you feel, somehow, that you deserve favorable outcomes. Having pulled an A-2, you expect to flop a perfect low. You expect not to be counterfeited or quartered. You expect to get paid off. Why? Because you caught lucky, and that's what lucky players do – they get paid off.

Wrong. Wrongo. Lucky players don't get paid off, they go home broke.

As soon as you think about luck, you're fucked. And I know you know it too. Because you're not stupid, just sometimes seduced by luck, because luck is a powerfully alluring force. Don't yield! Don't give in! Try this instead: Next time you go to play poker, imagine that you're the world's most least lucky person. Predict for yourself bad starting hands, missed flops, brick turns and deadly rivers. Disconnect from luck. Imagine that it won't be present in your game, won't help you at all, and that the only way you'll manage to win today is on sheer skill alone.

Because that's the way it truly is. And if you don't know that by now, then I guess you're just unlucky.