Poker is a game of patience. You need to bide your time and pick your spots. Endurance is everything, especially in a tournament. Stamina is king. If you can have serenity in the face of a dwindling stack and/or aggressive opponents, you’ll do okay. If not, then not. I was reminded of this fact recently when I went back and looked at why I’d lost four SnGs in a row-- each on the bubble. The reason? In all four cases, I simply ran out of patience at the end and did something dumb.
Let me illustrate: In one of the four games I played, I found myself with a medium stack and four players left. Blinds were getting big, but not horrendously so. It was a tight table, so it was ripe for me stealing “like a fox,” as the guru encourages. Mostly I had zippo for cards, but that actually was a good thing. When someone played back at my steal attempts, it was relatively easy to get off my hand.
But then I was dealt A2s and I made a pot-sized raise from the button. The BB, who had been suffering the most from my attacks (and had a stack roughly equal in size to mine) re-raised me all-in. I paused for a nanosecond, and then called.
What the hell was I thinking? He pushed all-in with a reasonable-sized stack against another reasonable-sized stack. He must have had a hand, right? But I didn’t slow down and think that through. Instead, I called with my weak ace. Can you say “dumb?”
In 20/20 hindsight, what I should have done was pretended that my hand was 72 when I raised, and then folded to his reraise. But I didn’t. I was on a roll, stealing left and right, mostly getting away with it, staying alive, building my ‘roll, woo-hoo this is fun, and…poof. I lost sight of the end goal: make the money. I was sprinting, faster and faster, when I should have been pacing myself. Sure, I needed to play the part of the fox to stay alive in that situation, but I didn’t need to win the race right there, right then, with acey-deucey.
When the cards were turned up, I found myself facing AK. Of course Anna held up and I was busted out shortly thereafter. The other three games all ended in similar melt-down fashion. Just change a few details and it’s the same flameout story. In each case, I lost sight of how much distance remained to the finish line tape. In each case, I got impatient.
Poker is a long distance event. Forget those fast twitch muscles—they won’t help you much on the green felt. You need to focus on playing smart, hand after hand after hand. Even if that means you’re folding, hand after hand after hand. Part of the game is simply being patience enough to let your opposition make the dumb mistakes before you do. Hell, that’s how I moneyed in an $11 SnG this afternoon. When it got to bubble time, I played the fox… but this time, I was a Lance Armstrong fox with staying power. The guy who busted out in fourth was also a fox, but an impatient one, calling an all-in from a medium stack with a crappy KTs.
Oh, how I felt his pain.
All-in for now…
-Bug
No comments:
Post a Comment