How Poker Players Suffer Big Losses By "Reverse Manufacturing"

By Mike Caro

Most players, even serious one, suffer much greater poker losses than they should. That makes me sad, so I'll try to fix it. One reason is that their losses are "reversed manufactured." Now there's a fancy term. What does it mean? Reverse manufactured means that those losses are the necessary byproduct of trying to manufacture a winning streak.

Oh, fine, but what does "manufacture a winning streak" mean. Ah, now we're getting right to the heart of it. You might have manufactured some yourself and not realized it. You're probably manufacturing a winning streak (and, in fact, manufacturing wins) if you like to brag about the number of times you've won in a row. If you go around telling anyone who will listen, "I'm on an 18 day win streak," more likely than not, you're manufacturing wins.

How can you manufacture a win? It's amazingly easy. All you have to do is refuse to settle for a loss and accept small wins whenever you need to. The only requirement is that you fight back when you're behind, hoping to break into the plus column, then quit happy if you succeed, rejoicing in the notion that you overcame adversity, struggled to restack your chips, and are now going home to rest victorious. It will feel like a proud accomplishment to you, but it shouldn't.

How you won

Let's look at how it might have just happened. You're a medium-limit player, not competing quite large enough to make a good living, but large enough to supplement your income or to barely get by without a job when required. In this way, you're like the majority of winning poker players - somewhere between just eking out a profit and professional wage-earner status.

Anyway, today you sit down in a $10/$20 hold 'em game, supposedly hoping to make a profit by showing off your Sunday-best poker skills. Sad stuff happens right away, though. Down goes a king-high heart flush, which you flopped, when a player holding the ace of hearts and deuce of diamonds sees a fourth heart come on the river. Next you flop three jacks, but they finish third when two opponents hit straights. Then there's that devastating hand where you got bluffed out of your birdcage by Bruno, who never, ever did that before. And it gets worse. The little medium hands that can go either North or South, all go South. Losses pile up. Misery surrounds you.

But somewhere deep, deep inside, you maintain your faith and conviction, and the spirit strikes you. You fight back. Hours pass. You grow weary. Hours pass. You fight to stay alert and wait for your luck to change. Hours pass.

It's now 3:40 in the morning and you need to be up at 8:30. Suddenly several pots are pushed to you. Then a small setback. Then you win more pots. After a string of pots go your way, you win a really big one. Is your recovery complete? You don't know, because you haven't had time to count your chips.

"Deal me out one hand," you tell the table. You need to stack these newly won chips, count them, find out where you stand. Down $135, put 10 of these $5 chips here, down $85 now, put these two $25 chips off to the side, down $35, oops, three more $5 chips under a $20 bill, exactly even, and that leaves these three $1 chips, change from the rake, so up $3! You did it! Your winning streak continues!

Time to go

"Deal me out!" you announce. "It's getting later than I thought." "Don't you wanna play till your blind?" someone asks. "You've got another hand coming." You're tempted, after all, you can just fold everything except aces - even aces if you really want to. But you just wave away the suggestion. "Nah, deal around me." And within minutes you're cashed out and on your way home. As you're leaving, a friend asks you how you did tonight. Your chest puffs out proudly and you say, "I won a tiny bit. Nothing that matters, but that's 19 winning days in a row."

Signs of trouble, my friends. Bad signs of trouble. You're manufacturing that win streak just so you can make yourself feel good about it. But you're not manufacturing profit. Sure, you think you're making profit, but really you're putting your bankroll at risk. You have tallied a lot of wins - a couple when you got off to a fast start and kept on winning, a few short ones when you started fast, but faltered and quit before you found yourself in the negative column, some where you'd come from behind and quit when you got ahead. And, of course, tonight when you'd stuck it out and turned a major loss into a tiny win.

Speaking of tiny wins, that's exactly the kind you're likely to have when you strive to extend a winning streak. That's simply because you're willing to settle for them. You'll quit with small wins when you've been winning more to keep from dropping below break even. And you'll gladly cash out with a small win if you've been losing and get ahead. However, there is no such thing as a small loss. You won't accept one. It's either a win or a big loss. You need to keep that winning streak alive if you can, right?

The wrong time to play

But, all together, this strategy means you're playing more hours than you should when you were losing, because you're trying to catch up. And it means you're playing fewer hours when you're winning, because you're eager to cash out and add to your win streak. By manufacturing a win streak, by forcing small wins, you're also putting yourself in grave danger of manufacturing huge losses - you simply won't experience them as long as your luck holds and your winning streak is extended.

You see, when you try hard as you can to dig yourself out, you risk digging yourself deeper. It's like that popular advice, "When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." I think those words were tailored for poker. Beware! On the few occasions that you won't be able to experience the glory of cashing out with that $3 profit and puffing up proudly, you're likely to suffer painful losses and depart pitifully from the poker table, all chance of recovery now hopeless. Maybe chance of recovery tomorrow will be hopeless, too. You will have lost way more than you should have. And I'm not talking about a magic stop-loss or predetermined limit on how much you should risk in a game.

Listen closely. I'm saying something different. I'm saying you lost much more than you should because you played poker in the worst of circumstances. When you're winning, opponents are usually intimidated by you. They're less likely to play their best games, less likely to make daring bets and raises with winning hands and extract every penny of profit from you. This means you can make value bets that can push your profits to the limit. Opponents who are intimidated usually keep calling in frustration, but seldom raise with anything but obviously strong hands. In doing so, they neglect to take advantage of all their edges, so you rule the table, and your profit soars.

Conversely, when you're losing, opponents are inspired. They play better against you specifically. They think, "Hey, there's someone I can beat. There's someone who's unluckier than I am." And they single you out for money extraction.

So, I don't like to hear about long manufactured winning streaks, because I know that those invite huge manufactured losses, too. And, in the long run, long winning streaks usually mean that you've played most of your time under bad circumstances and limited the time you've played under good circumstances. And that isn't a smooth path to poker profit.

The Psychology of Online Poker

By David Apostolico

Online poker often takes a back seat whenever credit is given for the recent poker explosion. The lipstick camera, the World Poker Tour and Chris Moneymaker are the usual reasons mentioned. For those who play, though, there's no denying the contribution made by poker sites. No longer did you need to travel (great distances in some cases) to play a game of poker. With the click of a mouse, you could be in just about any game for whatever stakes you desire. This greatly accelerated the learning curve of beginning poker players.

With the ability to play any time of day or night in the comfort of their own home, players could sit down to the virtual felt for a few hands or a few hours depending on how much time they had. With hands being dealt much quicker than in a brick or mortar card room, a player could gain as much experience in six months as would have previously taken years.

Of course, there are some naysayers who will complain that online play can never duplicate the feel and psychological component of playing face to face. While there are certain advantages to playing in a card room, there are a few advantages to online play as well. The ability to check hand histories, track your statistical play and not worry about giving off tells are just a few.

There is one area of online play, however, that is simply not available in most card rooms. It's a game that is just not practical to offer in a brick and mortar casino and I find it more useful to my overall development than any other game I play. It's playing heads-up No-Limit Texas Hold ‘em. While brick and mortar casinos cannot afford to offer head's up matches (it's not cost effective), they are available online around the clock..

Many proponents say that online poker is great to work on the fundamentals. Play solid straight forward poker and you'll do fine. While that is good advice, if that is all you are looking for in your online play, you are doing yourself a disservice. There is a great deal of psychology in poker and you can work on that aspect of your game as well by playing online.

Heads-up is a battle of wits, guts, and determination. If poker is psychological warfare, heads-up matches are played with nuclear warheads. If you're waiting for cards, you will get eaten alive. You will be forced to see a lot of flops and if you see a ton of flops, you will see how hard it is to hit a flop. That will force you to develop a good post-flop strategy. Post-flop play is probably the weakest area of most players, simply because they don't get sufficient practice. In a full ring game, it's too easy to fall into the trap of playing flops you hit and giving up on flops you don't. I believe most players too easily give their opponents credit for hitting the flop when they don't.

When you play heads-up, though, you will start to get a better feel for how hard it is to hit a favorable flop. Good hands are hard to come by, which means you have to develop and rely on other aspects of your game. You'll get extensively more experience playing post-flop than you ever could in a full ring game. This experience alone makes heads-up play worthwhile.

Yet, the psychological development you will enjoy is perhaps the best reason to play heads-up. While position is important, knowing your opponent is critical. Heads-up play affords you the opportunity to study one opponent and learn him inside out. Even though you can't see him, you'll see every move he makes and every move he makes will be made directly against you. That's right. Everything your opponent does will be done in the context of your own game. It's the ultimate psychological battle. You are engaged the entire time. I'm a big believer in observing and staying involved when you are not in a hand. However, there's no substitute for facing and making decisions – especially against an opponent who is trying to outplay you. The players who like to play heads-up matches typically enjoy the psychological aspects as well, so you can feel confident that they are not just playing their cards. They are sizing you up and looking for weaknesses to exploit. You will be forced to work on all aspects of your game. While you must be aggressive in finding and attacking your opponent's vulnerabilities, you have to constantly look inward as well to shore up any cracks in your own game.

Of course, poker is not all psychology. There is the science aspect of the game and I believe heads-up matches will help you in that area as well. By being engaged in every hand, you will consistently be calculating pot odds and making bets and raises accordingly. The comfort and anonymity of a computer will allow you to take your time in making the calculations. Soon, those calculations will become second nature.

Finally, let me make one more pitch for heads-up play. The advent of online play greatly accelerated the learning curve of poker players. Players could get in a game any time of day or night and play in the comfort of their own home even if they only had a short period of time. Additionally, the number of hands dealt per hour is so much greater online. Well, in heads-up play, you will play exponentially more hands and face far more decisions in an average hour than you would in a full ring game. That acceleration of your learning curve will pay dividends in every other game you enter.