Interesting thing happened to me at the casino last night. Well, interesting for me, but that’s all that matters anyway ;) I sat down a at a $2-$4 game. I probably shouldn’t have because the rake is insurmountable, but I wanted to test this hypothesis that I had. I usually played during the day when I went to the casino. The day shift is full of regs, mostly retirees trying to eek a few extra bucks out of their social security checks. I wanted to see how the games were at night. My guess was the games would be better.
There is one old obnoxious guy named Charles. He plays a lot of hands. It’s as if he is donating all his money, but the weird thing is I feel like he knows better. He knows a little about the game. If he would focus and screw down he could beat the game. Watching him gave me an epiphany.
People don’t always gamble to win. Most people don’t even expect to win. They see poker on TV and see people win consistently. They have to know that there is a way to win, but most of them never look into it, or if they do they don’t use what they’ve learned.
I saw one guy praying for a third heart on the river. I didn’t come, but it wouldn’t have mattered if it did. The third heart will come on the river 18% of the time. If you stand to win more that 4-to-1 on a call then you call. You make money even though you only win 18% of the time.
I expect to win 55% of my sessions. That means I am losing 45% of the time I play. If I dedicated more time and learned how to table select better and became an expert I could probably only win 60% of the time. The first thing I did when I walked in was remind myself that I only win 55% of the time. I was hoping there would be a lot of loose players at night that just played to unwind after work. It was a Wednesday, so it wasn’t as good as it could be, but there were several loose players. I responded by playing tight.
I also told myself I wasn’t going to hide anymore. Hiding isn’t the right word, but it’s the first word that comes to mind. I just let everyone at the table know I played online, a lot of heads up. Poker is a game of manipulation. Most of the books and the podcasts say you should never let anyone in on the fact that you know how to play. That’s probably true for the most part, until you have reason to do otherwise. One of the things that drove me crazy when I went to San Manuel before was that everyone was trying to change seats all the time. Some change in hopes of increasing their luck and some change to get position on a bad player. When no one knew me they frequently sat to my left. I don’t want that because money has a tendency to flow clockwise in poker. It’s a game of position. If I have a decent aggressive player to my left, he’s going to put me in some tough spots. People always flocked to my left when I sit down. Last night they wanted to be on my right. I just said I played a lot of head’s up online, but now it’s for ridiculously small stakes. I complemented a guy on a good play, even though he lost the hand to me. It really was some textbook check raise the turn on a pair and a draw to the nut flush. The next hand he moved away from my left.
The reason why they don’t want to be on my left is because they realize when I come in I’m coming in for a raise. And when I come in for a raise I’m going to have a better than average hand—especially compared to the rest of the table. The guy that did the fancy correct play still lost a huge pot. If I play head’s up—You can bet that we will never chop. I miss head’s up. I play 95% of my hands when.
If it get’s down to the two of us pre-flop, we’re not splitting three bucks—it’s going to be mine the vast majority of the time and anything else that comes into the pot along with it. Just by subtly throwing that out there the aggressive regs didn’t want to be to my left. They knew that every time everyone folded they were going to have to face a raise and they have no idea what to do in that situation. They love to chop, it gets them excited. Why didn’t I think of this before? It made it much easier to win and I felt like the regs gave me more respect too. Sometimes it feels pretty good when people don’t want to sit next to you.
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