Playing your best poker

As poker players and enthusiasts at whatever level, we spend countless hours working on our game. If we’re not playing the game, we’re often still thinking about it and hands we’ve played. But as we work to improve our game and our understanding of it, we are often ignoring the weaknesses in our game that cost us the most money. As Tommy Angelo said, ‘I figured if I ever went broke at poker, it wouldn’t be because my best wasn’t good enough to keep me afloat. It’d be because my worst was bad enough to sink me.’

Poker players often talk in terms of ‘playing their A-game’, which means playing at the best of their ability. And while it makes sense to spend a lot of time working on your A-game, I bet you spend very little time thinking about, and working on, your C-game (a generic term for when you’re not playing your best). In fact, your poker results and overall profit or loss will owe a huge amount, not to how much you win when you play well, but how much you lose (or fail to win) when you play badly.

Take action

So how do you improve your results when things are going badly and you’re not playing well? The first thing to do is take pre-emptive steps to make sure you’re playing your best more of the time, so that (hopefully) you never drop down to your C-game. And perhaps the most important part of this equation is choosing when you play and for how long. Like most things in life it’s only possible to perform at your best for a certain amount of time. However, this varies hugely from person to person, so it’s key for you to think carefully, monitor your own performance, and recognise how long you can play before things start going downhill.

It may help to carve up your play into one-hour or two-hour sessions, with breaks of at least 20 minutes in between to give your brain a chance to rest. The problem is that mental tiredness is insidious – most of us don’t suddenly hit a wall with fatigue, our play deteriorates gradually. If you’re playing big-bet poker you can be confronted by a critical decision at any moment, and if you’re not at your sharpest it can cost you dearly. Therefore, it takes immense self-discipline not to play beyond the point where you get tired.

Once you have a decent idea of how long you can play for before your game starts dropping off, notice roughly how many hands that equates to. That way, at a start of a cash session you can say, ‘I’ll play 500 or 1,000 hands,’ and on reaching that number, whatever the situation, you know you’re instantly going to end that particular session.

Obviously you can’t control your playing time like this when you’re in a tournament. But it’s worth remembering that the challenge of tournaments is to play your best at the end when the big money is decided. Given that most players’ games drop off as they go on, this is a problem. So try and make the most of breaks in tournaments. If you’re playing live, go outside and get some fresh air, and if you’re online close your eyes and breathe deeply for a couple of minutes – anything to give yourself a proper break. When you enter a tournament be optimistic about making it to the end and figure out how long you’ll be playing for. Then check you definitely want to play for that long. After all, if you’re always going to be playing your C-game at final tables then tournament poker might not be the format for you.

Know yourself

You should be careful about when you sit down to play. If you’re already tired from work, lack of sleep, or playing the day before, then it’s extremely unlikely you’ll produce your A-game. It’s also true that if your environment isn’t right, either at home or in the casino, you’re starting off at a disadvantage. Try and have the discipline to play only when you’re comfortable and not fatigued. Of course, this is easier said than done, especially when you love to play the game. One tip for when you really want to play but are tired or not in the right frame of mind, is to drop down in stakes. Play a lower buy-in tournament or lower stakes cash for fun. Then you can play your C-game with gay abandon!

You could take this idea one step further and have a separate account entirely – let’s call it your ‘tilt account’ (or if it’s more appropriate for your personal situation, a ‘pissed account’). You can keep a small amount of play money in it and reserve it for when you’re about to play and are confident you can’t play your best. That way, the next time you’re tired and emotional from 11 pints of lager, a stressful day at the office, or a row with your other half, you won’t put your main bankroll in jeopardy.

Chip off the old block

It’s often said of the top players that what separates them is not their A-games but their C-games – how often they play at their best and how badly they play when they’re not. In fact emotional control is often cited as the most important quality for reaching the top of poker. It’s widely acknowledged that the master of this was Chip Reese who was known for being tilt-proof. He once commented about himself that he endured a losing run of $ 2m over six months of horrendous cards, and that if anyone else in the world was to suffer the same run they’d have lost more than $6m.

Sadly, it’s highly unlikely any of us are going to be able to match Chip’s level of self-control or ability to regularly break out our A-game. However, there are ways to improve your attitude to the game and thereby play better when the wheels are threatening to come off. To do this you need to accept bad beats and downswings as part of the game and remove emotion from your poker play entirely. Poker is not an emotional game – it’s a game that people get emotional about. You can’t get better results by ‘getting up for it’, but you can get better results by making good, clear, thinking decisions. Frustratingly you can’t get revenge over the other guy that just sucked out on you because the cards don’t know that’s what happened and they may not comply. The important thing to know is that without bad players, or players that are worse than you at least, you can’t make money at poker. Or, as Howard Lederer helpfully put it, ‘Every time someone gets lucky on me with a bad hand, I say to myself, “That’s fine, that’s why I’m here.”’

So next time you’re having a bad run in a game, instead of becoming angry or frustrated about it, be pleased you got your money in good, because you just made money in the long run. Remind yourself that even if things aren’t going too well the only way to turn it round is to make good poker decisions. If you’re feeling emotional get up from the game and take a break. Missing a few hands, even in a tournament, won’t make much of a difference and you need your head to be clear. If you still can’t calm down and you’re playing a cash game – STOP PLAYING! You simply won’t be able to win in that mental state and the games will all be there tomorrow, so go do something else fun that won’t drive you insane and cost you a lot of money (so that’s quality time with your partner ruled out then…). Sadly, playing poorly can last longer than a session. What often starts out as a mathematical downswing can easily become a slump, as bad results affect your psyche. You try to start each session with a fresh attitude, but you lose a couple of hands and all the negativity of your bad run comes flooding back. Before you know it you’re playing badly again, either with fear or frustration and anger.

There are different things you can try in this situation. It’s often advocated that you play tighter to minimise your variance and potentially limit your losses. But this can be a dangerous road to go down. There may be some spots where you can take a lower variance line, but you should still try and make good poker decisions – trying to lower your losses could result in you simply playing scared.

A more useful line is to take a good look at your results and specific hands you’ve played to reaffirm where you went wrong with a view to improving your play. There’s also an argument for ‘going back to basics’ in terms of your thinking about the game. Give yourself a refresher course by re-reading books, watching training videos and whatever else you do to improve your game. It’s also worth considering dropping down in stakes regardless of your bankroll. Leave your ego at the door and spend some time playing players you know you can beat; this way you’ll be able to rebuild your confidence and faith in your game. You might also consider starting new records or a new database, or even start playing on a new site to give yourself a proper fresh start.

If all else fails you should take a complete break – not just from playing, but from thinking about poker entirely. This can be hard to do, because we all love playing, but everyone benefits from a break now and again. Trust me, you’ll return to the game with a fresh mind and a much better chance of producing your A-game.

Self-help

In the final analysis, improving your C-game and playing badly less often are both down to you. It’s vital to be completely honest with yourself about how you play and how often you play badly – the first step to fixing a problem is knowing you have one. If you’re doing things at the table you know to be mistakes, or often having bad sessions, ask yourself why. Make sure, for example, that you’re playing at a level you’re comfortable at, both in terms of your ability and your bankroll – after all, it’s impossible to play well if you’re playing with fear. Introduce more discipline into your poker and work hard on the ability to get up and stop playing when things are going wrong. It’s vital you take control of yourself, that you improve your C-game as well as your A-game, and one day it might be you limiting your losses to $ 2m – and feeling good about it.