JV'S KILLER POKER:
Reality

BY: John Vorhaus

Sometimes in poker, it's hard to accept what is. The reason for this is simple: Most of the time, the outcome we get is not the outcome we want. Any time that happens - any time there's a gap between what we want and what we get - denial tends to creep in. And then it's just a short step from that shouldn't have happened to that didn't happen at all.

Example: the dreaded ace-on-the-flop in hold'em. Holding pocket kings, you raise preflop and find yourself up against two or three callers. You reasonably assume that an ace on the flop will give you cause for pause, so you prepare your response in advance, resolutely telling yourself that if an ace comes, you'll be cool and savvy enough to get away from your hand; you won't let wishful thinking trap you for a bunch of bets. But then that ace does come (which it will, after all, about a quarter of the time) and here comes denial. In your conniving mind, you start to calculate all the ways that your opponents might not have an ace. Maybe they called your raise with lower pairs. Maybe they called with big cards or suited connectors. Maybe they're just stupid.

A question, if I may: Have you lost your mind?!

If you were able to step outside the situation and examine it dispassionately, you would have no trouble concluding that good aces - or even bad aces - are exactly the hands out there waiting to trap you and your wishfully thinking ass. If you were able to step outside the situation, you would play the hand very carefully, and muck your cards at the first sign of strength from any reasonably straightforward player. If you're not able to step outside the situation, denial is the reason why. Denial of reality. Denial of what is.

Here's another example, this one from Omaha/8. You start out with A-2, and hope for a big low flow. Reality tells you that if only one low card comes on the flop you should get away from that hand, but hope trumps reality, and when the flop comes K-J-5, you stick around for one more bet and one more card. Poor reality. It has no chance against the likes of you.

Look, at the end of the day there are only two things you can do with reality: deny it; or accept it. Accepting reality means folding when you're beaten. Accepting reality means seeing things as they are, not as you wish them to be. Accepting reality means acknowledging that some undeserving lucky bastard drew out on you (as undeserving lucky bastards will.) Accepting reality means taking life on life's terms, and poker on poker's terms.

This is a hard course. For many players out there it's not just hard but actively impossible. They're so caught up in denial, so alive in the fantasy of themselves as tricky, dominant, deserving players that they have no means of coping with adversity at all. You will know these players by their reactions when reality swings them around by the tail. They'll throw cards. Berate foes. Curse dealers. Curse the gods. They'll do anything in their power to convince themselves that what just happened should not have happened and therefore, in some internally tangible way, did not even happen at all.

There's only one thing to do with players like this: Attack them. Attack them because they are vulnerable. Their own sad detachment from reality leaves them easily manipulated. They'll call your value bets because they dare not let themselves believe you bluff. They'll call your aces with kings because they dare not believe that their big pairs can be beaten. They'll call your draws (which you only take with the best of it, of course) because they can't believe that the gods would betray them by letting you suck out. They'll call because their game is all about denial. And not about reality at all.

(John Vorhaus is author of the KILLER POKER series and News Ambassador for UltimateBet.com.)