JV'S KILLER POKER:
MISTAKIES

BY: John Vorhaus

Did you notice that I mispelled "mistakes?" Good for you; you're paying attention. (Did you notice that "misspelled" is misspelled? Congratulations; you're as big a grammer nerd as I am.) (Did you notice that "grammar" - oh, never mind.) Well, since I do nothing without cause, you can be certain that I misspelled "mistakes" on purpose. Why? To get you to meditate on the nature of mistakes, and on the nature of your own.

Because it's quite possible that you didn't notice the misspelling until I pointed it out to you. Since the word looked very much like a word you know, it's likely that you assumed it was spelled correctly, only to be caught up short when I pointed out both my own (intended) error and the fact that you overlooked it.

Think about the last time you played poker. Did you play perfectly? No? Well, good for you for admitting your shortcomings. This shows that you're playing clear-eyed, honest poker. You're not pretending that you're perfect (which is such a useless pretense anyhow, because, hey, nobody is.) Now do me a favor. Take a moment and list some of the mistakes you made. Tell you what: I'll go first.

1. I called too often; I often call too often.
2. I bet the river in a hopeless bluff; of course I got called.
3. I took a straight draw against a single opponent.
4. I didn't fold my pocket kings after an ace flopped and two people raised.
5. I kept playing when I was tired and cranky, and managed to lose even more.

You may think it strange that I would admit, in print, to such elementary mistakes, but goodness if I can't confess my own errors, how can I possibly persuade you to confess yours? Poker is best played with aggressiveness, this we know - but a little humility helps too. When you admit to your mistakes, you cause yourself a modest amount of psychic pain. But you gain a deeper understanding of yourself in the context of your play, and that saves you money - oh just lots and lots of money - in the end.

So, again, what are your common mistakes? No shit, write them down. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Dum de dum dum...

There now, don't you feel better? You're being honest with yourself. You're clearing out the cobwebs of your play.

But that's only half the battle. In addition to the mistakes you realize and recognize, there's a whole class of errors that just passes by unseen. This presents us with a familiar Zen conundrum: How can you see that which you cannot see?

I suspect, for instance, that you defend your blind too liberally. How do I know? Because many people do. They base their thinking on the flawed logic that, having committed one small bet already, it makes sense to call a single raise, almost no matter what they hold. This may be true, depending on the game and their opponents' style of play. More often though, it's a mistake, pure and simple: a mistake born of habit and based on flawed logic. You can't see it. You don't question it. You don't even recognize it as a mistake. So now what do you do?

For starters, question everything. Challenge your assumptions every time you play. (Don't assume a word is spelled correctly just because you trust the speeller.) After all, there are bound to be some holes in your play, unless you're perfect, which we know nobody is. So study your patterns and habits. Ask yourself: Do I do this because it makes sense, or do I do it because it's what I do?

Take Omaha/8. Some people raise every time with any A-2. Are they right to do so? Maybe, depending on the texture of the game. But I'm willing to bet that these reflex-raisers aren't thinking about the texture of the game. They see that A-2 and bam! They're in there raising. They don't know if this is correct play or not. How can they? They never question the action.

So: Have confidence in your ability, but also have doubt about your actions. Constantly seek to deepen your understanding of why you do what you do. And challenge those underlying assumptions, even the ones you trust. The only way - only way - you can improve your play is to take stuff that works and replace it with stuff that works better.

How do you achieve this deeper understanding and higher level of play? Duh... by study. By going back to the sources of poker wisdom that enlightened you in the first place, and reconsidering them again and again in light of what you now know.

Somewhere, for instance, back in the dim and distant past you came across "start charts," guides to starting hands in hold 'em. Possibly you pored over them until you had them memorized. You learned to stay away from problematic hands like, oh, say, K-T. But then later, once you built up a little skill and confidence, you convinced yourself that you could play K-T because if the flop didn't come your way you were skilled and confident enough to get away from the hand at a modest cost.

Skilly you?
No, silly you.

A junk hand is a junk hand is a junk hand. But you won't recognize it as such unless you keep your mind open to the possibility that mistakes have crept into your play. If you confuse a premium hand with a junk hand, you're making a mistake that you don't even know. That way lies madness, or if not madness then at least poverty.

I'd hate to see that happen to you. So I invite you to invite a little psychic pain into your play. It's one (good) thing to admit obvious mistakes, but it's something altogether else to look for and ferret out and destroy all the hidden ones. Do this. I promise it won't be a mistakie.

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