Poker Lessons from a Jeep

I've been playing poker for a little less than 2 years. I've been CONSISTENTLY making a profit playing poker for a little less than 6 months. I actually made money playing in 2005, but I was up and down a lot; very streaky, and much of the time I couldn't put my finger on why.

I've been very focused on learning this game from the ground up since I began playing; drilling and drilling on fundamental concepts until they become second nature, then moving on to another concept in a progression of learning I laid out early-on. So far, this has been a successful strategy, I've seen steady, incremental improvement in my game as I've learned the fundamentals. Every now and then, however, I'll make a "Quantum Leap"; an explosive jump in my understanding of some facet of the game and therefore my profitability. I made one of those leaps about six months ago. I believe it's the primary reason for the successful run I've been on ever since, and I owe it all to my pal Jeep.

Jeep (a nickname for George P; initials G.P.; hence, Jeep.) is a GREAT guy. About 55, he recently sold his successful business and retired early to, as he puts it: "have fun while I'm still young enough to have fun". One of the ways Jeep has fun is to play poker; specifically, to play poker and hit impossible draws against all odds, making players gnash their teeth and rage to the heavens. You regularly see Jeep sitting at the 4-8 table, laughing, talking, drawing out on people; just having a great time. He's one of the nicest, friendliest people you'll ever meet. You simply cannot sit at a poker table with Jeep and not have a good time .... until you get in a hand with him and are stupid enough to catch top pair and try to bet him out: it ain't gonna happen. Jeep LOVES the action. He also LOVES it when people get mad at him for drawing out on them. He never shows anything but good sportsmanship and class when he's at the table; he never taunts players or rubs it in, but it's also clear that he gets a HUGE kick out of beating players who play poker "right".

One night, back in December, Jeep was having a GREAT night. In pretty short order, he caught two or three inside straights on me, a runner-runner flush or two, trips on the river from bottom pair on the flop, and various and sundry other assorted draws, suck-outs and bad beats. Never one to let something as inconsequential as a paired board, 4-to-a-straight and 4-of-a-suit on a board slow him down when he has an overcard, Jeep was in his element, merrily crushing me into the dirt. The piece' de resistance' was when my pocket Jacks saw a flop of:

Jh 8s 5d

Jeep bet out on the flop, I raised him with my top set. He instantly called. A 3 came on the turn. Jeep checked, I bet, and he hit me with the CHECK-AND-RAISE! Holy shit! No flush possible, no straight possible, JEEP, I HAVE YOU NOW! I raise him back, he comes back at me. We raise each other several more times. Finally, Jeep just calls.

On the river, another 3 falls. I have top full house! Sensing trouble (I think), Jeep checks to me. I bet, and he CHECK-RAISES me AGAIN! I stop and look at the board. Jeep is crazy on draws, but he's not a manic bettor. Going back over the hand and the confidence with which he's played it, I decide he may have 88 or 55; a lower full house than mine. The only hand that beats me is 33. Surely he wouldn't have bet out with 33 on the flop; there were 3 overcards. Even if he had bet out, would even Jeep call my raise with 33? I decide he wouldn't and raise him back. He instantly comes over the top. I fire right back. Again, Jeep fires back, again, I respond in kind. When he instantly comes back over the top yet again, I can't help but notice the absolute glee with which he does it. Jeep is in ectasy! Finally, realization dawns. Jeep has the nuts, I'm screwed. I resignedly call his last raise and turn up my Jacks. Jeep jumps out of his chair and slaps his 33 on the table, his familiar, exhultant cry of "Ship it!" echoing across the casino as he rakes in the massive pile of chips with both hands, crowing with pure, unadulterated joy.

Summoning every ounce of willpower (and class) that I have, I manage to croak out "Nice hand" from between jaw-breakingly clenched teeth. I can literally feel them grinding as my pulse pounds audibly in my ears. I don't say a single word for the next two hours. Not one word. I pride myself on NEVER criticizing or berating players when they draw out on me. Inside, though, I am screaming; RAGING at Jeep. "HOW CAN YOU CONSTANTLY SUCK OUT ON ME???" "WHY WON'T YOU FOLD???" "DIE! DIE! DIE!" "ARRRGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!", but, on the outside, I present a calm exterior. My control, however, is marginal. I honestly fear that if I open my mouth at all, the things I'm screaming inside will come out, so I keep it tightly shut. I honestly can't remember the last time I stayed so angry for so long. I am so mad I actually have to fight back tears! Several times, I literally find myself light-headed. I keep my hands folded in front of me because the urge to pound my clenched fists on the table is absolutely overwhelming.

Over time, the rage subsides. You just can't stay mad at Jeep. Like a force of nature, Jeep just IS; there's no malice, no bad intentions. Hurricane Katrina wiped out the Gulf Coast, and Jeep wiped out me. It just happened, and there's nothing you can do about it but evacuate; so I did.

On the way home, I had an insight. I've seen Jeep with mountains of chips in front of him so high he needed a periscope to see the flop. When he was losing, I've seen Jeep dig into his wallet more often than Haliburton submits fraudulant invoices for Iraqi reconstruction. One thing I've never seen, however, is Jeep not having fun. Win or lose, Jeep is the life of the table. He plays poker for enjoyment, and he enjoys himself, no matter what. It made me think a lot about the game and why I play it.

As I chewed on that over the next day or so, I thought of another player who used to come in the casino. I can't remember his name, but he is essentially the anti-Jeep. A guy of around 60, he'd play in the 2-5 and 5-10 no limit games pretty much every day. The thing about him that stood out from the start to me was that he was ALWAYS mad. I can't remember a single time when I dealt to him that he didn't angrily slap his cards into the muck every single time he folded, his outrage that he didn't get playable cards clearly evident. God help you when he took a flop and was bet off of it by another player; his glare making it evident that it was the dealer's fault for his not winning the hand. When he won a hand, it was no respite at all, and Lord, what happened when he took any type of bad beat.

He was eventually barred from the casino. He was in a hand with a very Jeep-like character, a guy who was there to have fun and liked to draw, regardless of the odds, who drew out on him on the river. The dealer accidentally pushed the pot to Anti-Jeep, rather than the guy who'd sucked out on him, and he refused to give it back! Despite over an hour's cajoling from the floor, he simply would not to give it up. Finally, the poker room manager had the casino pay the guy who'd won the pot his money, and barred Anti-Jeep from the casino until he paid it back. It's been over 6 months, and he still hasn't done it.

The thing I took from that was simple. Why?

Why do something that makes you so mad? People play poker for enjoyment. If you get so miserable playing, why subject yourself to it? Anti-Jeep was an extreme example, but I see people playing mad all the time. Again, the question seems so simple. Why spend so much time doing something, ostensibly for fun and recreation, when it makes you so frustrated and angry? Even if you're playing for all or a significant part of your living, why do something that makes you so miserable? Surely, you can find a way to earn a living that doesn't suck your sould out.

One of the graveyard floor guys, Mike, is someone I respect a lot. He's been in the poker business for a long time, and really knows his shit. I remembered that he played for a living for a time, and talked to him about what I was thinking about, asking for his thoughts.

"I always looked at it like I was killing snakes." was Mike's response.

What???

Mike's take was essentially that he was earning his living on that poker table, and he took it VERY seriously. In order to make sure he always went for the kill, he avoided interacting with other players; instead, remaining silent and focused at the table, not engaging in any extraneous conversation. He was there to win their money, and that was that. If they chose to sit down at the table with him, whatever happened next was their problem, not his.

That took me back a bit, but, as I was thinking about it later, I remembered another story Mike had told me. He went into a convenience store one night, paying the cashier with a ten-dollar bill. The cashier mistakenly gave him change for a twenty, and Mike, who knew she was making a mistake, took the incorrect change and left the store with it. As he was driving home, at first laughing at his good fortune, it occurred to Mike that the cashier would probably have to pay for the cash register shortage. It appalled him that he had so lost the character ideals he'd lived by all his life that he'd not only taken the money without saying a word, but laughed about it afterwards, as well. Mike turned around and went back to the store, admitted to the cashier that he'd known he was taking the money when he shouldn't have, apologized profusely, and paid her back. Right then and there, Mike decided he didn't like what playing poker for a living did to him and went out the very next day and got a job.

I admire Mike for the decision he made to change his life, but I wonder if he would've needed to make that decision if he'd approached the game a little differently. I think my perspective here is a little unique. 20-some years ago, I was lucky enough to be able to turn a hobby into a career. What a blessing! I worked a ton of hours, but, when what you do for a living is also what you love, that's no sacrifice at all. One day, however, I turned around, and all the passion for what I did was gone. Suddenly, all the hours it took for me to practice my craft at the level of success I was accustomed to were just too many. Once I came to that realization, the future looked dull and dreary; one I had no desire to continue. After thinking about it long and hard, I decided to walk away, with absolutely no idea what I was going to do. Scary.

I was lucky enough to find another passion; poker. I've been doubly-lucky to be able to make a living with that passion; dealing, and playing. The lesson I learned from the last time I turned a passion into a living, then lost that passion, is that you have to treasure it. Like so many other things in life, something taken for granted is most often something lost. My old life turned into "killing snakes", there's no way I'm going to let it happen again.

After quite a bit of mulling them over, these three things; Jeep, Anti-Jeep, and Mike's "killing snakes" all came together to make me decide to make a major change in the way I approach this game. I decided that, no matter what else, I was going to have fun. There is just no way I am going to spend hours and hours sitting at a poker table if it doesn't bring me joy. Think about it; if every time you kissed your significant other on the neck as a prelude to "something else", they whipped out a ball peen hammer and smashed you in the face, how long would it take you to figure out that kissing your signifcant other on the neck as a prelude to "something else" leads to pain, and not whoopie? It doesn't get much more Pavlovian than that, yet so many poker players keep coming back time and again, despite the fact that they are constantly miserable at the table.

I've learned a good bit of the math associated with this game, I know that suck outs and bad beats are an inevitable part of it. I also intellectually know that I WANT people to draw at me against the odds; long term, I make money against them and players like them, regardless of what happens in the current hand. That knowledge does little to take the sting out of getting sucked out on. Looking at it globally, however, does. Being successful at poker isn't about winning pots, or even winning sessions; it's about making money in the long run. Taking life-satisfaction from the game is the same; this hand, this session don't matter, all things pass, both good and bad.

Right around the first of the year, I made a conscious decision to never forget that the primary reason I play poker is that I enjoy it, and to not allow things to spoil that enjoyment for me. I decided to take Jeep's approach of having fun, no matter what. Now, that doesn't mean I play like Jeep, I don't. I haven't changed the way I play at all, except that, by changing my OUTLOOK on the game, I leave myself in a position to play the game to the best of my abilities more of the time.

While I used to take a lot of pride in the fact that I never berated players for their bad play, what I didn't understand was that it didn't mean anything beyond basic courtesy. Whether I choked back my anger and said nothing, or whether I choked the life out of fool who just hit an impossible draw on me, the effect on my decision-making was virtually the same. The 170th Rule of Aquisition says: "POKER IS A BRAIN GAME"; it's all about decisions. The only way to make good decisions is to do so logically and analytically; intellectually, rather than emotionally. You simply cannot do that when you're angry.

Since changing my outlook on the game, I believe I am making my best decisions a greater percentage of the time. Being successful at this game isn't just what you know, it's how much of the time you can bring the greatest amount of what you know to bear on the decision at hand. I still get drawn out on, but, by remembering why I'm there playing in the first place, it makes it easier to laugh at the irony and unliklihood of it, rather than imagining myself stabbing the moron in the eye with an icepick.

There's a whole' nother level to this, the thinking I've done here has lead me to much more thinking, and, I believe, even greater realizations. I'll leave them for another post. At the moment, I have something of much greater import to ponder. You see, today, I saw Jeep sitting at a 1-2 no limit table.

"Jeep!", I said, "What are you doing here? You're a limit player!"

"I got tired of limit", was the reply, "here, you can bet people off a draw".

Stunned, I couldn't think of anything to say. Jeep, playing no limit. I shudder at the implications.