As you might imagine, it was probably a bit of both. After a session, it can be difficult to tease out the play bad from the run bad. If you want to learn from your mistakes, however, it is worth it to try to do so. In hands that didn’t go well, did you play bad, did you run bad, or was it a double whammy of play bad and run bad?

There are a lot of ways to run bad at poker, and many of them are subtle. I’m not exploring this topic to give you ways to rationalize your lackluster results. Quite the opposite, I think being aware of how luck works allows you to better understand what is under your control.

Here are six different ways you can run bad at poker.

1. Opponents catch their cards against you.

This is the obvious one and the type of run bad that gets the most attention. You get it in on the turn, top set against bottom set, and your opponent catches his one out for quads on the river. Brutal beat, man.

2. You make few to no hands for a while.

“I didn’t get dealt one pocket pair in four hours!” It happens. “I had A-K or A-Q seven times and didn’t catch a pair once!” Yup. Again, this one is fairly obvious, so I won’t belabor the point.

3. Your opponents catch hands against you.

This one can be subtle and very frustrating. This is different from the first way to run bad. You’re not getting the money in good and the wrong card comes. Instead, your opponents are just making more hands than usual. You raise three times preflop, and someone reraises you each time. Hyper-aggressive game? Maybe. But not if those three reraises were the only ones for the past hour. Instead, you just ran into big pairs three times. Run bad.

You raise preflop with K-J and get two callers. The flop comes T-7-5. The callers check, you bet, and one player calls. The turn is a 7, and your opponent makes a big bet. Run bad.

You raise preflop six times in an hour and a half, and all six times you miss the flop, and an opponent calls or raises your flop continuation bet. It’s very frustrating, and in most small stakes games it’s almost all run bad.

You raise preflop with Q-Q, and the big blind calls. The flop comes J-9-3. Your opponent checks, you bet, and he calls. The turn is an A. He checks, you bet again, and he check-raises. Run bad.

This particular form of run bad can play with your head. Unlike simply getting nothing to play, you are investing money in these hands before things turn sour. And unlike getting it in with the best of it and losing, these hands don’t go to showdown. They usually end with your opponent raising and you folding, or your opponent calling a bet and you checking and folding on the next round. After a few times, that ugly little thought, “Maybe I’m getting bullied,” starts dancing with your sanity.

Don’t worry. The table has not suddenly consipred to push you off every hand. You aren’t getting bullied. Your opponents are just catching hands, and you are running bad as a result.

4. Your opponents cold deck you.

You have the queen-high flush draw, and on the river the ace of your suit comes. You get it in, and your opponent has the king-high flush. Nothing you can do.

This is the same phenomenon as the previous way to run bad, except that instead of your opponent raising and you being forced to fold, you happen to have a big enough hand that you get all-in instead. Just one bad cold deck can ruin a whole session, and often it’s pure run bad.

5. Your opponents miss every time you make a hand.

You made three sets and two flushes tonight, and each time you bet the flop, and everyone folded.

This one is frustrating, and it can have you questioning how you play. When this happens to you a lot, you may start to think, “Should I be slowplaying all my big hands to make sure I get something from them?”

Slowplaying makes sense sometimes in no-limit, but it’s easy to overdo it. More importantly, slowplaying decisions should be based on the board texture and your opponents’ tendencies, not on what happened the last five times you flopped a big hand.

6. You’re stuck at a bad table or in a bad seat.

This one obviously applies most directly to tournaments where you’re assigned a table and seat. But it can happen to you in cash games as well.

As a winning poker player, over time I can expect to win X dollars per hour on average when I play. But that number is my average hourly win over every poker game I will play for a year (or longer).

On any one particular day, what I can expect to win per hour could be much higher or much lower.

Not every $2-$5 game is equal. Some days I sit down, and there is a drunk NFL player on my right with a $5,000 stack. This setup would be worth considerably more than my X per hour average. Other days I sit down, and the tourists are all sitting to my left, nursing $200 stacks. This setup is below average.

You should invest some effort to find the best game and best seat in the house. And if there’s no good game, perhaps you should try a different cardroom. But, by the definition of average, you will sometimes be forced to play in a below average seat or game. This important form of running bad is worth acknowledging.

Final Thoughts

About half the time you sit down to play poker, you’re going to run bad. If you’re a skilled player, you might book a win anyway as long as you don’t run too bad. But if you miss every flop for five hours and get cold-decked the one time you hit, you’re going to lose no matter how awesome you are. Good results depend on catching a few breaks.

It’s important for your sanity as well as for your attempts to improve that you be able to look back at a session and pick out the bad outcomes that were beyond your control.

But don’t rationalize every bad result as running bad. Often there’s some bad play in there as well. Next issue I’ll talk about ways that bad play can put you in situations you could have avoided and how it can cause you to lose more than necessary.

[This article appeared in the September 21, 2011 issue (Vol. 24, No. 19) of Card Player.]

Weighing Gain Against Loss

Let’s lay down some assumptions. Most people use the rationale, “I was waiting for a better spot,” to justify folding in a situation where they felt calling (or possibly raising) had more value. For example, “I really thought he was bluffing, but I decided to give him that pot and wait for a better spot.”

By definition, then, you think you are giving something up by folding. You don’t think he’s bluffing every once in a while. You think he’s bluffing so often that calling will make you money on average. But you’re folding anyway, presumably because you are averse to risking your entire stack. So what are you losing? You’re losing the share of the pot that would have been yours (on average) had you called. And what do you gain? You gain the piece of mind of knowing you won’t get stacked on this hand. If you weigh gain versus loss objectively in this scenario, you are losing much more by folding than you are gaining.

You win at poker by risking money in situations where you will profit on average. This is true when you’re risking just a $50 flop call, and it’s true when you’re risking your $800 stack. You risk money in favorable situations, situations where playing gets you more money back on average than folding does. Nothing changes just because your stack is at risk and you aren’t a lock to win. If you win more money on average by playing than by folding, then playing is virtually always the best play. It’s really that simple.

Cash Game Excuses

But Ed, you may be thinking, I can think of many scenarios where you’re better off not taking the gamble. I disagree. I won’t say it’s impossible to find such a situation in a cash game, but they are rare—rare enough that you can play for a hundred hours and never once be correct to “wait for a better spot.” I’ll discuss two of the false scenarios.

1. You’re in the hand with a bad player and you’re worried that if you break him (or double him up) he’ll leave the game.

Ok. If you somehow knew for certain that your target would leave if he busted/doubled up, and if you knew that your target would stay in the game for a certain period of time if you folded, and if you knew that a much stronger player would replace your target if he were to leave, then keeping him in the game would have some quantifiable value. However, even then the value of winning the current hand could be greater than all the possible future value you could extract from your target.

In practical terms, you can’t possible know all of that. You don’t know if a player will leave when he busts out, or if he will rebuy ten times. And even if you fold to wait for a better spot, your target could bust out to someone else on the very next hand and all your theoretical future winnings would go up in smoke. Moreover, if you play $1-$2 or $2-$5, chances are the next player on the list is nearly as bad as the player you’re worried about, so who cares if he leaves?

In the overwhelming majority of real-world scenarios, folding a good hand to try to keep a bad player in the game is a fool’s plan. It’s a case of a bird in the hand almost always being worth more than two in the bush. Playing on the best poker sites will give you an edge and have you winning faster while you learn.

2. But I’ve built a stack much larger than the buy-in cap, and if I lose the hand I won’t be able to rebuy what I’ve lost.

This is another excuse that could possibly have merit if all the pieces were to fall into place, but that in the vast majority of real-world circumstances ends up being a lot of hot air.

You have $2,000 in a $2-$5 game. The buy-in cap is $1,000. If you lose the hand, you can’t rebuy. When does this hurt you? It hurts you only if:

1. A particularly bad player at your table also has $2,000.
2. This particularly bad player doesn’t decide to blow off his stack to someone else on the next hand or just get up and leave. (See above.)

Just having a big stack by itself isn’t worth anything. You need someone else to have a big stack with you, and that person needs to be bad. That person also needs to play long enough with the big stack for you to get a good shot at winning it.

In most cases, you’re better off gambling on your current hand rather than playing for some theoretical future hand that most likely won’t materialize.

Tournament Excuses

Waiting for a better spot is nearly always a bad idea in a cash game. Because you can always rebuy, it takes a truly extraordinary circumstance to justify passing on a winning situation in the hope that an even better one comes along.

In tournaments, waiting for a better spot more often has merit. But even in tournaments, “I’m waiting for a better spot” is usually just a flimsy rationalization for timid play.

Say you’ve just entered a major tournament with lots of entrants. Before the first hand, the tournament director offers to let you flip a coin. If it lands heads, he’ll double your starting stack. If it lands tails, you’re out. Most players would never dream of taking the gamble, but mathematically flipping is basically just as good as not. Now say instead of flipping a coin, the tournament director let you run pocket queens against ace-king for double or nothing. I’d guess that still most tournament players would turn it down, even as a 56/44 favorite, wanting to “wait for a better spot.” But this is a gamble everyone should take. In a large field, a double stack is worth twice a single stack, and 56/44 is a huge edge on an even money proposition.

More generally, during the early and middle stages of a tournament when the prizes are still far off, “waiting for a better spot” is typically as bad an idea as it is in a cash game.

Final Thoughts

If you are fond of folding in tough situations, rethink your strategy. I’m not arguing for or against folding, just that you shouldn’t play timidly. If you think your opponent is bluffing, don’t fold, waiting for a better spot. Take a chance. It’s how you become a better player.

[This article appeared in the December 29, 2010 issue (Vol. 23, No. 26) of Card Player.]

Thinking like a loser is sure to keep you losing. Why? Because it means you are focused on the wrong things, and this poor focus will prevent you from improving. Here are some things I hear players say that represent loser thinking. I’ll talk about why they are bad and then suggest some ways to turn that negative energy into positive.

1. Bad beat stories

Bad beat stories are the worst. They are pure negativity. No amount of brooding will change even a single river card from now to eternity. Thinking about a bad beat is guaranteed to improve your play not one iota.

And when the bad beat thinking takes over, it shoves all other constructive thought out of the way. If you’re still thinking about that ten on the river two hours later, that’s two hours you weren’t playing your best and two hours you have almost no chance to learn anything from.

Of course, once the bad beat monster gets in your brain it’s hard to get it out. Bad beats happen all the time, so the next fix is always just around the corner. There’s no sure way to get past a beat, but here’s what works well for me.

First, play on a comfortable bankroll. If you’re worried, really worried, about losing the money you have on the table, you are setting yourself up to think like a loser. On the other hand, if you keep five buyins in your pocket when you play, you will never have the thought, “Wow, if I lose this buyin, that’s it.” Playing on a short roll is playing scared, and when you do get a bad beat you’ll naturally resent it that much more.

Second, book some wins. If you’re focused on bad beats, it probably means you’ve been losing lately. Obviously you can’t just will yourself to win, but you can decide to call it a day the next time the natural ups and downs of poker have put you ahead a couple hundred bucks. Mathematically it makes no difference when you quit your sessions, but booking a win or two can be just what it takes to clear your head.

My hope is that the next time you’re tempted to tell a bad beat story, you’ll think of this article. Dwelling on bad beats is self-defeating, and it’s thinking like a loser. Get up and walk around. Reminisce about that tournament you won last year. Count sheep. Anything. Just get the beat out of your head.

2. Complaints about opponents

Here’s another doozy. “How am I supposed to win with that jerk in seat eight calling every hand to the river?” Unless the jerk in seat eight is Phil Ivey, chances are he’s not causing your problems. He’s just playing like an idiot. People who play like idiots lose their money. They may not lose every single time they play, but they do eventually lose. And most of the time they lose fast. If you don’t believe me, try playing like an idiot for a few hours and see where it gets you.

Poker is a zero sum game (minus the rake of course). That means that if the jerk in seat eight is losing money (and he is), then someone is winning it. It should be you.

Here’s how it goes. Say there’s a guy who is calling 75 percent of his hands preflop and then calling to the river with any pair. Twice in a row you had A-K, and you missed the board while he flopped bottom pair. He called you down and won both times. Frustrating, for sure. But here’s how many players react. The next time they flop a pair against this player, they bet it once and then just check it down hoping to win the showdown. Then when they win, they shout “Hallelujah,” and stack the tiny pot.

That’s thinking like a loser. They’re too focused on the fact that this crazy player has beaten then, and not focused on why what this player is doing is crazy in the first place. The player is crazy because he pays off too much with weak hands. Therefore, to take advantage, you should bet your real hands harder than you usually do. Checking the pair down to try to “win cheap” is self-defeating. Instead, you should bet, bet, bet.

If you find yourself tempted to complain about an opponent, stop yourself. The opponent isn’t causing you problems. Instead, he’s an opportunity. Think about what he’s doing wrong, and then adjust your play to take maximum advantage of it.

3. Waiting for a better spot

Okay, most people know that bad beat stories aren’t productive (though judging by how often I hear them most people also haven’t taken the lesson to heart). And many people know that bad opponents don’t beat you in the long run. But there’s something I hear all the time that has entrenched itself as a sort of conventional wisdom. Yet it’s loser thought.

“I kind of thought he might be bluffing, but I folded anyway. I figured I’d wait for a better spot.”

I cringe whenever I hear people say they “waited for a better spot.” Nine times out of ten, it means, “I was too chicken to take decisive action, so I took the easy way out and folded. I can’t embarass myself if I fold, right?”

This one’s a little tricky. I’m not saying that folding is a bad thing. It’s what I do almost every hand. But habitually waiting for a “better spot” is a big problem. Why? Because people who do that often end up waiting for a near lock before they put their money in. There’s another word for that play style – nit. Being a nit isn’t bad because it’s uncool. It’s bad because it’s not very profitable in most no-limit games.

Good players take some chances. If they get a read that someone might be bluffing, they pull the trigger and call or reraise. They don’t say, “Well, I think it’s a bluff, but I think I’ll fold anyway and maybe I’ll flop a set in a few hands and he’ll get it in with me.” That’s wishful thinking, and it’s thinking like a loser.

Evaluate every decision on its own merit. Ignore the mythical “better spot” that may or may not arise. If a daring play seems like the right play, take the chance. You’ll get burned sometimes, but it’s the only way to learn.

[This article appeared in the December 15, 2010 issue (Vol. 23, No. 25) of Card Player.]

Today marks an important internal deadline for our new small stakes no-limit hold’em book. It’s the day that we’re completely finished writing. Now we just need to edit (though we’ve done a fair amount of that already), proofread, and typeset/lay it out. I’m not completely sure how long that process will take, but it shouldn’t be too long. The book will be available to buy as an e-book almost immediately after we’ve put the finishing touches on it… we don’t want to delay release to wait for paper printing and shipping. This book has been “coming soon” for longer than I’d have liked, but now that the writing is officially wrapped up, we’re really almost near the finish line. More details soon.

Find A New Bluff And A New Value Bet Every Session

When I play small stakes no-limit, I spend a lot of time observing how the regular players play. Almost universally, I think they miss bluffs and value bets, particularly on the river. A lot of those misses, I think, can be put down to tunnel vision. Once you get to the river you already have played most of the hand and have a good sense of where you stand. You’re trying to get to showdown. You’re trying to catch a draw. You’re hoping a draw doesn’t come in, and so forth. In some ways, however, “knowing where you stand” is another way of saying that you’re entering the river with preconceptions about how to play it. Add those preconceptions in with the emotions of seeing a river card that you may or may not like, and often people don’t think too clearly on the river and just end up going with the obvious.