Theory of Luck

In Doyle's Super System he talks about gambling with other people's money in no-limit Hold-em. He'll run a series of bluffs to run up his stack and then he moves all in with some kind of draw either hoping to win the pot right there or catch his draw and bust someone.

I use this strategy in a $6-12 Omaha Hi-Lo game I like to play. I avoid all marginal decisions if I am losing or even, but if I'm ahead I will play a marginal hand or take a shot at a marginal draw that I wouldn't otherwise.

This is a theory of luck really. Some may argue that the right decision is the right decision and should not be affected by your chip stack, but I disagree. When I have the opportunity to gamble with other people's money I will take a few shots and try to run it up.

Stack My Chips Loser

A friend of mine, JT, told me his ultimate humiliation at the poker table. A paraplegic sat next to JT at the $30-$60 table. An assistant would show the handicapped man his cards, but it wasn't feasible to lean over and stack the man's chips for him so this task fell to the kind-hearted JT. The man couldn't play a lick, but got on quite a heater and put bad beat after bad beat on JT. He'd let out a high-shrieked cackle when he won and JT would have to deal with the humiliation of stacking the chips in front of the "helpless" laughing man. It didn't seem right to suffer bad beats, but to have to stack the chips for your grinning victor was an added slap in the face. A few minutes previously he had felt a sense of pride in offering a helping hand to someone in need and now he was looking for any reason in the world not to do the task. Nobody wanted to change seats and nobody left the table. JT was stuck. The bad-beat, laughing and chip stacking continued through-out the night. When JT went all in with two Aces and lost to the man's J-9 offsuit he quietly stacked his last chips into the man's pile, stood up and slunk away into the night.

Being a healthy, happily married man with 2 wonderful boys allows him to have the perspective to laugh at the situation now, but that night he didn't find it very funny.

Poker Player Dies Under Mysterious Circumstances

In a press conference today local Phoenix police chief Derek Johnson announced that Daniel Gray died last night at "Motel", which is a small family-run motel located on 6th Street and Bell in downtown Phoenix. Daniel's body was discovered by the maid this morning, his head face-down in a plate of powdered donuts next to a half-constructed ant farm. It was unclear if the ant farm was Daniel's latest project or provides a clue as to his mysterious death.

"All we know at this point," Chief Johnson said, "is that he was some over-grown kid who liked to play poker."

Alcohol and drugs have not been ruled out.

Choose to Live Joyfully

Poker has taught me many life lessons that I was too muddle-headed to comprehend in the first place. For example, I learned early in my poker career not to let anything from the past negatively affect my future. Sounds simple enough, but why did I find it so difficult to put into practice? I would take several bad beats at the tables and the untroubled faces of week-end gamblers would suddenly transform into demons of mythic proportions. This emotional reaction to losing wasn't healthy or profitable. The fact that these negative images of harmless people occurred to me was bad enough, but to let it carry over into my life and future decision making was absurd.

Losing had a snowball effect. When I lost I got ulcers and I didn't have the desire to talk to friends or do things I enjoyed. I'm not proud to say there was no better loser than me. But I was at least smart enough to realize this wasn't the best way to live my life. I chose to have a positive outlook no matter what happened simply because the alternative was worse. I'm not saying all my days are now blissfully serene skips through the park, but I do have a new resolve and make better decisions than I did in the past. Even my bad days now aren't really bad.

I was talking with an old acquaintance the other day and she told me she had been divorced and some of her other recent problems. She had severe shoulder pain and went to the doctor and he told her much of it had to do with her tense attitude. She said to the doctor, "You try dealing with the shit I've been through in the last 6 months!" It reminded me of what I used to do. She was choosing to hold on to her bitterness even though her body was screaming for her to let it go.

The world is a mess. The world is perfect. Choose your life and make it what you want.