On Riverboat Ron and Success Stress

My Carolina Panthers won a franchise record eighth-straight game yesterday, whipping the undermanned Tampa Buccaneers to improve their record to 9-3. Sets up a big one next Sunday night versus division rival New Orleans who plays at Seattle tonight. If the Saints happen to lose, they’ll be 9-3 also, with two games between Carolina and New Orleans scheduled over the next three weeks.

Friends have asked me about the excitement level here in Charlotte regarding the team’s resurgence after four-plus years of disappointment. It’s funny today to look back to earlier in the season and how it genuinely appeared head coach Ron Rivera (in his third year at the helm) wouldn’t survive September after an 0-2 start.

They played the New York Giants during Week 3 at a time when it still wasn’t clear the Giants had a subpar team this year. (And when some of us might have even picked the Giants in certain pick’em pools, although there’s really no need to go back and research such things at this point.) A bye week was on the other side of that game, and most around here believed Rivera was toast should the Panthers have lost that won.

They won 38-0, then came back from the bye week to lose 22-6 versus Arizona in a dreadful performance. It looked bad, like having lost three-fourths of our starting stack by the second level bad. But we doubled up (so to speak), winning easily the next week against Minnesota. And now we’ve doubled a couple of more times and are challenging for the chip lead with the final table in sight.

So what do I say when those friends ask how we Panthers fans feel about all of this? I say we’re not getting too excited just yet. In fact, I’m personally full of trepidation about the whole situation. I look at those “Team Efficiency Ratings” from Football Outsiders my buddy Rich Ryan likes to reference in his Pigskin Diaries columns, see my Panthers now rated third in the entire NFL (behind Seattle and Denver), and I’m pretty much full of dread.

One explanation for the reaction stems from what happened back in 2008 -- the last time the Panthers were an above-average team -- when they cruised into the playoffs with a 12-4 record, then plummeted mightily in a 20-point first round loss to Arizona, the game the franchise’s former hero, Jake Delhomme, threw five interceptions and more or less bid farewell to Carolina.

Another reason, though, relates to the same irrational feeling of unease that some occasionally feel when winning at poker. I’m talking about that strange desire to protect against losing what you have already won, such as when you’re up in a cash game and start thinking about walking away a winner rather than continuing to play in a situation that is more likely than not a good one for you (as suggested by the fact that you’ve been winning). Or when a player unused to accumulating lots of chips in a tournament suddenly wins a couple of huge pots to take a big chip lead halfway through the event, then turtles up, not knowing how to proceed with the big stack.

Many who write about various forms of “tilt” talk about how winning tends to lessen one’s propensity to tilt, although it can introduce other problems. In The Poker Mindset, for instance, Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger point out how “players are considerably less likely to go on tilt when running well than when running badly,” although other “pitfalls” such as overconfidence, unrealistic expectations, and laziness can arise to chip away at or erase entirely one’s profits.

To that list I’d add another pitfall that I guess would have to be called “contentment.” You know, the kind of feeling that causes some to become strangely passive at a time when it is probably worst to do so.

As far as the Panthers go, I’m hoping they continue to play aggressively and take those calculated, well chosen risks that have now earned Rivera the nickname “Riverboat Ron” -- a hilarious moniker, actually, for those of us who got to know Rivera as more risk-averse than Tighty McTighterson who hates entering hands with less than pocket kings -- and not revert back to the cautious, play-not-to-lose mode with which they started the season (and which I was already complaining about after Week 1 in a post titled “Passive, Not Passing”).

Anyhow, that perhaps partly explains why winning eight games in a row makes me more uneasy than going 4-4 or 0-8. Not to mention why I never rose above recreational status as a poker player, too.

The Familiar Struggle

Had kind of a so-so November, poker-wise, ending the month down just a touch (following an awesome October). Have been so busy of late I haven’t been able to play as often as I normally do. Usually I try to play at least a short session pretty much every day, but in November I see I only actually played 17 of 30 days. And so far in December I didn’t play at all until this past weekend, when I put in a few sessions of pot-limit Omaha.

Total hands in November amounted to just about 4,400. That’s compared to 8,100 in October. I generally fare better when playing shortish (100-200 hand) sessions, although missing days affects me negatively, I think, as I find it difficult sometimes to get my head back into the game (as the PokerShrink would say) when I’ve been away for even a short while.

I’ve written before about considering myself a “recreational” player, although perhaps a little more serious than most of that category when it comes to thinking about the game and trying to improve. Even so, I find myself often lapsing back into “Level 1” thinking at the PLO tables, especially when I haven’t been playing regularly. That is to say, I find myself thinking a lot more about my own hand than what my opponent(s) have, a bad tendency that leads to a more passive style that relies more on my catching cards than anything else.

Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger talk about “Levels of Thinking” in their book The Poker Mindset: Essential Attitudes for Poker Success (2007). There they call the level where one is only thinking of one’s own hand “Level 0,” the level where one also considers one’s opponent’s hand “Level 1,” and so forth. The idea is the same, though, no matter how we number the levels.

I think PLO is a game where the difference between those two levels is perhaps more obviously noticeable than in, say, limit hold’em. Players who are brand new to PLO find it exceedingly difficult to put opponents on hands or hand ranges. (Hell, some find it tricky reading their own hands.) Even experienced PLO players like myself sometimes find it hard to keep thinking about opponents’ hands. And when you stop doing that, you necessarily become less effective.

As Taylor and Hilger say, “most players tend to think at different levels at different times.” Various factors come into play, causing us to move up or down levels, but the one they focus on is experience. “When a player is in a familiar situation, he is more likely to think at a higher level than usual,” they explain. “However, when faced with a difficult and unfamiliar situation, the same players will just revert to the [lower level] with which they are more familiar.”

Like I say, for new players especially, PLO presents a number of unfamiliar situations that cause one to focus more on one’s own hand than worry too much about what others have. Other factors can cause such lapses, too, like fatigue or tilt or whatever. But I like that idea that familiarity leads to clearer thinking, and thus helps one think more clearly about what the opponents have.

Thus the problem I’ve been facing with my intermittent play -- when I log on after missing a couple of days, I have to refamiliarize myself with starting hand values, bet sizing, calculating equity, etc. Such is the plight of the recreational player, I think. Also of the older player whose jingle-brain stopped growing probably before some of his opponents were born.

Now let’s see if I can remember how to post this sucker.

(That picture above comes from the poster for the 1987 film The Stepfather. I just wrote a little something about that film for Film Chaw today -- check it out.)

Laurel, Hardy & Me

The PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker wrapped up yesterday, as did my work helping cover the sucker. As was the case last September with WCOOP, it was again a lot of fun to be scribblin’ alongside and collaboratin’ with a good group of folks. Am glad to have it in the rearview, though, as the frequent late nights (sometimes ’til sunrise) screwed with the sleep schedule a bit more than yr cranky gumshoe would’ve liked (or had necessarily anticipated). Goes with the territory, of course.

Have been so busy with SCOOPing I haven’t had a lot of time to think about this here Vegas trip I have coming up this week. Will say a little more about that tomorrow, which is the day Vera Valmore and I will be flying out. Have a lot of stuff planned, though, including meeting up with various blogger types and others. Like I say, stay tuned.

Wanted to write just a little today about my recent online play. Had built up the online roll a bit and moved to $1/$2 limit hold’em a while back where things were going just swimmingly for three weeks or so. Too swimmingly, really, as my win rate had climbed to a gawdy 6 BB/100 hands or something there for a while before finally settling back down into a more realistic range. Then came a nasty little crash over the last few days which ended yesterday with me doing what I did back in December and just cashing out a big chunk o’ change in disgust.

So I’m back to just a few hundy to play with online, meaning I’ll have to head back down in stakes again in order to manage the bankroll correctly. I might even get away from LHE a bit and explore some other games and tourneys in an effort to try to keep poker fun here in the near term. Try some of that change I was yapping about in my last post.

What happened yesterday was another quick, painful sequence of bad timing, misfortune, and a bit of what Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger in The Poker Mindset refer to as “passive tilt.” That’s when you react to a bad session by starting to expect the worst (e.g., believing your opponent will always hit that draw), and thus go into “check/call mode when faced with any aggression from your opponents unless you have an extremely strong hand.”

The authors explain how unlike other, more obvious forms of tilt (when you know you’re tilting), passive tilt can often operate somewhere below conscious thought, and thus “can go undetected for a considerable period of time, especially when triggered by simply running badly.” I’m pretty sure this is what I have been dealing with the last few days, and I’m going to point to one moment in particular from yesterday’s session that kind of woke me up to what was going on.

I came to a new table and within a few hands immediately recognized the player on my left to be an especially weak opponent, doing a lot of limping and calling, showing down subpar hands, and being exploited by a couple of other, more tutored players at the table. I ended up getting into at least three hands with this player in which I lost big pots after he hit unlikely draws on the end (e.g., rivering five-outers to make two pair, filling gutshots, etc.). Then, as often happens in this situation, the guy ended up giving it all back very quickly to the rest of the table, went busto, then left.

So my mood wasn’t ideal. There were at least two very good players at the table, and since we were six-handed that meant I probably should’ve just left, too, and found an easier spot. But being down, I was stubborn about it and so stuck around.

That’s when I noticed the guy on my right was three-betting preflop every single time the player two to my left open-raised. I kept picking up winners like 7-4-offsuit, so I was folding out of those hands, of course. But it was getting obvious: the guy on my right for some reason had decided to try to isolate the other player whenever possible.

Finally those two started going at it in the chat box as well, and the gist of their conversation was that each believed the other to be a terrible player. I won’t rehearse the whole debate, other than to say there was a lot of rancor over a two-outer or nine-outer (they couldn’t decide) which one had hit against the other some time earlier. Silly stuff.

Then comes a hand in which I pick up in the cutoff. Player to my right, Laurel, raises. I three-bet. Folds to Hardy in the big blind who cold-calls, and Laurel calls as well. Flop comes a worrisome . Laurel checks, Hardy bets, I raise, and both call. The turn is the , and when both check I overcome my passive-tilty-what-if-I’m-beat fretting and bet. Both call.

The river is the . Passive tilt or not, I ain’t gonna be raising anymore on this one, I don’t think. Laurel checks, Hardy bets, I call, and Laurel check-raises. Ugh. Hardy just calls, though, so I only have to sacrifice one more bet to see this through, which I do.

Laurel shows . A boat on the river. Hardy shows . A straight. Neat. I’ve finished the hand in third place. I don’t bother to figure out what-outer it took to beat me. Neither do they.

Apologies for the bad beat story (or SIGH), but I share it mainly to say that the hand -- along with the two players’ bickering beforehand -- woke me up out of my listless, unprofitable funk and got me to the Cashier’s page. In that hand, from beginning to end, I was essentially overwhelmed by the feeling that there was no way I was gonna win it. Which is no way to operate, fer damn sure.

As was the case in December, cashing out a big chunk had an immediately beneficial effect on my overall mood. Time to regroup once again.

But first, Vegas! More tomorrow on that.

(EDIT [added 11:00 a.m.]: Just happened to notice Barry Tanenbaum posted something yesterday on a related topic, “Passive Play When Tired.”)

Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger’s The Poker Mindset

Mentioned a week ago how I’d been going back to Barry Greenstein’s Ace on the River to reread short chapters now and then. Another book that is good for such occasional rereading is Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger’s The Poker Mindset: Essential Attitudes for Poker Success (2007). Wrote once before not too long ago about the chapter on tilt, and yesterday found myself again looking through The Poker Mindset, reviewing other short chapters and reflecting on how the ideas related to my own game.

As the title indicates, the book is primarily focused on the psychology of poker, and does a nifty job treating several of the many unique challenges to one’s mental health one faces at the poker table. The book is well organized and well written, and I would characterize its advice as especially practical in nature, offering genuine courses of action one can take consciously in response to various issues (e.g., risk aversion, bad beats, downswings, tilt, bankroll issues, thinking clearly, controlling emotions, etc.), rather than strictly discuss such things in the abstract.

The book begins with an explanation of that title, defining what “the poker mindset” is and how developing such a mode of thinking can help one with all of the other stressors poker presents us. A lot of that has to do with understanding the relationship between luck and skill in poker. Both are part of the game. That’s reality. Thus the “poker mindset” (say Taylor and Hilger) is one that understands and accepts reality, and from there one can make decisions that are grounded in what is really going on when one plays poker.

Not intending to do a full-on review here, but mainly wanted to pass along one of the bits of advice I reread last night which struck me as particularly insightful and of use -- a section in Chapter 4 (“Bad Beats and Losing Big Pots”) that talks about how players tend to deal with losing big pots.

As someone who plays mostly pot-limit Omaha, I’m involved in big pots fairly frequently. Such is the nature of PLO. And as is to be expected, I will lose my fair share of them.

Just a couple of days ago I had a session start out with a wild hand in which I managed to lose my entire buy-in in the first hand -- flopped top set, got a flush draw to put it all in on the turn, and his card came on the river. I rebought, and as it happened the very next hand (my second at the table) saw me turn a nut straight and win back half of what I’d lost to the very same dude. Things were happening too quickly, really, to talk much about “image” here, although I think on the second hand my opponent certainly thought I’d instantly gone on tilt and thus stuck around to the river, giving me back some of my cabbage.

In any event, like I say, the big pots aren’t that uncommon at the PLO tables, and I’d like to think I’ve learned to deal with losing them somewhat better over the time I’ve been playing.

In their discussion, Taylor and Hilger suggest there are different “stages” a player goes through when it comes to dealing with losing big pots. The “journey” through these stages is not “linear,” they explain (we go back and forth), but each nevertheless “represents a better response (and a better underlying attitude) than the last.”

The first stage is anger. The main focus here is upon the money lost, for which the loser looks to blame someone else. The loser searches for a target, usually the opponent. If a live game (the authors explain), the target sometimes becomes the dealer. Or one might blame “the poker gods, or whatever deity they believe in.” I think we’ve all been there.

The second stage is frustration, a stage which the authors say is characterized by a lot of thoughts or statements that begin “if only.” For instance, in the hand I recount above my response falls in this stage if I’m thinking “if only the flush hadn’t come.” Like the first stage, this one also finds the player looking to the past, i.e., failing to move on in one’s mind to the next hand.

The third stage is acceptance, wherein the player has “learned to put short-term results in perspective” and subsequently play without being affected by having lost the big pot. Such players can still respond emotionally to losing and feel bad about what has happened, but they don’t dwell on it in such a way that it affects them moving forward.

The fourth stage is indifference, a stage which Taylor and Hilger suggest few players ever reach. At this stage, the player possesses such self-control he or she actually is able to avoid all feelings of “anger, frustration, or even acceptance of the hand,” and instead is able to remain “focused entirely on how his opponents played and what can be learned from the hand.” Thus does such a player strike a nice, healthy balance between looking back and looking ahead, using the past to inform the future.

I’d like to say I’m usually above the “anger” stage, although I know occasionally I’m there. Whenever I’m tempted to type a snarky response in the chat box after losing such a hand (a temptation I normally am able to resist), I am surely stuck in the first stage.

More often I’m in the second stage (“frustration”), saying to myself “if only.” Sometimes after a hand like the one described above, I’ll open up a window, go visit Two Dimes, and run the numbers just to show myself that yes, indeed, I was a heavy favorite when the money went in. I suppose doing that is somewhat instructive (helping me recognize certain odds), but the exercise is mostly just to satisfy doubts or make myself “feel better.” Not really looking forward at all.

When I am playing particularly well, I will occasionally have moments where I am conscious of operating in the third stage, “acceptance.” That comes and goes, though. And I know for certain I’ve never experienced the detachment of “indifference” when losing a biggie.

Like I say, I think the book is quite good at spelling out certain issues with which we are mostly familiar, and offering practical advice -- like simply acknowledging and being conscious of these different varieties of reaction to losing big pots -- that can be helpful at the tables.

So, in which stage do you find yourself when losing big pots?