At times it feels the world just doesn't like you. Here take that - your car breaks down - and that - my course geek turns out to be a brick and I need to start again with a new guy - and an upper cut to the jaw - weather cancels my promo trip and money twirls down the drain. I hit a dry spell at the tables just as my expenses mount. As you can see, I've been having one of those bad runs. And like poker, you need to stick it out. Keep your loses to a minimum. My three month old son smiles at me as I pick him up this snowy morning. Stay focused on what is important.
The longest win streak in college football history is held by the University of Oklahoma Sooners, who won 47 consecutive games between 1953 and 1957. Streaks – runs of good or bad luck – are quite common in poker, but one doesn't necessarily have to win or lose a large number of consecutive hands for it to be considered a good or bad streak. The losing streak I've been discussing in this article refers to a lengthy succession of losses, the sort that happens to major league ball clubs and video poker players alike. I'm not talking about the sort of streak that results in losing your car, your house, your family well, you get the idea. That's not a losing streak.
I'll always remember an interview with a WWII vet, Frank, who went back to visit the battlefield in France where, in 1944, he was assigned to sit in a foxhole and wait for the Nazis to pass by. Then he and the other foxholers would sneak out at night and attack their rear. Well things went horribly bad and a gang of Nazis discovered the ploy and were going from foxhole to foxhole and unloading seven or eight shots into the heads of each American G.I. Imagine what Frank felt as he saw and heard each of his buddies plead for their lives as they raised their hands in surrender and then be cold -bloodedly killed. There was no escape. When they got to Frank's fox hole, he stood and raised his hands as his comrades did. The Nazi pointed his gun at him, then smiled. He did not fire. He just inexplicably threw the camouflage netting back over the hole. That night, Frank snuck into the woods and made his way back to the American camp.
Frank was now in his late 70s and he said since that time when he had accepted his inevitable death, nothing can ever get him down. Nothing is as bad as it seems. Everything passes. Money is only money. A career is only a career. If there is love and respect, relationships can be repaired.
Poker is good training for adopting Frank's enlightened outlook of the world. Some stretches you just can't win no matter what you do. The cards are against you and there is nothing you can do about it. You need to get through it the best you can- minimize your losses. Easier said than done as your bankroll dwindles and you wonder how you are going to make rent next month. Then it happens. In one magical hand, all the despondency of the past is washed away. It's like the past never happened. You're back on your feet again.
Utah reached those depths of despair. He hit bottom and lost faith in his quest. But he cleansed himself mentally and reawoke with a soldier's mentality. As Edna said, 'Don't give up. Don't ever give up.'
Let's face it. Losing sucks. We expect it to happen occasionally—just often enough that we can show what a good sport we are about the whole thing.
Bad Streak In Poker Odds
But every loss affects us, and with each successive loss, we begin to seethe with anger and confusion while searching for something or someone to blame. That guy who beat us with that freakingrunner-runner gutshot straight, for example.
Or the slot machine that, despite the hundreds of dollars we have sunk into it, refuses to pay off. It's obvious the casino has that one rigged.There oughtta be a law.
Our brains are hardwired to recognize patterns. This is a good thing. Sure, it can be fun to arrive at the correct conclusion based on incomplete data (the very purpose for pattern-recognition),but it can also give us plenty of false positives, such as it often does when it comes to gambling.
Bad Streak In Poker Tournament
If the streak goes on long enough, however, some (but not all) of us will arrive at the same simple-but-true conclusion: I lost because I bet, and I continued to lose because I continued to bet.
This is a harder conclusion to reach if you play mostly skill games such as poker. You know the odds. You know your outs. You even know the outs your opponent has for the hand you stronglysuspect he has.
Sure, you know about luck, but you call it variance, and this allows you to pretend luck doesn't exist except as a mathematical construct.
There is a difference, of course. Variance is bloodless, cold, logical. Luck is redolent of worry beads and burning joss sticks and just might be a bit mystical. Luck is emotional, swingingwildly between surprised joy and abysmal depression.
Luck, in the final analysis, is no lady—assuming for the moment that ladies are not bipolar heiresses who carry a switchblade in their boot.
Luck exists, my friend. Oh yes. Just ask that idiot who matched your all-in and filled that runner-runner gutshot straight. He won't be blessing his 'variance.'
