And now…back to poker
January 28, 2008
Hopefully, all of the DRAMA is over regarding the League and what’s going on in it. It all gets down to if you want to play by the League rules, stay. If not, leave.Anyway, Lippy made a post on the League site the other day regarding the play of the members. He was pretty upset about the whole thing and it brought up an interesting aspect of the game.
Basically, it came down to this. (I am paraphrasing because I wasn’t there but this is my understanding of what took place) A short stack went all-in on a hand. There were 3 or 4 big stacks at the table (20X the all-in bet). No one called the all-in bettor. Not even the BB who only had to call $400 more in chips.
Excuses were presented by those at the table.
1. They weren’t going to call even $400 more with a 9 4 off because it isn’t a good hand and they didn’t want to double up the all-in bettor.
2. (This was presented by someone who was at the table) They didn’t call because it is hard for US people to fund their bankroll. So, some US players play like that because they are trying to make it to the cash.
WOW
Where do we start with that?
We could sit here and argue why the call should have been made and that the whole “bankroll” thing makes no sense but I want to comment on something else.
I think the whole situation can be explained by the following:
Playing “not to lose” is a lot different than “playing to win”.
This “playing not to lose” attitude happens at most of our league games. You can see it by watching how people play, how long the games take, and some of the comments regarding the play.
I am not immune to it either. Sometimes, I notice my aggression is a lot lower than normal in league games. I think this is due to the fact that the games tend to be more “friendly” than non league games and I am also pretty confident I can beat most of them because I know how they play.
So, Lippy came in the game playing to win (Lippy made the post so I assume it was him that was the all-in person. It may not have been. He may have just saw the play and commented on its stupidity) and ran into people at the table who were playing “not to lose”.
Of course, the big fallacy with that type of thinking is that you will lose more when playing not to lose versus playing to win.
It may seem like you are doing ok but in the long run, someone playing to win will have the bigger bankroll.
Ok, so you play not to lose and you make it to the cash once in a while. The people playing to win will eat you up and make it farther into the cash, which, in the long run, will earn them more money.
If I sense someone is playing tight because they want to make it to the cash, I will force you to make decisions every hand because I know you won’t do anything unless you have a real good hand. Over time, I will have eaten you away by taking small chunks out of you and when you finally make the decision to go all-in, I will have earned enough from you to possibly call and take you out.
I am not even going to get into some of the calls made and hands played at league games. That would be another post or two.
Sucessfull poker is playing to WIN!
Comments are always welcome…….
Good Luck out there…
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