Thursday, November 1, 2007

Some People Really Do Run Better

Anyone who has played poker for a while has gone through the following situation ...

Let's say you're playing a tournament. It's the money bubble of the Bodog $100,000 Guaranteed and you shove with Queens versus a raiser who has you covered because he's been pushing his stack around as he's supposed to. Even though he has enough chips behind where a fold is correct since you've been playing super tight, he calls off a lot of chips with Ace-7 offsuit, spikes an Ace and sends you packing. Frustrating, no? Obv.

Then you vent to a poker buddy or make a blog entry about it - whatever. Inevitably you are going to receive the reply, "Don't worry because you'll win against that call in the long run."

My usual reply is something to the effect of: No fucking shit. And I say this for two reasons.
  1. I know what hand ranges and odds are. I don't need to be told right after I bust out as a massive favorite on the money bubble.
  2. It's a stupid thing for someone to say.
Because just how long is this "long run" that people are so fond of referencing?

How many times in your poker life will you be on the money bubble in this spot? The answer is: Not many. You're far more likely to be flipping than to be massively ahead and if this happens in the WSOP or a WPT event, or even an FTOPS event - well, that's probably the only time it's happening in your poker life. So guess what? It doesn't work out in the long run.

That means running this hand through PokerStove 5,000 times to show someone that they will in fact come out ahead in the long run is retarded.

The fact is this may happen a few dozen times in a tournament and you could be unlucky enough to lose more of those than you are supposed to if the math works out in the long run.

Also, the times where it will work out could be during inconsequential stages of a tournament whereas the couple times you get sucked out on could be at a Final Table of a big event, or on the money bubble where winning would have put you in great position etc. etc.

The short version is this: "In the long run" is a bullshit term that doesn't mean as much as people think it does.

5 comments:

thaREALdmoney said...

I have an excellent solution to help prevent having to hear someone say this again.

Don't bitch any complain about it at all.

Just deal with it. Problem solved. You sound like you feel like you deserve to win.

Maybe check at the source to find a problem before ripping on others who are just trying to be helpful.

CzechRazor said...

That is an excellent solution, sir. And it would be 100%applicable if I had posted a bad beat story and then bitched about it.

But the reality is that I posted a completely fictional hand in order to talk about the real core of what I was writing about - that the phrase "long run" is way overused and seldom correctly used.

I don't necessarily bash the people who say it, but I think it's a silly thing to tell someone.

The people who vent just need an ear, not advice or cliches - especially wrong ones.

Maybe I've just heard too many bad beat stories downstairs at Foxwoods. I stopped telling them about 3 months into my poker career when I realized everyone had a story to tell you if you had the time to listen.

thaREALdmoney said...

Hahah. true. Sorry if i came off as sounding like a dick. I actually am a dick but i digress :)

I also am sick of peoples beat stories so I try to keep my blog to stories of where I lay beats on other people. It brings me much Joy :)

I'm just saying, whenever you take a sick beat, just think of that time you got your 88 all in pre vs AA and sucked out. :) or had KJo all in pre vs KK and flopped a striaght and held.

It makes it alot easier to take them nasty beats.

In regards to your response. No i wasn't chasing losses. I had a bad 2 days playing (very bad) last month and cashed out all my money in my party account except 20$. Ran that up to about 250$ then decided to gamble with it and sat at 5/10NL short and played for an hour or so. They play almost as bad there as they do at 50max :)

p.s. please please please don't fall into grumpy man syndrome because you play alot.

Live players i find are so apt to being the grumpiest mother fuckers on earth because they are around old grumpy fuckers all day.

Not saying you are, just saying don't become one. Be Happy damn it :)

CzechRazor said...

Wow. Good call. I've been fucking miserable from the grind lately and it's obviously easy to see. Thanks for pointing that out.

Very nice reaply, thank you.

That being said, a lot of my posts are still going to contain a healthy dose of sarcasm and darker humor but that's just who I am when I write.

Alan aka RecessRampage said...

I love it.... To me, this was one of the funniest posts I've read in a while. I think the whole "in the long run" comment is more a coping mechanism for most people. So when they tell you, they're also partially telling themselves because they can surely identify with you the bad beats they've taken. So they just say "in the long run..." to you and also to themselves at the same time. Good stuff.