| Sure enough, WorldsWorst was playing the kind of game I remembered. He was calling with more or less anything and figured to bequest his credit limit to the table. Seeing this, I decided to relax my standards for entering hands whenever WorldsWorst was in a pot, because I knew I would get paid off handsomely whenever I made a big hand. WorldsWorst was sure to call my bets and perhaps even to raise me a few times when he was already losing. Trying to take advantage of this, I called a fair number of opening bets with hands that I would normally fold. This turned out to be, as a pilot who crashes into a mountain might say, a slight over-correction in my course. I didn't forget about the other players, but I was too focused on WorldsWorst. I was too eager to play with him; I was giving up some of my normal edge. Usually much of that edge would come from starting with a better hand; the player who starts better usually finishes better. By relaxing my starting requirements too much, I was now facing WorldsWorst in some hands where he started better than I did. More importantly, I was involved in many three, four and five-way pots without sufficient ammunition. And so in a game that looked incredibly juicy, I lost. WorldsWorst? He lost, of course, lost every dollar he had. He was going to lose, that was clear enough. But what I'd forgotten in the course of that anxious hour, waiting to get into the game with him, was that there was no rule he had to lose to ME. The lesson, like the original rule #3, applies to most forms of gambling. If you find yourself in a game with a weak player, be very cautious about making any drastic changes in your usual play, just so you can engage the enemy. Slight, situational changes are correct, but if you're like me on this particular day, or like most gamblers on most days, you will probably err on the side of too many adjustments or changes. Unless you are a true expert and loaded with self-discipline, you will be better off playing your normal game, and simply accepting those chips which your game's version of WorldsWorst happens to donate.In one of my favorite W.C. Fields movies, The Bank Dick, a fast-talking con man convinces Fields' dim-witted associate to embezzle bank funds in order to invest in the con man's "Beefsteak Mine" stock. I don't know about you, but what little beef I do eat these days isn't mined. I tried to envision the guys in the tunnel, hard-hats with lamps illuminating their work. The conversation might go, "Look here, Charlie, a rich vein of flank steak!" "That's nothin, Frank," his mining partner would reply, "I just dug through to the richest deposits of rump roast anyone ever found in this county!" Yummy. As a result of the movie scene I now label any "no chance" investment a beefsteak mine. This provides a nice little contrast to the more desirable "gold mine" more commonly used to reference a terrific investment. Recently I got to ruminating about whether poker tournaments should be classified as gold mines or beefsteak mines, while attending the Commerce Casino's Los Angeles Poker Classic VIII, one of the five or six biggest, most prestigious poker tournaments held in the US each year. |
Tiger 1 home gamb1 gamb2 gamb3 gamb4 gamb5 gamb6 gamb7 Tiger 2 Casino and other Advertisers |
||