Poker News

Ashley Adams

Maybe I’m playing poker too much. I was sitting in synagogue today, the first day of the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah-a day for serious introspection. I found myself focused on a prayer written by the famous Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan. He was addressing the Jewish view of sin and salvation-major themes on this special holiday. He wrote:

“Nothing that we can say or think can really undo what has been done. The past can never be relived and it always conditions the present and future … Having failed, however,does not mean that we are failures, for the future lies before us with its infinite possibilities.

In our discouragement, many of us brood over our incapacity for good behavior, instead of trying to find out what bad consequences of our acts make them sinful, and how we may put our conduct on the right track so that it will not lead to wreckage of our abiding purposes.”

Don’t tell my rabbi, but I couldn’t keep my mind from focusing on how this prayer was instructive for the serious poker player. Think about it. We suffer a loss at the table. Rabbi Kaplan is telling us not to let it get us down-because it doesn’t mean that we are losers. We just need to learn from our defeat, apply the lessons we learn, and then commit ourselves to playing better in the future.

I hear these as instructions for a poker player. Don’t whine, he tells us. Don’t brood over what we think is our inability to win-our bad luck or our inherently bad poker skills. Rather, use the loss to motivate us to move forward and do better in the future.

This lesson was brought home to me as I recalled a recent session at Foxwoods. I was playing in a $20-$40 stud game. Most of the time, the table is populated by players who tend to be relatively tight and respect my raises and act accordingly by folding much of the time. Most of the time I win by being selectively aggressive-mixing in bluffs and semi-bluffs.

So this time I began the session by pushing some action early on with some scare cards as I normally do with good results. Unfortunately, I found that the players in this game were much more likely to call my raises than the typical $20-$40 player. I’d raise with my ace in late position; they’d call. Three or four of us would see fourth street. If I hit a suited card or another premium card I’d bet again, only to get called again. I quickly found that I was down $600 as my hands failed to improve and my attempts at stealing the pot also failed. Alas.

But rather than getting down on myself, or getting discouraged, or going on tilt, or quitting the game, thinking luck or the poker gods were against me, I used my early losses to get me to think. I considered my opposition more carefully. These were not my typical opponents. These guys were much looser and somewhat wilder. And so I adjusted my play. As Rabbi Kaplan so eloquently said it, I put my conduct on the right track so that it did not lead to the wreckage of my bankroll. I bluffed and semi-bluffed far less and value bet and called more with medium strength hands. My adjustments paid off and I left a $900 winner for the session.

I’m not suggesting that every poker player convert to Judaism to improve his or her game. But these words by Rabbi Kaplan are worth considering, no?

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