Sam Forde is a qualified counsellor and professional poker player based in Auckland, New Zealand. He specializes in heads-up no-limit hold'em, and contributes poker mindset videos on a regular basis for Run It Once. Sam enjoys the stimulation of poker strategy, psychology, and the various areas in which these intersect.
I was recently involved in a Run It Once bootcamp called ‘Playing Against Recreationals.’ Addressing this theme brought up a lot of memories for me - the good, the bad and the strikingly ugly.
The truth is that for a long time I struggled to play well against recreationals. I was the stereotypical solver-era player. All my interest and energy went into battling other regs and studying with solvers. Meanwhile, I was ignoring my serious leaks vs. recs. I was ashamed of this struggle. I thought ‘Playing recs is easy. I should have mastered this already.’ So, I would either autopilot with my baseline strategy or I would make big over-adjustments, but these were tainted by technical errors and fused with my own fears and judgments.
A classic example of this was that I would retaliate against maniacs by fighting fire with fire. Their mindless aggression was met with my mindless aggression. I had some analytical-sounding thoughts at the forefront of my mind, but a lot of these were post hoc justifications for the impulse ‘Stand tall and don’t let them push you around!’
Three versions of me walk into a bar…
These slug fests with high-variance and unpredictable opponents could be stressful, and while my thought-process had the semblance of deliberation, it was a mess. I can give you a sample. Picture three parts of me in conversation at a bar inside my mind.
Gung-ho Hero: “He 3-bets way too much, so I’m going to widen my 4-bet range.”
Analytical Hero: “OK, but do you really think this is a guy who likes to fold to 4-bets?”
Hype-man: “More 4-bets! We need to respond to this aggression or he’ll walk all over us.”
Analytical Hero: “But you’ll just end up…”
Gung-ho Hero and Hype-man are loudly revving each other up. They shout, whoop, drain their beers and run back out into the fray.
Analytical Hero (calling after them): “You’ll just end up playing bloated pots with marginal hands against a guy who is more than happy to get it in on any street.”
There would be variations on this theme, but the dominant formula was ‘My opponent is doing a thing to me and I need to defend myself!’
I’m sure something similar happens to you some of the time against certain opponents in particular parts of the game tree. For instance, imagine you are facing an opponent who check-raises a lot. Do you have thoughts like ‘If their check-raise range here is made up of a lot of thin value, then I can actually consider overfolding’, or do you just see the flashing neon lights: ‘They are trying to do something to me and I need to stop it!’?
Part of the difficulty in these situations is seeing the wood for the trees - bearing in mind what their check-raise range and frequency say about their check-calling range, for instance, and how you can exploit this imbalance on different nodes. This is harder work, because it involves thinking about what didn’t happen. It involves having a sense of the splits in the game tree and the impact of our opponents’ choices. This is a key skill in poker, but it is a process which requires attention and focus.
How can we address the mental side of some of these leaks?
I find the question ‘What am I afraid of, right now?’ to be fruitful.
I’m afraid of being exploited. I’m afraid of feeling weak. I’m afraid of feeling like things are out of control.
A variation on this question is: ‘What is important to me that I am trying to protect?’
My sense of being competent. My survival in the game. My self-esteem.
Often these will be good things you value which have been hijacked by self-preoccupation.
Self-preoccupation is a very normal response to tricky feelings. The problem is that we can get quite caught up in this. We have all sorts of judgments (‘I should be managing better!’) and tricky feelings (e.g. annoyance/discomfort). To throw fuel on the fire, shame can be lurking nearby (‘If you can’t break even this month, it’ll just go to show what a loser you are.’). Self-preoccupation thrives on these and we end up blaming others, acting out of a sense of entitlement, and getting angry. Then we are stuck on the merry-go-round of self-preoccupied judgments (‘I shouldn’t get so tilted’), difficult feelings (e.g. deflated) shame (e.g. desperately wanting to win). And on it goes.
When there’s a part of our game of which we’re not proud, our reaction can be to ignore it, to hide. The problem with hiding is that problems get worse, we can get caught in the self-preoccupation spiral above, and our connection to good in-game thought-processes can suffer.
What is the antidote to this self-preoccupation? There are a few avenues here, but one fast route is to look outside yourself - to focus on paying attention to your opponent with curiosity.
What might my opponent be thinking? What’s it like to be in their shoes right now? How might they be experiencing this spot?
A second path, which runs alongside, is to focus on the creative potential of this moment.
What might be possible in this situation? How do I want to act?
Try this sequence, for example:
- What mistakes are available in this spot?
- What mistakes does my opponent tend to make?
- What mischief can I get up to in response?
Other players don’t owe us anything. We are responsible for looking outside ourselves and taking on a real curiosity about who we are up against. And we need to remember it’s OK that there are parts of our game which need work! We can embrace this. In the words of Leonard Cohen, “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
Learn more from Sam Forde at Run It Once.
Images courtesy of Alejandro Garay/Nadine Shaabana/Dan Gold/Unsplash
