Card Dead - Adam Stemple

It's happened to me, it's happened to you, it's happened to all of us. You sit for hours and watch an endless parade of cards that have nothing to do with each other go by. J6o, 83s, 92o--the crap just keeps on coming. You finally pick up a playable hand--KJ on the button, say--only to watch the flop come A88 with a bet and a raise in front of you. You throw it away and look at 72 or its equivalent for the next hour. It's then you realize it: you're card dead.

Nothing you can do about it, right? Wrong. I am about to tell you the single most important thing about being card dead, the one fact that will end your chances of being card dead ever again. Ready? It doesn't exist.

That's right, despite us all having experienced it, the state of being card dead does not exist. You should all know that intellectually, but I want you to realize it deep down. You are not now, nor have you ever been "card dead." The cards have no memory. Your chances of picking up a pair of aces remain steady at 220-1 against whether you had them the hand before or haven't seen them in three weeks. If you play 15% of your hands, then you are going to see 15 playable hands out of every 100 over the long haul. These are the facts. No matter how you feel, the cards don't know or care that you are running bad. The laws of probability don't change because you imagine yourself unlucky.

Now, this is not to say that being card dead doesn't effect you. It just isn't an external thing. It's internal, which is usually trickier to handle. Imagining yourself "card dead" is a subtle form of tilt. Any time you blame illusory external factors for a defeat (or victory, though we are all generally too ready to blow our own horn when things go right) then you are missing a vital chance to examine your own play and learn. This is also not to say that you can't claim, "I was card dead in that SnG and just couldn't do anything." As long as you are certain that you played well, and did everything you could with the cards you were dealt, then so be it. But so often, I hear card dead as just another term for running bad. But whereas "running bad" has some connotations of blame on the self (generally where it should be; how often have you been running bad, and gone back and examined your game to find that you had gotten way off kilter with some hands), "card dead" seems to indicate it is all the cards fault. That if only you had been dealt better cards you would be killing the game.

You will not be dealt better cards.

You will not be dealt worse cards.

We all get the same cards. Understand this. Over the long term--the only time frame that matters--we all get the same cards. You will see every hand in roughly the correct proportion to the others. The difference is, the good players make more on their good cards, and lose less on their bad ones. Losing less on the bad ones is very important. Possibly even more so than making more on the good cards. Very few people play considerably better when they are winning. It just feels like it. But most everyone gets frustrated, annoyed, heartbroken, angry etc. when they are losing. And those feelings lead to bad play. Bad play leads to more frustration, annoyance, heartbreak, anger, etc. And the cycle continues. Failing to lose less on your bad hands, leads to losing even more on your bad hands. And probably winning less on your big hands.

So when you feel you have been "card dead," don't ask, "When will I see better cards." Ask yourself, "Have I done everything possible to lose the absolute minimum on these shit hands I've been getting." And if you have, then just play poker. Those aces are just around the corner. Exactly one out of every two hundred and twenty-one hands.

Suggested Reading:

Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel