How to Be a Poker Player: The Philosophy of Poker by Haseeb Qureshi

Author:Haseeb Qureshi
Format: epub

Weathering your Downswings

Two things are inevitable in poker: downswings and taxes. (Unless you’re British, in which case you can subtract the taxes and add funny accents.)

As successful as you think the greatest players are, part of their greatness comes from the fact that they have braved downswings deeper than almost anyone else. It is a statistical certainty that the longer you play poker, the more likely you will face a downswing of truly titanic proportions.

We are naturally inclined to think of ourselves as poker players in terms of what we’re like when things are going well and we are successful. But how you face those downswings is just as big, if not bigger, a part, of your true capability as a poker player. I say again, how you face your downswings is a vital part of your skill as a poker player.

I emphasize this because it’s a direly important point. Being a great poker player isn’t just about capitalizing on upswings, nice graphs, taking shots and moving up. A huge part of the journey of a poker player is how you brave your downswings. It is gritting your teeth, taking punishment, again and again, day after day, and holding fast. Being a great player when you’re winning is not enough.

You must know that it is always possible a storm of variance will hit you, a storm so large, so powerful, so destructive that you will not survive it, so ruthless that it will break you. And someday, if you keep playing poker, you will face that downswing, and it will be one bigger, deeper, and longer than you ever thought possible. This is a statistical certainty. No amount of playing good, or praying, or good karma will protect you from it. It is only a matter of time and chance. The question, then, is this. How strong are you, really? How big of a storm will you be able to weather?

There are scores of players who were fantastically skilled when they were sailing out in the open waters of running-good. But when they could not handle the storm that hit them, they went broke. It is the oldest story in poker, and though it happens again and again, this story always goes untold, unremembered. Narratives in poker revolve around the successful, the upward spiking graphs and the smooth, continuous winrates. The masses of poker seek these stories out, they selectively inundate themselves with these stories, as though to blanket themselves from reality.

But this is the way it is. Poker is a fickle mistress.

So let us say this—skill and winrate in poker should not be measured merely by how good you are when you are running well, but also by how good you are when you are running poorly. Your running-bad winrate is part of your overall winrate, when abstracted over the long run. This seems obvious, but in fact, most players unthinkingly do the opposite when they calculate their winrate. When you look at a sample of your winrate while

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