Page 7 - April 2003 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Back-Up Plan Important for Bad Nights by Andrew N.S. Glazer
Ijust got knocked out of a poker tournament that I didn’t have to leave, because I lost my chips during what’s called the “rebuy” period—a time early in certain events when you are allowed to buy more chips if you lose all you have, and in No-Limit Hold’em, you
lies in having some self-control, even if you’re not in that top 1%. Perhaps just as important as either of these answers, though, is having a back-up plan: Something else you have planned in advance that you can do, should your gambling take a bad turn.
The back-up plan’s nature depends on where you are and what your likes and dislikes are.
The important thing is that you recognize both the misery indifference concept, and come to the casino armed with a plan for escape. When you’re already in the throes of misery, it’s probably too late to come up with a good back-up plan.
What was my back-up plan for the poker tournament? While I’d like to think I’m in that top 1%, I not only had a column to write, but a local TV channel was running a Star Trek: The Next Generation marathon. Leaving the card casino was a simple matter. There’s always another tournament, and the casino will always be there on a night when things are going your way.
Andrew N.S. (“Andy”) Glazer is a columnist and Poker Tournament Editor for Card Player Magazine, and is widely considered to be the world’s foremost poker tournament reporter. He is also the online guide for the free poker information site, www.poker.casino.com Newsweek called him “a poker scholar,” and he was one of the broadcasters for ESPN at the 2002 World Series of Poker. Mr. Glazer writes a general gambling column for the Detroit Free Press, has written for virtually every gaming publication of note, and is the author of Casino Gambling the Smart Way, which can be found in bookstores or at his own website, www.casinoselfdefense.com.
can easily lose all your chips on one hand.
Despite my con dence in my skill in this particular game, I decided not to invest any more money in this particular tournament, because I just felt that it “wasn’t my day.” I’d gotten unlucky a few times, and more important, I’d made a couple of plays that I didn’t think were optimal. I had a muscle spasm in my back and I’d thought this might prove distracting, and whether it was the spasm, the bad luck, or just a lack of focus due to other matters, it wasn’t my day, and I decided to leave rather than invest more money in the tournament.
You may never participate in a poker tournament, but almost every one of you will have days or nights at the poker tables when things are not going well. Unless you possess self-control that’s in the top 1% of all gamblers, it’s of the utmost importance that you recognize when it’s “not your day” and get the heck out of the cardroom when it’s happening.
From a purely mathematical viewpoint, this doesn’t make sense for casino games, but the right mental attitude is critically important in games of skill like
poker. If you don’t, you run the risk of gambling past your point of what I call “misery indifference.”
How much money you have to lose to hit the misery indifference point depends entirely on how well off you are. For some people, it might be $400. For others, it might be $40,000. Let’s assume you’re more of a middle-class citizen and that your point of misery indifference is $500.
Once you’ve lost that $500, you’re so unhappy that you barely care what happens after that. You start making silly bets, you hit the credit card cash advance machine, you go absolutely berserk, because it makes no difference to you whether you lose $500 or $800.
You’re already feeling so miserable that you don’t care — that night. The next day, the extra $300 you lost makes a serious difference in your ability to pay down the credit cards, or to take that vacation you’d been planning, or to buy Christmas presents.
How do you avoid the dangers of gambling past the point of misery indifference? Part of the answer lies in simply recognizing the danger. Part of the answer
April 2003
Page 7
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
Column: The Poker Pundit