Page 8 - December 2005 • Southern California Gaming Guide

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Man and
Less Suffering at the Poker Table
by Jim Mercurio
Lose 30 pounds in 3 weeks. Make a million dollars overnight. Become a poker pro after reading this book.
You’ve heard these exuberant claims. And you know they are all lies. However,
there is something you can do the next time you play poker that will transform your game instantaneously.
Why am I giving this away for free? It’s my holiday gift to you. Here it is: Don’t look at your hole cards until it’s your turn to act.
stomach while they were watching a movie—was all about manipulating expectations. It is created by the careful dissemination of information. Give the audience too much information and they become bored—not enough and they get confused. But just enough information and the audience will be completely engaged in the moment.
Phil Gordon gave me that advice himself. It makes sense. No one can read you. No one can know what you have if you don’t know. Great players will often glance to their left before they act. If they are in middle position and two players to their left look disinterested and another player is just waiting to muck, suddenly they are in late position. And that is a huge di erence. Don’t give away that information to other players.
By choosing to not look at your hand, you are creating tension, excitement and anticipation. Why is staying open to what’s “You have to act as if there is this important? Because to happening. play poker with discipline If you had watched only the hand right in front can sometimes be very
and what you want the future to be instead of just
A more sophisticated reason for not looking at your
hand until it’s your turn to act has to do with a simple
concept that Howard Lederer introduced to me: You
have to be in the moment. Howard incorporates
principles of Zen Buddhism into his teachings on
poker. ( anks to him, Zen in the Art of Archery by
Eugen Herrigel and Daisetz Suzuki and Zen Mind, e practice of not
Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuzki adorn my bookshelf.) In a given poker hand, you have to forget the past (the bad beats) and forget the future (the what-ifs).
You have to act as if there is only the hand right in front of you. If you glance down at AQ off suit, your mind might start turning, “This is the first playable hand in an hour, I will raise 3 times the big blind, if I win the pot uncontested, my chip-stack will be almost out of the danger zone...” But the problem is you don’t really have enough information to know anything about what it means to have AQ right now. In fact, you have wasted your energy and focus on your expectations
looking at my hand until
it’s my turn to act has
been fundamental in my
$20,000 in tournament
winnings this year. And
I recently had a Eureka
moment where I had a
powerful and personal discovery about it.
the table, you might have seen that the UTG player, who happens to be a rock, limped in and then was raised by a very astute pro.
of you. If you glance down at AQ off suit, your mind might startturning,‘Thisisthefirst playable hand in an hour, I will raise 3 times the big blind, if I win the pot uncontested, my chip-stack will be almost out of the danger zone...’ But the problem is you don’t really have enough information to know anything about what it
boring for the new player. Impatience is one of the biggest obstacles I face in my tournament play. Even if you have a horrible run of cards and have to throw away 40 hands in a row, there is a simple way to get a few moments of sheer excitement and anticipation out of every single hand. All you have to do is wait until it’s your turn to act before looking at your cards. e suspense won’t kill you, I promise.
In Buddhism, they say
And then you will see that you have plenty of chips and aren’t desperate. Now when you look down and see your AQ, you will see it for what it is: a clear fold.
I spent the weekend of November 13 lecturing about screen writing and storytelling to thousands of writers at the Screen writing Expo in Los
Angeles. A colleague of mine and I were discussing the essence of narrative storytelling and realized that tension—the uneasy feeling in the audience’s
means to have AQ right now. ” having expectations can lead to su ering. I say, look
at your cards before it’s your turn, it’s your game that will su er.
Jim Mercurio is a writer, filmmaker and poker player. He produced the film Hard Scrambled, which stars Kurtwood Smith (That 70’s Show) and Richard Edson (Do the Right Thing). Writing and poker are two very lonely businesses. If you read this column, drop Jim a line at jim@jamespmercurio.com. Happy Holidays.
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Page 8 December 2005
Poker: Wired Aces and River Rats with Jim Mercurio