Moral Victories

Is Losing Ever Supposed to Feel Good?

Last weekend I played the $1,100 buy-in PokerStars US Summer Series event at Philadelphia Live! (exclamation theirs). It was great to be back on the felt for the first time since Vegas! (exclamation mine)

I ran up an OK stack, only to bust when I got 40 blinds in with JTs vs KTo on a board of ATT7.

Along the way, I played three hands that I was particularly happy with.

Hand One: I open UTG1 with AcJh and get called by an excellent player in the big blind. The flop comes 3s3h2d and I continue for a min-bet. My opponent calls. The turn is the Qd and we both check. The river is the Qc and my opponent leads out for 1.6 times the pot. I fold.

Hand Two: The UTG1 player opens, and the Lojack three-bets off a 50 BB stack. From the BB, I four-bet to 13 BB with AdQd. The initial raiser folds, the three-bettor jams, I fold. (The jammer shows AcKc.)

Hand Three: The same excellent player from Hand One opens from the HJ. I three-bet to about 3x off a 50BB stack on the button with Th8h. The HJ four-bets to about twice the size of my three-bet. I fold.

Why was I happy with all these hands that I lost? Because after the tournament, I learned that the solver approves all these lines.

In Hand One I thought I probably had a min-bet with my entire range on that flop. The solver mostly agrees, although it mixes between a min-bet and a 2BB bet, with a slight preference for the 2BB bet. Still, I clearly had the right idea.

Then on that turn, I knew I was supposed to barrel with most of my range, but I thought I had one of the rare hands I could check back. And the solver agrees!

Finally, on the river, the solver does indeed have some big overbets in its range as the big blind. (As I said, my opponent was a very strong player.) My reasoning at the table was that I would’ve checked back the turn with JJ and my weaker queens, so I could call (or raise) the river with those, and safely fold my ace-high hands. And this is exactly the solver’s plan facing an overbet.

In Hand Two, the solver purely 4-bets AQs in my spot, and purely folds to the jam. For a long time I wouldn’t ever put in a quarter of my stack and fold to a shove, but I’ve looked at enough spots now to know there’s a time and place for it. I thought this was one such time, and the solver is with me.

The solver mixes between flatting and three-betting in Hand Three, so I’m definitely fine taking the more aggressive approach against a tough opponent, and trying to take down the pot right there. The solver purely folds even against a relatively small four-bet.

Now, of course, lining up with the solver’s play isn’t always the most desirable solution. In fact, as anyone who has read my latest book knows, I often deviate from what I consider optimal play to try to exploit the opposition.

But in this case, going against a very tough opponent in Hands 1 and 3, I’m mostly trying to play as optimally as possible. I’m therefore delighted that my plays were solver approved.

In Hand Two, my conscious thought process at the table was that the LJ was probably three-betting a bit wide, but would never play against my cold 4-bet without a hand. I actually wasn’t sure what the solver would think of my fold versus his shove, but I thought it was close enough to optimal, and I definitely thought it was the right play against this particular opponent. That it turns out to be the right play even against a tough opponent is just icing on the cake.

Am I happy I lost all these hands? No. But I’m happy with how I played them, and that’s of course the only thing that matters.

It never feels good to keep folding in key spots. Obviously. That’s why it’s so important to focus on the process instead of the results, to keep yourself from being miserable. Do that, and the results will eventually come.