We’ve all been there, the pain of knowing you had your opponent against the ropes, just about to hand you all their chips and then the river brings the backdoor flush that also puts 4-to-a-straight on the board and they instajam their chips into the middle.
You immediately know—somehow, in a way that’s probably aggravating as heck, they’ve managed to get there.
You know too that the disciplined play is to trust your instincts and fold, but…there’s always a chance…right? They could be bluffing, couldn’t they?
You click the call button and see what you already know—rivered again.
Why do I always do this, you ask yourself, why can’t I fold when I know I’m beat??
It seems like the decision point – the moment that determines whether you win or lose – has passed, but, in fact, it has just arrived.
Do you blame your opponent? Do you blame the cards? Do you blame the poker gods? Or do you put the onus on yourself to improve and figure out why you keep calling when you know you shouldn’t, and more importantly, how to stop doing it?
How Not To Hero-call
One of the wisest things I’ve ever learned in poker came from an old poker coach of mine who taught me that the question in this type of situation isn’t do you call or do you fold, it’s do you want to be right or do you want to be rich?
If you want to be right, he said, continue calling, you are bound to find many moments where you will be, and it’ll feel as good as good can feel.
But if you want to be rich, he continued, short-term pain is the answer, as it often is in life. The pain of sacrificing the chips in the middle, the pain of having to rebuild your stack, the pain of possibly having gotten got.
Learning to fold when the evidence says you’re beat requires a level of humility that can be tough to execute in a game driven so heavily by competitiveness and ego. Exercising restraint and having the discipline to rebuild may not come naturally, but mastering it can make the difference between long-term profitability and the temporary satisfaction of a reckless call.
That question of do you want to be right or do you want to be rich has always stuck with me, likely saving me from many a terrible hero-calls. I would only add this to the advice:
View your poker results through a lens of years, not sessions.
Folding in tough spots becomes infinitely easier when the goal isn’t immediate profits or the ego boost of a successful hero call, but staying on the likeliest path to long-term poker success.
And in a case where your analysis and intuition are both pointing in the same direction, that means accepting the pain, mucking your hand, and beginning the search for the next profitable opportunity.
Sometimes, perhaps even often, being a hero simply means staying humble enough to keep yourself alive.
Will Watson is a writer, amateur poker player and enthusiastic student of the human mind.
Contact me at: willwatsonpoker@gmail.com
