What's done is done

As I've mentioned previously (http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/07/hopelatrons-and-seeing-future-non.html), I think Phil Laak is one of the most interesting professional players to watch and read about. But though he's smart and, for the most part, highly rational, he occasionally reveals bits of unexpected irrationality.*

On an episode of "Cash Poker," (from which the above screenshot is taken), Phil initially limps in, along with several others. Then a player behind him puts in a large raise. Phil folds, as does the player on his left. Phil then says to the other guy who folded, "This is where you pray the flop doesn’t connect you, now that you’ve folded. This is the time for a small prayer."

I've heard this sort of comment many times before. For example, players are raising and re-raising each other before the flop, and a third player drops out of the action after the bets get too high for him. The two remaining players both get it all in, and the last one who folded announces that he mucked pocket 7s, and says, "Dealer, don't you dare put another 7 out there on the flop." Sometimes, when there is betting yet to come after the flop, a player who folds to a raise will not declare what he had, but will still give a generic warning to the dealer: "You had better not put out the cards that would make my hand."

This is insane! After you've folded, it can't possibly make any difference to you what community cards get revealed. A decision to call or fold before the flop isn't made retroactively correct or incorrect based on what three cards the dealer puts out. It was correct or incorrect based on the strength of the starting hand, your position, the number of opponents, your table image, your read on opponents' strength, the size of the pot, the size of the raise, and a myriad of other factors. But what happens after the point at which you have to make the decision is utterly irrelevant to any rational assessment of whether the decision to fold was correct.

I assume that Phil's implication is that if cards come on the flop that would have made him a powerful hand, had he stayed in, he will regret his decision to fold. That's ludicrous. Why would you chide yourself for not taking into account information that is unavailable at the time you had to decide what to do? Would you pride yourself on being a great player if you called a big raise with 7-2 and the flop was 2-2-7? I should hope not. So then how can it make sense to kick yourself for folding the 2-7 when that flop hits?

It's perfectly natural to see a flop that would have turned a garbage hand into a stealth monster and think something like, "I wish I could have my cards back." But you know that isn't how the game is played, so you shrug your shoulders and let it go.

(You might also take the opportunity to look back at your decision to fold and re-evaluate whether it was the smartest move, given the information you had at the time--not given what the flop was. The reason this is smart is that, if you conclude again that it was the right play, you can give yourself a little mental pat on the back to counteract what might otherwise be the insidious tendency to remember the 2-2-7 flop the next time you look down at 7-2, and play it in the futile hope of history repeating itself. I find that reassuring myself that my fold was correct helps neutralize any temporary sting of regret that I feel when the would-have-been miracle flop comes.)

However natural it is to feel a momentary twinge of regret for the mathematically and strategically correct fold that, in retrospect, would have been a lucky spot for an unorthodox pre-flop call, it strikes me as completely ridiculous to think--let alone say out loud--that you hope the flop isn't one that would have helped you. What, you can't handle that twinge of remorse, so you have to pray, beg, and threaten the dealer that circumstances don't come up that will cause you to feel it? That's just childish. Grow up already.

When I was in fifth grade, our class learned and performed a highly abbreviated (like, 30 minutes, I think) version of Shakespeare's "MacBeth." It was a great experience for me, especially since I landed the title role. I've never forgotten many of the lines I had to memorize back then, even though it has now been about 35 years.

After MacBeth has murdered King Duncan, in order to assume the throne himself, he is tormented by guilt. His wife, Lady MacBeth, says to him (Act 3, Scene 2),

How now, my lord! why do you keep alone,
Of sorriest fancies your companions making,
Using those thoughts which should indeed have died
With them they think on? Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what's done is done.

Even more famously, later Lady MacBeth herself becomes unhinged, and starts sleepwalking, reliving in her dreams the night that she pressed MacBeth to kill the king in his sleep (Act 5, Scene 1):

To bed, to bed! there's knocking at the gate:
come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What's
done cannot be undone.—To bed, to bed, to bed!

You can't go back and unfold your hand. You can't make your decision whether to play based on what the unknowable flop is going to be. Therefore, it's silly to anguish over having made a correct decision. It's even sillier, in anticipation of such regret, to make threats or propitiations in an attempt to prevent seeing a flop that will trigger such anguish. It is a "thing without all remedy," and "should be without regard."

Regular readers know by now that I'm not particularly keen on the idea that prayers at the poker table are of any efficacy. (See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/07/mr-destiny.html and http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/10/more-on-religion-at-poker-table.html.) As irrational and embarrassing as I think it is to offer up prayers to try to affect the outcome of a hand that one is in, it is ten times more foolish to offer them up to try to affect the outcome of a hand that one has already exited.


*I'm obviously aware that he's eccentric and does strange things. Some of that, I'm sure, is for show, and some is just his oddball personality. But peculiarity does not equal irrationality, and here I'm only talking about the latter trait.