Taking the walk of shame

In poker, taking the "walk of shame" commonly refers to leaving the table to hit up the ATM for more cash so that you can keep playing.

At the Palms tonight, over the course of a little less than seven hours of play, I saw the woman two seats to my right make this walk six times. I have no idea how long she had been there before I arrived, but occasionally when somebody at the table commented on being down, she would feel obligated to "top" that with a complaint about how many hundreds she was down--and the number kept growing.

She was trying desperately to get back to even, obviously. But she was simply outclassed--and not just by me, but by most of the other players at the table as well. We were all like a flock of vultures picking her bones. She was incredibly easy to beat, because if she had a big hand on the flop, she would bet big. If the flop missed her, she would check if she had not been the pre-flop raiser, and if she had been the pre-flop raiser, she would make just a small bet on the flop, then check the turn card. In other words, she was incapable of playing her weak hands as if they were strong. Since I nearly always had position on her, I was able to steal pot after pot from her by floating her smaller flop bets.* When she actually made a strong hand, she would bet big, and it was easy to fold with minimal financial damage.

She may have been the grouchiest woman I've ever shared a poker table with. She was always throwing her cards at the dealer. She openly, repeatedly blamed the dealers for bad cards and bad beats. Once when I won two large pots in a row from her in the first few minutes of a female dealer's session at our table, the woman turned to her and said, "That's $200 you've cost me just since you sat down here." Yeah, right--it's all the dealer's fault.

There's no question this player was having an unlucky day--flops didn't hit her hands, and on the rare occasion that they did, often another player would stick around and hit a straight draw or flush draw against her. She was on constant tilt, and in a constant foul mood, for the entire seven hours I was observing her. It was a really remarkable display of tenacity--that is, of holding on to every possible bad thought and feeling she could conjure up. It was as if she perversly loved wallowing in her misery and misfortune. There are people like that, you know; they enjoy obsessing on everything bad that happens to them because it confirms their preconceived notions about how unfair the world is.

Every time she stood up, I thought, "Well, she's finally had enough and is going to quit." But every time she came back within a few minutes with one or two crisp new Benjamins, and bought more chips. A hugely disproportionate amount of my winnings for this session came from her repeatedly replenished stack. I'll admit that I showed her both my strong hands and my bluffs in a deliberate effort to keep her steaming, because both actions had the same effect. If I showed her a bluff, she'd get mad at herself for folding the best hand. If I showed her that I was ahead, she'd get mad at the dealer for giving her the second-best hand or for letting me catch a lucky card to beat her. And the more smoke that poured out of her ears, the easier she became to beat. On the rare occasions that she made a strong hand, bet it hard, and everybody folded, that, too, would make her steam, because she couldn't get paid off. Her frustration was palpable.

Here's today's lesson: There are going to be poker-playing days when nothing goes right. Maybe it's because something is on your mind and you're not focusing well. Maybe you've sat down at a table of sharks. Maybe the poker gods just have it in for you today, and every possible unlucky outcome will happen, no matter how well you play. Maybe you started losing, and changed how you play--for the worse--in an unwise attempt to catch up again.

It doesn't really matter why it's happening. You have to recognize that it's just a bad day to be playing poker, leave, and come back another day. One of the most reliable and tangible indicators that you've reached a good quitting time is that you have burned through all of the cash that you brought with you. If you prepared properly for your session, that's probably at least two or three buy-ins. If you haven't gotten anywhere with that, it's probably not going to be happening for you today. The empty wallet should serve as a big, red, flashing beacon that it's time to quit. Maybe you should even put a note to yourself in there, right behind the 100s: "If you've gotten down to this note, GO HOME!!!"

If you've run through that money and have to make the walk of shame to the ATM, you will almost always be doing yourself a favor to keep on walking to the parking lot. Conversly, if you pull more cash out of your bank account and bring it back to the table, you will be doing me and all of your other opponents the favor.

Which way do you want it?


*"Floating" is the term for the ploy of calling an opponent's bet on the flop with nothing, then taking the pot away on the turn or river (still holding nothing), either because the opponent shows weakness by checking on one of those streets, or by putting in a hefty raise if the opponent makes another smallish bet.