Poker gems, #457

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Bluff magazine, June, 2012, page 71.

When aspiring pros find out that being a poker pro mostly involves folding hands and waiting for the right spot, they get bored. Sometimes it seems like you are folding hands all night long, and when you do get a hand, you end up folding the flop. And on a rough streak this can happen for a week straight. When an aspiring pro discovers that playing poker correctly really isn't that much fun and it isn't the fascinating creative experience he thought it would be, the bloom is off the rose. Playing poker for a living is a ton of work, and sometimes you work hard all week for a paycheck that has a negative number written on it.

After a few years as a pro, you may start to wonder when the big baller lifestyle is going to kick in. You'll get impatient for your time on TV at a big featured table, your time on the podium being awarded a bracelet, your big sponsorship dollars. And they may never come. There are great players who have never done any of these things. They just grind away, making good money, paying the mortgage, paying a ton of taxes, and folding hands. Are you sure that's what you want?

This article is really the long way to ask a simple question. Do you really want to play poker seriously, or do you want to play poker the same way I wanted to be an astronaut when I was 9?

Poker gems, #427

Chris Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, June, 2011, page 65.

This is why the players at the higher limits just nod and smile when a new player sits down and says, "I had to move up here where people play real poker, you can't beat that lower game where no one knows how to fold a hand."

If you can't beat the weak game, then you sure as hell can't beat the game you just moved up to, and the regulars all know it! When I see this happen I know that the new player is going to lose his chips, but he will be happier doing it at the bigger table and he will chalk it up to a bad run of cards.

Let go of your desire to make the table behave the way you want it to and start adapting to your table. Letting the game come to you, and taking advantage of the mistakes your opponents make, is both less frustrating and more profitable.

Poker gems, #405

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, December, 2010, p. 71.


Over the years I have never had a student who is losing money because he is playing too tight in cash games. Occasionally I have advised a student to play a few more hands in late position, and I have advised almost all of them to be more positional overall, but I have never had a student who really needs to loosen up.

Poker gems, #395

Chris Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, November, 2010, p. 67.


He began to remind me of the tournament player who says something like: "The next time you come after my big blind, I'm raising with any two."

To a solid player this statement means: "Go ahead and steal my blinds all day. I hate when people do it, and my best defense is to try to scare them because I am not capable of reraising unless I have a big hand."

Poker gems, #355

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, April, 2010, p. 64.


A $5-$10 spread-limit game has been running regularly at my local cardroom (Running Aces Harness Park in Minnesota), and I've been heading out there more often lately.... Minnesota state law limits the maximum bet size to $60, so it's not possible to make the kind of money I make online, but it helps fight the cabin fever. Don't even get me started about a state that advertises its lottery all over billboards and allows a drunk to buy a thousand dollars worth of pull-tabs in most of the bars in town but has set a $60 cap on poker games. Ridiculous.

Poker gems, #343

Steve Brust, as quoted in Chris Wallace's column for Poker Pro magazine, February, 2010, p. 77.


Probably the biggest thing I'm working to overcome is fear--fear of losing money, and fear of looking like an idiot. The answer to fear is math: if the numbers say it is profitable to make a certain play, then you make that play. Math overcomes fear. If word of this gets out, it may change the world.

New versus established tables

A long time ago I noticed a trend that I wasn't sure was real: Newly started games seemed harder to make money at than when I joined a game that had long been in progress. I couldn't tell if this was a figment of my imagination, a sampling anomaly, or a real phenomenon.

I mentioned it to Cardgrrl when she was here last month, and, to my surprise, she quickly agreed. Here are some factors we came up with that might explain it:

• At a new table it is less likely that players have already been drinking (though that's not unheard of).
• Nobody is stuck and therefore playing wildly to try to get back to even.
• Most players sit down with a mental commitment to playing tight and conservatively, but that discipline tends to break down over time, so it is less of a factor governing play in an established game than a new one.
• The table maximum buy-in set a limit on what the biggest stacks are at first. But after the game has been going, if players are taking big swings at each other, the total chip count on the table can climb dramatically as the rebuys accumulate.

Given those considerations, and now that I've taken the time to think it through, I have decided that on the rare occasions that I am offered the choice between a game just getting started and one of the already established ones, I will hastily select the latter.

Interestingly, the opposite may hold true online. In the current issue of Poker Pro magazine, Chris "Fox" Wallace discusses the life cycle of online poker tables. (Actually, this is what brought the whole subject back to mind and prompted me to write about it.) Again, this is not something I had really considered before, but he makes a good case that it is often profitable to be the first or one of the first to start or join a new online table. This is because the fishy players are impatient and will tend to sit down wherever they can find an open seat without waiting. They do not look for particular weak opponents to play with. They do not bother checking the lobby for table stats of average pot size, number of players seeing the flop, etc. So if you can be there right when they first log on, you can be the one to take their money. As Wallace puts it, when the other sharks smell blood in the water, it will be because you have been dining.

So take heed, and choose your table accordingly.

Poker gems, #213

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75.


Being a predator is not for everyone, and it has its risks. If you are a predator, you trade the joy of poker for the profit. You no longer get to do whatever is the most fun--now you do whatever is the most profitable. Home games might not interest you at all anymore because the money is not big enough or the players are people you don't want to prey on. I don't play with my friends or family for just that reason....

You will have to learn to separate your approach at the tables from the rest of your life, because you do not want to be a predator at the grocery store or with your friends. If you aren't careful, your entire life can become a contest to see how much money you can make in every situation.

If you separate poker from everything else, it becomes easier to become a stone-cold killer at the tables, and easier to keep that killer away from people you like. So keep poker away from the other parts of your life.

Poker gems, #212

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75.


Predators do not spend time complaining, they spend time improving. Complaining does not win you any chips, while working on your game increases your win rate. That means bad beat stories are out. Don't tell them, and don't listen to them.... If you made the right play, then let it go and move on to the next hand. If you didn't, then learn from it, but don't waste any time lamenting your bad luck.

Poker gems, #211

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75.


A predator also does not sulk or go on tilt after a bad beat, just as a lion does not lay around and sulk after a failed attempt at catching a meal. He keeps hunting, because the next one might be slower or dumber, and the one that got away would not have tasted any better than the meal in front of him. To be a predator you must remember that all the fish are the same, their money spends the same, and if a fish takes a thousand dollars from you in bad beats, it's only because his fish friends have given you two thousand in the past.

Poker gems, #210

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75.


When someone calls me a fish, I revel in it, knowing that they not only think I'm a bad player (most days that's very wrong), but that they probably don't understand my game at all, and they won't be trying to understand it. A predator would dissect my game, trying to figure out why I did something, and if I was really a fish they would either keep quiet about it, or compliment me on my play in a genuine fashion. A predator is happy when his prey is slow and easy to catch, and he doesn't warn them that he's following them or that they could get away from him by behaving in a smarter way.

Poker gems, #209

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75.


Being called a fish at the table is one of my favorite things. It tells me so much about an opponent, and all the news is good. When someone starts to berate me for my play, it almost always means that they are paying more attention to my mistakes than my good play, and they are usually misdiagnosing a play and don't understand what happened or why I made the play I did. It tells me that they will be expecting me to suck out on them, so I can bet out when the flush comes in and I missed my straight, because they will often fold.

Poker gems, #208

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75.


This attitude won't make poker more fun; in fact, it will be less fun. You won't get to play a lot of hands, and you won't be able to satisfy many of the social needs that every human has. Things like the desire to be liked, the need for respect, an inherent desire for fairness and justice and a sense of entitlement to some of those pots that you aren't winning when things go badly. You will have to learn to satisfy all of those psychological needs away from the felt (real or virtual), because while you are at the table you can only care about chips, and getting more of them in front of you.

This means that you cannot focus on anyone at the table who makes you angry. Teaching that guy a lesson and dispensing some justice will not get you any chips, so you rein yourself in and don't even think about him, because he doesn't matter. Only chips matter.

Poker gems, #207

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75.


If you really want to play poker part or full time as a significant part of your income, you need to become a predator. You need the ability to detach yourself from the game, from the frustrations and from all of your desires....

You are not here to dispense justice or to show that guy to your right who the boss is. You aren't here to gain respect or show off or convince someone that you are a better player than they are. You don't even care if they know you're any good at all. Because you only care about the money. Big piles of chips in front of you, as many as possible, and those chips are the only reason you play this game. Games are too tough these days to play any other way and still expect to win.

Poker gems, #206

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Poker Pro magazine column, January, 2009, pp. 74-75. Note: I don't usually find much to like in Poker Pro, but once in a while there something of real value. I thought this column was especially good, so I'm going to post several paragraphs from it, each as a separate entry, on consecutive days.


There are only two attitudes about poker that make sense. Either you are a recreational player and you want to have some fun and see if you are any good, or you are a serious player and you only care about making money. Anything in between the two is a recipe for disaster. Trying to have fun and casually play some cards will guarantee that you lose money, and losing money when you are trying to be serious about winning will ruin your fun.