Addicted to Winning

Addicted to Winning
By Rolf Slotboom

When people who know nothing about poker hear that I'm a professional player, they often ask if I'm addicted. Most of the time, I have to answer (as honestly as possible): I don't know. Since I started playing poker for a living three years ago, I have been a consistent winner. My results have always been good, especially when considering the game conditions in Holland, where I have played the majority of my sessions (the poker pit is open there only seven hours a day, the dealers are slow, the rake is high and my opponents are fairly knowledgeable).

I guess I'm addicted to winning. If I win an x-amount of money in November, I want to win even more in December; if I'm the biggest winner in the second-highest limit available, I want to become the No.1 player in the biggest game. I don't know how things will be if I cannot beat the games anymore, and that's when your true colors show. When I started playing professionally, there were a few steady winners who are now break-even players at best; they still come to the casino to win and when they fail to do so, they get sour. But they still show up every time!

Being a winner during a certain period of time doesn't give any guarantees. I think I've got one of the best combinations a poker player can possibly have: ambition, talent, discipline. However, that doesn't mean I will be a winner for life. New stars may rise, I might lose the love for the game, get burned out, or the game conditions might change so games will become tougher to beat. For now, I'll look at things from the positive side and that's not too hard, as I feel I'm still improving all the time (and get confirmation in my results).

On Winning and Losing

Before becoming a professional player, I had been working as a dealer, first in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and later in Vienna, Austria. The job was nice, the money was good and I had two good friends of mine working as colleagues. Still, I had come to the point where I wanted to play for a living, rather than deal. I thought (as most dealers do) that I was talented enough to make a living playing the game (in fact, my bosses laughed at me when I told them my plans; they said so many dealers before me had tried the same and no one succeeded). As it turned out, it was more my discipline that helped me make it than my talent. When I started, I didn't know very much about the game. I hadn't read any books or used any software yet, but by playing rock-solid poker and the willingness to learn I was still able to be a consistent winner from day one.

The good thing about being a winning player is you can choose your own times to play. You've got no bosses telling you what to do, and (if you're really good) you can make a decent living out of the game. The bad thing is: it won't automatically last. You've got to keep improving on your game all the time, since that's what your opponents will be doing. When I started out, my main edge was playing ultra-tight and still being able to get paid off all the time.

Eventually, people will catch up on what you're doing, and you're going to have to add some new weapons to your poker arsenal. In the second year of my career, during a period in which I tried to add some more creativity to my game, I found myself for the first time faced with a long losing streak. I lost seven days in a row for a large total sum and, for the first time, I started losing faith. I wondered if my game was still good enough; if being a professional player was at all possible; if maybe the people who had told me this was impossible may not have been right all along; in fact, I wondered if I was able to play the game at all.

Later, you get to see the patterns: that losing streaks are part of the game, that poker is a highly fluctuating game, that trying to add some more creativity to your game also means bigger swings and that losses are therefore more likely than ever. The thing that surprised me the most was this. People had always feared me, since I hardly ever lost. When they saw I was unable to win several days in a row (more because of bad luck than because of bad play, because even during that period I was able to keep my cool and play reasonably well), they lost respect: they started check-raising and making moves on me they had never done before.

When my worst streak out my career had ended, I was fortunate enough to have my biggest winning streak right away and pretty soon everything went back to normal. People feared and respected my play again and avoided getting involved with me too often (like they always had), and that's exactly the situation you, as a winning player, want to be in. You don't want your opponents to become too tricky, creative, or dangerous.

Conditioning Myself and my Opponents

When I play poker, I always do the same things. I always do the same routine before getting into the game,start with the same amount (compared to the limit) at all times, stack my chips the same way etc. Why is that? I believe in conditioning yourself and your opponents that you're going to win. If people expect you to win and see the same patterns (your stack growing) all the time, they might start taking that as a given; that is, it's no question to them whether you're going to get the chips, it's when you're going to get them.

In limit games, I have always bought in for the minimum, keeping chips in my pocket to add to my stack when my stack didn't contain five or six big bets anymore* (depending on the aggressiveness of the game). People know that whenever I start playing I will have the shortest stack on the table. However, since they know I'm a winning player, they expect my stack to grow. In my opinion, this makes it more likely my stack will actually grow (call it a self-fulfilling prophecy if you want). I know this is contrary to what most writers tell you (about big stacks and the intimidation factor).

However, if you're playing limit poker with the same (small) group of people, they know you're up when you've build your little pyramid, and that the other guy with the same amount of chips just bought in for them. Whenever the casino is open 24 hours a day rather than opens and closes at fixed times (and thus people don't start their sessions at the same time), or when you play in a casino with lots of strangers or tourists, then buying in for a bigger amount might not be such a bad idea. Still, I like to start with a short stack, fully expecting to build it during the session (and expecting my opponents to expect the same).

* In Europe, the minimum buy-in for limit games is ten big bets most of the time.

Some Final Words

The truth of the matter is: I don't know how I'll react if I can't beat the games anymore. Am I really addicted (and thus, when I start losing all the time, I still can't quit) or just addicted to winning (and thus, if the games become too tough to beat, I'll quit and start looking for a different job).

Right now, I've just had the biggest winning streak out of my career (17 winning sessions in a row and on top of that at pot-limit, where the swings can be huge and therefore winning players don't necessarily have a very high win rate), and found myself getting more energy after each win. People who tell you it's about winning money are wrong. The money is nice, but the feeling of accomplishment is the driving force for most winning players; the urge of being the best, the desperate need to win, win, win.

Professionals try to win all the time, maybe not during a single session, but in the long run. If they are really true professionals, they also try to win the right way: by behaving nicely to fellow players and dealers; by creating a friendly atmosphere for their less skilled opponents; by accepting the luck factor in poker and not complaining about it, and by never angle-shooting or, in an unfair way, take advantage of a situation that has occurred.