Post #5: The Truth About "Locking Up Wins"

Everyone has heard the platitude of “control what you can control.” While it tends to be swept under the rug in many instances, in poker it’s one of the easiest ways to float to HSNL. Looking through a framework of following a genuinely +EV strategy, the edges gained in an online environment are still effectively marginal (at least at MSNL in the sense of winning at 3bb/100 is deemed to be successful). Following a strategy that truly generates EV will surely lead to long term results given that the volume is adequate.  

I’ve always been someone to lock up wins on the day, especially after having 10bi+ days. Hell, even 5bi+ days after taking a break and seeing the monetary result. My internal dialogue tends to be something like this, “Why would I play anymore, I can be happy with this day. I crushed it, let’s log off with a win.” Even though there are some people that like to keep pushing massively winning days, I used to (and still do, I’m not completely over it yet) identify my skill based on my daily results. This leads to a roller coaster of feeling like a loser when the balance in my account isn’t higher than it was when I first started playing on the day, and feeling like I’m the next HSNL wizard and the only thing that’s stopping me is my bankroll when I win. Through this mental paradigm, I don’t see myself as a long-term winner, more as someone who has more winning days than losing, but is still a “loser” on occasion. It’s very important this is recognized, because zooming out long term, I’ve been able to survive through playing poker as my source of income alone. Having this ability to zoom out and truly see that the graph I see in front of me is through my own work, decisions, and strategic implementation should take away any doubt I have in the ability I possess. If I truly understand that’s the case, not playing poker because of a massively winning day, even if I genuinely want to, is criminal. Doing something like this reinforces the mentality of “I need to win today, lock this win and feel like a winner. Go on, revel in the glory that is this day.” The truth, and the brutal one at that, is winning on a particular day doesn’t matter in the slightest. It only matters for my ego.

The EV of my strategy will reveal itself in the long run, so I am only delaying the inevitable regression that is bound to occur. When I have a day winning at 40bb/100, that’s obviously not my true win-rate. I will eventually get to a point where I have a rather poor day and lose at -40bb/100. Instead of truly understanding that, I am fearing the following, “Maybe I’m not a winning player, but locking up this win proves that I was one today.” I still have that back-end fear that I’m a losing player, because the logical thing to do is to play until I don’t feel like I want to play anymore. This doesn’t mean burn myself out and play 16 hours a day, but if I genuinely want to play for 12 hours on a weekend and feel like I’m in a mental state to do so, I should. This also doesn’t mean to play for 12 hours straight. Mental fatigue sets in, so playing for a few hours at a time, relaxing, and getting back after it is different than trying to grind volume for elongated periods. Being in tune with how I truly feel will lead to better results by default. I play enough volume to where I can take time off if I wanted. The feeling that rests within me when I want to play but choose not to is, “I am leaving money on the table by choosing not to play.” However, this mentality doesn’t stay with me when I win 5bi, because if it did, and I still wanted to play, I would be sitting in the seat and generating as much EV as I possibly could before I wanted to take a break.  

At the end of the day, given the sample I’ve put in and the hours of studying and sheer volume, my graph trends upwards. I don’t have to latch on to these wins anymore. It’s a major step back in progression when I’m playing my normal stake. Shot taking, we can argue that locking up wins when first moving up to a new stake can ease yourself into it, but that’s not the topic at hand here. This is playing volume at your regular stake over a long period of time, but still choosing to lock up a big win in order to feel better about yourself. The way I plan to continue playing after I start feeling like I don’t want to lose anymore is to look back at my entire sample at 200nl, and realize that by not playing, I’m not incrementally moving the EV line upwards, because I feel so entitled that I deserve to be a “winner” on the day to day. 

Onwards and Upwards. (Graph of 200z/200nl)