Читать книгу Killer Poker Online/2: Advanced Strategies For Crushing The Internet Game - John Vorhaus - Страница 11

I can read minds, sort of.

No, I can’t guess your favorite color or think of your number from one to ten, but I can make a reasonably good stab at what’s in most people’s heads most of the time. The art came easily to me once I understood that 90 percent of everything everybody thinks is pretty much the same as everybody else. I discovered this skill in a poker game, waiting for a guy to bet or not bet into a really scary board of A♣-Q♣-J♣. I held just 8♥-7♦ and I remember being afraid the guy would bet, for I would have to credit him with a piece of that flop, and fold. And then it hit me with the force of revelation: If I’m afraid of the board, so is he! Looking at him, I could almost see the little thought balloon floating over his head:

When he checked, I bet and won the pot. Thus did my mind reading career begin.

I have since learned that mind reading is a useful skill across a wide range of my activities. As a writer trying to figure out how characters in stories think, I start by asking myself: What do I think? From this I can extrapolate what’s going on in my characters’ minds. As an editor working with writers, it’s easy for me to know what my writers are afraid of—hard censure, hard notes, and hard work—because when I’m a writer working with an editor, I’m afraid of these things, too. Negotiating has also become easier for me since I learned not just to see things from the other fellow’s point of view, but really to inhabit and own his perspective.

The trick of mind reading, then, turns out to be simple. To read other people’s minds, start by reading your own. If you’re open enough and honest enough to tell yourself what you really, truly think and feel and hope and fear, you’ll pretty much have the measure of everyone around you. If you tell yourself these things in a vague and approximate way, you end up with a vague and approximate notion of others’ thoughts. But if you analyze yourself with precision and in detail, you get a precise and detailed look into other people’s heads.

Do you think I’m wrong? Try it. In fact, try it on me. I’ll bet you can easily list five things I’m thinking right now. Start by asking yourself what you think of my claim to be able to read minds, and what you would be thinking if you were me, trying to sell that claim to you.

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Here are some of the things I’m thinking:

 I don’t think they’ll buy it; it’s such an outlandish claim.

 But it really works, and it works on so many levels.

 They’re probably wondering what this has to do with poker.

 Speaking of poker, I’d rather be playing right now than writing.

 I wonder if I’ve gotten any new email in the last five minutes.

 They’re gonna think I’m crazy, starting a poker book with a rant about mind reading.

 Maybe I am crazy, starting a poker book with a rant about mind reading.

 But we all know that simple self-awareness is the golden key to success in poker, and even if we can’t read others’ minds, there’s no end of benefit to being willing and able to read our own.

 Or maybe we don’t all know that. Maybe just I believe it.

 Gosh, maybe I’m on the wrong track.

 In fact, what gives me the authority to write this book in the first place?

 You’re a fraud, JV. Soon everyone will know.

 No new email. Just spam.

Did you get me right? Half right? Even a little bit right? What did you learn about me? (And, oh, by the way, what did you learn about you?) As you can see, you don’t even need to be in the immediate company of the person whose mind you’re trying to read. Is this not useful in online poker, where our foes are scattered all over the planet, and all we have available to decipher them is the scant information they make available to us through their screen names, points of origin, bets and raises, checks and calls, buy ins, rebuys, and very occasional lines of chat?

Now let me explore what I think I know about you. I don’t expect to get you completely, but check me if some of this doesn’t apply. First, as mentioned earlier, I think you’re probably male. That’s not mind reading, though, just demographics. From home games, to Duffy’s Card Shack, to online play, to the main event at the World Series of Poker, men comprise the thick majority of the poker playing community. Online, of course, any he-man can hide behind a screen name like CurlyShirley, so it doesn’t pay to make too many spurious gender judgments. That said, I’ll assume that most of my readers are male; you should assume that most of your online opponents are, too.

You’re young, I surmise, for the bulk of the online playing population is, as are most poker book buyers and readers. You’re young enough and eager enough not only to invest your time and energy in online play but also to invest your time and energy in improving your play. As we grow older—as you’ll discover if you’re yet young—it gets harder and harder to keep the flame of learning burning. It can be done, of course, but that adage about old dogs and new tricks is not without merit. If I’m wrong, by the way, if you’re not young, then more power to you for staying alive in your mind long after most of your peers have sunk into the know-it-all complacency that antecedes stuffy nostalgia, long naps on the davenport, and death.

You probably live in the United States. Whether it’s that our culture and technology create a favorable environment for the online player, or that the rest of the world simply hasn’t caught up or caught on, I can’t say. It’s worth noting that while most players are U.S. citizens, not a single online poker site has its corporate home or computer servers on U.S. soil. This is for legal reasons, of course, but it amuses me to think that I live in a place where it’s legal to play online but not legal to host the game. (Now I’m being disingenuous. It’s not legal to play online; it’s just that there are so many of us that the powers-that-be are powerless to impose their will on us. Thus is it always. When law enforcement battles technology, technology wins.) Though you live in the United States, you enjoy playing against people from Australia, Sweden, Burkina Faso, and Nagorno-Karabakh. It brings a touch of the exotic to your life.

Talking of young and talking of legal, there’s a fairly good chance that you’re below legal gambling age. You have discovered in online poker a way to play poker for real even though technically you’re not allowed. At this point I should issue a disclaimer: If you’re not street legal where you live, please use the information in this book on play money sites only, will you? Thanks. Glad we got that out of the way.

You may be in college; so many online players are. If you’re not there now, you most likely were, for internet poker requires smarts across a broad range of subjects—math, computers, psychology—plus, people who buy and read books of any kind are much more likely to be higher educated than, you know, not. You and your friends might consider it the height of good fun to spend a Friday or Saturday evening immersed in the online poker experience. I could tell you and your friends that you need to get a life, but I’m not your dorm mother, so no.

If cardroom poker is not readily available in your neck of the weeds, you consider online poker to be a godsend. Even if casinos are legion and close, you spend a hunk of your budgeted poker time online because it’s just so damn convenient. No traffic, no parking problems, no boho with bad breath sitting next to you. You probably play at least a little online poker every day. You find the puzzle of poker to be endlessly fascinating and utterly compelling. You’ve tried various sites, but over time you’ve made one or two your home. Likewise, you’ve experimented with a wide variety of cash games, sitngos (sit and go tournaments), and scheduled tournaments, and have settled on your favorites. Though you mix it up from time to time, you play what you play—mostly, as noted, no limit hold’em. Furthermore, you play within a “comfort zone” of limits and/or buy ins, unless the tidal ebb or flow of your bankroll dictates a shift down or up.

You have experienced the pitfalls of online poker, including unexpected disconnects, untimely interruptions, sites going south (and taking your money with them), and unbelievable suckouts. Despite all that talk of collusion, you haven’t seen any, nor have you seen any evidence of bots, either independent or site sponsored. It crosses your mind that you might not know the difference, but even viewed through the narrow prism of an avatar or a screen name, all of your online foes strike you as all too human. Besides, if they’re bots, they’re not all that good, so who cares?

You’ve met your share of angerbots, though: people who lose their temper online and use the protective anonymity of a screen name to launch testosterone-and rage-fueled chatbox screeds:

How could you call with that sh*t?

You’re the worst player ever!

aaaaasssssshhhhhooooollllleeeee!!!!!

Perhaps you’ve even lost your temper in this way, though you know enough, one hopes, not to let such sentiment bleed out your chat window, or, indeed, affect your play. One hopes. Still, you know what it’s like to be pissed off online. Maybe it pisses you off that people get pissed off. Certainly, there’s something that pisses you off about online poker. Probably several somethings. These include…

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In writing that list, you discovered one or two things you didn’t even know bugged you that much. Such is the power of the list.

In sum, then: You’re no newbie. You’ve played enough online poker to be well past questions of site functionality and game mechanics. You’ve got basic strategy down pat. You don’t know all your odds inside out, but you know enough not to draw slim into a small pot, and you know not to play crap hands (even if sometimes you do). You’ve read many poker books, and you’ve learned at least a little something from all of them. You have high hopes for this book. You’d like to take your internet game to the next level, or at least get your money’s worth in terms of tools for profit on the virtual felt. I have high hopes, too, and feel safe in promising that you’ll learn enough at least to cover the cover price. But check back with me in about 85,000 words and we’ll both know.

Now, let’s get started, shall we? We’ve got a lot of work to do.