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One of my favorite movies as a kid was a film called Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory. I won't get into the plot except to say that a group of
children with, shall we say, exaggerated personality traits, all win a visit to
a magical chocolate factory. And one of the most memorable characters in the
film, if not the most likable, is a little girl by the name of Veruca Salt. She
is the perfect epitome of the spoiled little rich girl.
Now, what does this have to do with poker, you may wonder. Patience. I'll get to
that in a minute. Veruca, you see, is a very fortunate little girl. She has a
very wealthy father who dotes on her, a father who is willing to give this child
anything and everything her heart desires. All she has to do is ask. But Veruca
is not a happy child. No. Veruca's constant complaint, the source of her misery,
her signature line which she repeats over and over again throughout the film
like a mantra, is this: But Daddy, I want it NOW!
This girl has no patience whatsoever. She needs instant gratification. And too
many poker players have a little Veruca Salt living somewhere inside of them.
Myself included. We want to be rewarded for our good play and superior
knowledge, not somewhere down the line, not in the long run, but right this
moment.
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When we keep getting dealt junk cards for hours on end, watching other players -
lesser players - raking in pot after pot after pot, it's not enough to know that
if we just hang in there long enough the good cards will eventually start to
come our way. No, we want those good cards now. When our pocket aces keep
getting cracked by idiots who cold-call raises before the flop with hands like
10-5 suited or 9-2 offsuit, it's not enough to know that eventually our good
hands will hold up and we'll make a bigger profit because these same idiots call
too much. Eventually - yuck. We want it now. And at the end of a long, losing
session, it's not enough to know that if we keep playing correctly and making
good decisions and the game conditions are favorable, that sooner or later we
are bound to make our money back, be it tomorrow or next week. Tomorrow? Next
week? We want it...well, you get the idea.
We live in an era of instant gratification. Everything in our society, it seems,
is built on the principle that faster is always better. So perhaps it's no
wonder that many of us are conditioned to want our rewards immediately, without
the bother if all that pesky waiting. Like little kids who insist on eating
dessert before we've even touched a fork to our spinach.
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Another way that pot lust can interfere with our ability to play well is by
convincing us to stay in the game too long when we really should quit. Usually
this happens because we are losing and we want to end the session with a win, or
at least get back even. And so we convince ourselves that we're really not
tired, we're still playing our best, the game is still good, yada, yada - even
when those things are obviously not true. If strong desire goes unfulfilled,
denial usually steps in to fill the void. When Lady Luck gives us the cold
shoulder, some people just can't handle the rejection well at all. The more
desperately we want something, the more difficult it becomes to face the
possibility of not getting it. This is when the Voice of Denial can be very
seductive: I can eat cheesecake every day and still lose weight. I'm going to
win the lottery this week. He's going to leave his wife for me. I look really
good in spandex. I can keep calling with bad hands and longshot draws and still
win because I'm just that good.
But when Veruca whines, it works. Daddy always caves. He just cannot bear to see
his little girl unhappy, not even for a moment. But what about us? In those dark
moments after yet another bad beat, as we watch some call-happy moron smiling
and humming to himself while he stacks our money into neat little piles in front
of him, when the world has spun off its axis because things are not supposed to
happen this way and our insides are roiling like the sea in a hurricane because
we want poker justice and we want it NOW - who can we whine to then?
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The dealer? Yeah. That'll do a lot of good. And I'm sure they really enjoy listening to us complain all the time. The other players at the table? Maybe. But I seriously doubt that they're really all that broken up over our misfortune. Secretly giddy is probably closer to the truth. The poker gods? No. The poker gods hear us whining and they scoff. They laugh. They throw a party and take bets on the next time they can screw us over. But the one thing they won't do is give us the instant gratification we crave.
Now I must confess, when I first saw Willy Wonka at the movies I secretly liked
Veruca, even though I knew that I was supposed to hate her. Of course, the fact
that I was eight years old at the time may have had something to do with it.
When you're eight years old, the notion that Daddy will run to your rescue every
time you stamp your little feet and complain actually seems like a pretty cool
idea. Back then, I just thought Veruca was a headstrong girl who wanted whatever
she wanted, whenever she wanted it.
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But poker players simply cannot have whatever we want whenever we want it. A
good poker player must wait. And wait. And then for good measure, wait some
more. Throwing a tantrum certainly won't help us any. Unlike Veruca, we have no
super-rich Daddy to fix things for us. Okay, maybe some of us do, but that's not
going to help us at the poker table. Not unless we convince Daddy to buy us a
casino and stack all the decks in our favor. And that's right up there with the
poker gods actually listening to our pleas and helping us on the
likely-to-happen scale.
Delayed gratification, that's the key. It's no fun, but that's the key. We have to bide our time. Lie low, take in all the information, and pick our moments. It's about patience. Patience is what will get the money. And that is the fun part.
Besides, Veruca came to a bad end. For all of Daddy's efforts to buy her happiness, she still plunges down a garbage chute at the end of the movie. She was a bad egg.
In other words, you have to eat your spinach before you can get dessert.
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