Welcome to a brand new, one hundred percent free episode of the Low Limit
Cash Games podcast. This is a podcast I created exclusively for you, the
lowest stakes poker player at your local card room or at your home poker games.
One two, no limit, one three, no limit. We're here
to help you become a winning player. Let's jump right into it, shall
we. Today we're gonna be talking about understanding variants. The reason I created
this podcast is because I get so many messages from you guys, and I
love getting messages positive, negative, questions, hand histories. I reply to
everybody. Sometimes it takes longer than others, but I will get back to
you. And over the past to two weeks or so, I guess I've
gotten several messages about, you know, people on bad runs and how unlucky
they are or want me to, you know, look at several hands and
see if they're playing poorly. And I find that, generally speaking, most
people have a poor understanding of variants, whether it be positive or negative variants,
because you can experience both of them. So I was sitting here trying
to come up with a way that I could explain variants in a way that
wouldn't make it crystal clear to you, so that moving forward, you know,
no matter whether you're experiencing positive variants or negative variants, you'll be able
to recognize it, understand it, and understand that it's just normal. I
think would be great in the world of poker. And now I'm as guilty
as this as anybody as if we could normalize the phrase running normal. So
when somebody asks you, hey, how's poker going, go, oh,
yeah, I'm running normal, and you use it. Whether you've had eleven
winning sessions in a row, or whether you are winning one session and losing
seven sessions, or you're down ten buy ins or whatever, You're just running
normal because that is normal. The law of large numbers is extremely large.
And while it's true over time statistically things will average out to the probabilities they're
supposed to average out to, it can take a really long time for that
to happen. And I've had several real life examples I would that I've talked
about. There's this female professional tournament player I want to say her name is
Corona Cova, Maria maybe, and she was on a I think it was
the Thinking Poker podcast. I'm not sure what podcast it was I think that
was it, but she was talking about how she was down one thousand buy
ins. Now it's a winning poker player, well known. I think she's
written a book or two. But that's some negative variants. But it's normal.
I mean, in a year, that's completely normal. So it takes
a lifetime for you to achieve anything remotely resembling the expected probabilities. Now,
online players have an advantage in that they're playing five, ten, fifteen,
twenty times as many hands as we can play live, and so they get
to you know, expected probably is a lot faster. Nevertheless, I've come
up with an experiment that you can do for yourself. I want to first
put a disclaimer out there and let you know that this is for you to
experience in an imaginary way. Okay, I want you to try to drink
it all in, take it all in close your eyes, and experiences that
work as if it were really happening. But I am in no way recommending
that you actually do it. I forbid you to do it, I'm not
suggesting that you do it in no way in a billion years. I'm not
actually telling you to do what I'm about to say. Okay, So we're
going to talk about when your pocket paces get beat by pocket kings. Now,
if all the money goes in pre flop, which is what we're going
to use, the pocket kings are going to beat your pocket ass about twenty
ish percent of the time. Okay, we're just gonna say twenty ish for
simplicity's sake, So about twenty percent of the times. That's one in five.
So one out of every five times that you get it all in pre
fought with pocket aces and your opponent has pocket kings. By the way,
this is also pocket queen's pocket jack's pocket tins, et cetera. You're gonna
win four out of five times. It's like overwhelming, right, You're an
eighty percent favorite to win. That's an insane amount of times that you win.
And so you just expect to win, right, You just expect to
win. And when your aces get cracked and they bink a king on the
flop or the turn of the river, you're like, oh god, that's
just I'm just supposed to win that. Well, I mean, you're not
really supposed to win it. You know, over the your course of your
entire life, on average, you're supposed to win it. You know,
four out of five times, but you're never supposed to win it every time.
And so if you want to understand with crystal clarity what twenty percent feels
like, so that you can understand that it's way more than your brain comprehends,
picture this imaginary experiment. Shall we imagine that you have a friend or
a partner or spouse, whoever, and they're sitting across the table from you,
and they have a hammer. Now, instead of it being like a
big twenty ounce ballpeen hammer or something that would just crush everything, let's say
it's one of those hard rubber mallets. I mean, it's still gonna hurt
like a you know what when they slam your finger, But we're gonna take
and you're gonna slide your hand out on the table and they're gonna raise the
hammer up, and one out of every five times, one out of every
five times, they're gonna slam this rubber mallet hammer down on your fingers.
And the way they're going to decide whether to do it or not is they're
gonna go to like random Number generator dot org or whatever, and they're gonna
tell it to give you a number between one, and five, So it'll
either spit out one, two, three, four, or five. And
every time it spits out of five, they slam the thing down on your
finger. Okay, Now, every time they don't slam the hammer down on
your finger, you get one hundred dollars bill. So they're either going to
be handing you one hundred dollars and they got this big bag of hundreds over
here right your partner or your friend, or your wife or spouse, they
got a big, big bag one hundred dollars bills, and they got this
hard rubber ballot hammer. So eighty percent of the time you're getting one hundred
dollars, baby, who does not want that? Eighty percent of the time,
I get one hundred dollars. Let's rock and roll. Let's roll it
up, man. The odds are on my side. I'm getting a hundred
bucks. Let's go wham ow. Fingers throbbing. They rolled to five right
out of the gate. Now, I want you to try to internalize this,
and I want you to understand what this could feel like, because that's
very vivid. You get either getting a hundred dollars, you getting your fingers
smashed. Within only one or two standard deviations. The following will and many
times you could get your fingers slammed three times in a row, and it'd
be perfectly normal. The person across the table from you could push the old
random number generator roll of five, smash your finger, push the random number
generator roll of five, smash your finger, push the random number generator roll
of five, and smash your finger, and it'll be three times in a
row. When you were an eighty percent favorite, your finger is literally throbbing.
It's throbbing like one of those big cartoon fingers block bla blab, and
you're like, whoa what I was eighty percent favorite to get one hundred dollars.
You don't have one hundred dollars. You should have three hundred dollars in
your head. Right, that was three times as you have three hundred dollars,
you've got no dollars, and you got messed up finger, also perfectly
within the realm of standard deviations. Five times out of ten they could smash
your fingers. Now, that's normal. Five times out of ten. That
happens all the time when it's only supposed to be two times out of ten,
right, But atas could be five times out of ten, which means
every other time it could happen. If something can happen five times out of
ten, that means every other time it could happen. So one hundred dollars,
smash finger, one hundred dollars smash finger, one hundred dollars, smash
finger, on, on and on, ten times in a row. Your
fingers are dying. You can't use them anymore. Sure, you got five
hundred dollars, but you're supposed to have eight hundred dollars, and your fingers
aren't supposed to hurt nearly as bad. This is all perfectly normal. Now,
let's look at the flip side of it, also perfectly within standard deviation.
You could go twenty times in a row and never get your fingers smashed.
Never BAM rolls of one gives you a hundred BAM. Rolls of three,
it gives you a hundred BAM. Rolls of deuce gives you a hundred
BAM. Rolls of four gives you a hundred bam hundred bam hundred hundred hundred
hundred hundred, one hundred hundred twenty times in a row. This person across
the table from you're just throw one hundred dollars bills at you, and you're
like, yes, I'm an eighty percent favorite. This is what's supposed to
happen. And you don't feel like that. It's odd. You don't feel
like that, it's abnormal. You don't feel like your cheat math in any
kind of way, because in your head, you're supposed to win. You're
the favorite. You've got aces, they got queens. You're supposed to win.
You're supposed to get one hundred dollars, but you're not. You're not
supposed to get the one hundred dollars twenty times in a row. Do you
know the differences? It doesn't bother you when that's happening. You don't find
it odd, you don't find it strange, you don't find it remarkable.
You don't text all your friends and go, wow, I'm running crazy positive
I want one hundred dollars or five times in the row in this game.
You don't do any of that because you expect to win. Your brain expects
to win because your brain has told you that eighty percent means one hundred percent.
And this is the most dramatic way I can think of to express to
you how to internalize positive variants and negative variants. Now, if we were
to look at and you can do this for yourself, right, just go,
I don't I think it's random number generator dot org or random dot org
or something. If you just google random number generator until it you want it
to roll you a number between you know, one to five or whatever,
and just push the button. Just keep pushing it, and just notate how
many times strings of three happen, or strings of five, or strings of
seven happen, or five out of ten happens, or seven out of ten
happens when it's supposed to be two out of ten, and just see,
you know, just do it like three hundred times, just blah blam,
blam blam three hundred times. And then look at the patterns that happen and
understand that all those fall within the mathematical realm possibility. But see how many
times it was crazy one way or the other. And then understand that when
you're kings get run down by pocket jacks, that nothing strange happened. You
aren't the unluckiest person ever. It's just the law of large numbers playing itself
out in your very limited lifespan. Why is this important. I'll tell you
why it's important. Because the reason people go on to lose and have bad
sessions is not because somebody two out of them with pocket jack's when you had
aces. That's not why why you lose is your brain goes into mega tilt.
You got robbed, you got stolen from the poker gods hate you.
I'm tilted up, and your gameplay goes into the pooper. You start playing
too many hands, you start raising too many hands, you start trying to
bluff too many hands. You just start doing all kinds of stuff because your
brain is on megatilt. And now you tilt off two three buy ins.
And when you go home that night or the next day, when you're talking
your buddies, you're like, yeah, gosh, just got devastated last night.
Man run my aces into queens and no good. And that's all you
tell them. You don't tell them that after that happened, that you went
on monkey tilt and played like an absolute buffoon for the next three hours and
just tilted off another two buy ins. And when I say you, I
mean me. This isn't accusatory, This isn't I'm better than you. This
is human nature. But if you can really visualize and understand that what happened
is normal, you are running normal when that happens, and then do what
you need to do. Stand up, go for a walk, take a
five minute walk, go outside, get some fresh air. I don't know
what amuses you. Open up TikTok and look at some dumbcat videos or whatever
it is that resets your brain, because you have got to reset your brain
because right now your brain is locked up. Your brain is locked up,
and the poker god's hate me mode. Your brain is locked up, and
I got robbed mode. Your brain is locked up, and I got beat
mode. Your brain is locked up, and I'm running bad mode. Your
brain is locked up and nothing I do is going to work today mode.
And that's the mode your brain is in, and you have got to snap
it out and reset it. Take a five minute walk, look at some
silly videos on TikTok. Text your girlfriend and I don't know, tell her
she's sexy or something whatever. I don't know what it is. But take
some time and reset your brain and then come back into the game and play
the game like that. Twenty percenter never happened. It never happened. That's
we can't do anything about it. That's in the past. It was normal,
it was average, it was nothing remarkable. And then we go on
to play our our A game. You gotta keep playing your A game,
and odds are you'll get that money back. It's a very good chance you
get that money back before your session is over, provided you brought you another
two or three buy ins, provided you don't go on tilt. Did you
still play a solid game and everything is fine. Let's normalize saying we're running
normal. Just try it. I'm trying it. It's an experiment for me
because the mental game is the hardest part of over It's not understanding what undergun
ranges are. It's not knowing what your three bit cut off range is.
Now that stuff is easy. You can figure that stuff out. You can
memorize it. It's as easy as memorization. The hard part is the mental
game. It's getting your mind right. It's understanding that twenty percenters happened way
more than we think, and we think about it too much. And then
when we're running three times what we should in a positive way, we don't
think about it and we just expect it, and we need to understand it
all of that is normalized, and continue to play our a game as much
as possible. Thanks for listening to the completely free, no strings attached,
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