Poker Article - "Are You a Hero or a Zero!"

Are You a Hero or a Zero! - By Al Spath

The most exhilarating feeling at the card table is when you take down a monster pot, especially when your opponents don’t even see it coming! It does not matter if it is accomplished on-line or live (although live has a special feel about it, with nods of well-done, the occasional hand slap, and even the over-used, and seldom meant, “good hand” comment, and it instantly gets your adrenalin pumping, your pupils enlarged, and your animation exaggerated. Yes, and on occasion, to the point of further pissing your opponents off. You indeed feel like a hero, not a zero, you’re on top of the world, you’re bulletproof, nothing can stop you, “just bring it on!”

On the other hand, when you fail to make your draw, someone sucks out on you, or when someone simply outplays you, it is not uncommon for you to lose your entire stack, your seat in a tournament, or worse than that, you lose your confidence and poise. They say it’s how you handle adversity that sets apart the truly balanced, confident player from the schizophrenic player who seems to bleed on their sleeve over each defeat and/or setback. Nothing feels worse than being a Zero! Having lost your entire stack in a cash game, being bounced from a tournament without reaching a money seat, or just being humiliated with an ill-conceived bluff, a horrendous call, or when you have been exposed incorrectly slow playing a monstrous hand, thus enticing someone to actually run your big hand down for the right price. Again we should ask: hero or zero? I think Zero!

How about when you are at the tables and just suffered a terrible bad beat, or worse yet, a beat from an inferior hand (played by an inferior opponent), who catches a miracle river card to complete a gut shot wheel (straight), while playing you heads up against your flopped set of aces, do you act like a hero or zero? Do you lash out at their play; make “meaningful” derogatory comments about their inability to play “smart” poker as they continue to stack your chips? Do you continue to berate them, the game in general, as play continues as the rest of the table laughs hysterically inside as they watch your antics? Or do you accept the fact that your opponent paid his/her way to the river, and is entitled to catch his/her share of cards? It’s still poker, and sometimes they will get there (although a smaller percentage of the time), so don’t you really want them (albeit not lots of them) in the pots you are contesting?

I posed this same question (Hero or Zero?) on several website forums and I’d like to share with you some of the thoughts from the late Tulio Braz (aka cyber name - Sabbath), a Luxor Casino regular (who’s joy in life include his weekly felt encounters with the likes of Alan Schoonmaker), and who is a multiple online poker room tournament champion:

“OK, it is hard to think of heroes in poker. We are all there for one thing to get each other’s chips. To me a hero is someone that will risk his/her own well being to help someone else, or at least to stand up for a belief. In poker we are not doing either of those things, we are there for personal reward. But there are players that I do look up to in the game. Players that I would like to try and emulate. In a way, you can say they are my poker heroes. To me it does not matter what level they are playing at. These are the players that you can just sense that they are serious about the game. They say very little at the table but they are always polite. They never criticize anyone else’s play and tend to fit into a table in a way to enhance a good mood, while they play in a manner that would suggest just the opposite. They are out for every last chip they can get, and when they leave the table you will never know by the look on their face if they have won big or lost big. To me these would be my poker heroes because they promote the game of poker. I also truly believe there are many people that come to a poker room not to win, but to just have a good time. Yes, we all want to win, but I would bet that most of us would not play if we did not enjoy the game itself."

Zeroes – These are much easier to spot. They are boisterous; know it alls that are only losing because “their opponents,” do not know how to play. They think they can run over a table by playing very aggressively, but then when they get beat are mad because their opponent did not fold. They sometimes are drunk with mouths that came out of the sewer. These players are zeros to me because they can very easily chase the fish from the pond. It does not matter if they play well or not; they always ruin the game and everyone’s enjoyment at the table. Some of these “Zeros” you will not see too long in a card room because they get 86ed as they should.

I think Tulio’s point’s sum it up rather succinctly and I would add just one more bit of observation. You don’t have to do anything spectacular at the tables to be a “Hero,” you just have to avoid being a “Zero.”

 

I have a client who swears that the amount of 1 and 2 outers hit on the river against him online is disproportional to live games.

What do you think?

 

from what i see, people online , play different than in live games., and a lot of online games cost less to get in, than most live games,. as for the disproportional to live games,. i would put it this way, if you are at a table with 9 other players and you are a pro and the other nine, are beginner's or amateurs than the odds of your leaving the table ahead is slim., luck would play more of a part in this game,. 1 or 2 outer on the river happens a lot,. you have to also consider how the person who hits this thinks of how you play and if he has a playable hand,. if he thinks you have nothing and hits, that has happened to me several times,. when i called it showed to be a mistake, yet when i hit it was a sign of relief., i am not a hero nor am i a zero, but i am hot tempered.,

 

i am changing my style of play and strategies, my new style will be contrary to popular ways of playing,. everyone knows the way to play by position and cards, my arrangements will differ from now one, the idea is to make putting me on a hand very Generic,. which means the basic hands, to put me on, would be the ones, you would put someone who you have never played with on,. which makes the range wider.