The Gambola Virus or ten tight solid players do not make a good game

22.05.2008, Lesen Sie hier den Bericht über «The Gambola Virus or ten tight solid players do not make a good game».

by Kyle Swanson Pokerpages.com I think it's a good bet that everyone reading these words has, at one point or another, been afflicted with a case of the Gambola Virus. None of us are permanently safe from it, no matter how much we may think we're on top of all the causes and symptoms. The past couple nights at the poker table made it very clear to me that despite naming this malady and understanding it pretty well, I'm still far from immune to it.

About a decade ago, I played in a weekly pot limit seven card stud game with two guys who chased cards constantly. If they got it heads up between them they would bet and raise and re-raise. Many times one would win a huge pot with queen high; they were constantly trying to bluff each other (and the rest of us, which was less successful). I would sometimes get caught up in their madness and find myself on sixth street with no pair and a gutshot at best and would ask myself, "how the hell am I this naked here?"

This was during the ebola virus scare and during one of those "why am I in this pot?" moments it occurred to me that I had caught an acute case of their chronic disease. I said, "you idiots have given me your Gambola Virus!" They laughed, as one of them took the pot with his pair of jacks, and I realized that my new illness might be a tough one to shake.

Since then, I've seen that the only really healthy poker games are ones in which at least one player has a case of Gambola. Ten tight solid players do not a good game make (except for the rakist, of course). There must be at least one "action" player to bring a table to life. Get two or three of them in there and you've got a real poker game. The virus will soon spread. A strange thing about the Gambola Virus is how quickly it can infect even a good player. One bad beat and suddenly all the symptoms are there: starting with weak cards, chasing long shots with no pot odds, staying in a hand when you know you're toast.

The Gambola can also suddenly infect an entire table (or town, Vegas was built on its contagious charms). Actually, contagious hardly begins to describe this little germ. One or two cases can be contained, but once three or four people catch it at a table, the virus can almost immediately spread to everyone in the vicinity. Tight play alone will not win a pot when half the table is in every hand. You've got to be willing to get in there and gamble with what may be the worst of it sometimes, in order to get lucky, because it takes luck as well as skill to beat a bunch of demented gamblers. Normal pot odds get all out of whack and if your bankroll can't stand the variance, you'd better find a more sedate game. But if you want big wins, you've got to learn to cope with La Gambola (and her sister, Lady Luck), in others and yourself, as many of the best games are GV fests.

This fascinating virus features early symptoms of extreme amounts of fun and excitement. Once you've taken a dumbass chance and seen it pay off, suddenly you begin to think that the germ might be worth keeping in your system for a while. At this point, you tend to be blind to the most common outcome of longterm Gambola infection, which is extreme amounts of no money. So you gamble it up and if you're lucky you might have a great hour, or perhaps session, or even once in a long while, a week or even month of silly good luck. Before you know it you've forgotten that you ever played intelligently and you're trusting luck to carry you through. It's then that the Gambola virus will smile and show you what it's really made of.

We've all seen bad players go on insane tears at the table. Everything they need shows up and our flopped nuts are rivered time and again on one and two outers. That's when we're in the most danger of catching the old GV: "It works for him, it'll work for me!" One or two spankings and we might wake up from our fever but one or two big pots and part of our previously bright brain might start thinking, "Hmmm, maybe there's something to be said for just gambling!"

Which brings us back to my last two sessions. Two nights ago I was in a limit Hold'em/Omaha 8 game. I had booked a decent win the week before in this room, so I was willing to see if my luck was still holding and played a little too loose from the get- go. I won a few, lost a few, and since the game featured a major action player who is in almost every pot and usually calling to the end, I got away with it for a bit. Then I stopped giving the game my full attention and got caught up in the humor of a prop bet at the table. One of the players bet some others that he could eat 400 chocolate M&Ms in four hours, immediately after wolfing down a steak dinner with all the trimmings. I had faith and laid a little on the side that he would both finish in time and not lose his cookies (or M&Ms). No one else believed, so it was up to me to root him on. As the bet and the game progressed, the laughter increased incrementally and soon I was calling with weaker hands "just for fun" and found myself down about 15 big bets. Not so bad, but way more than it should have been.

I had quietly let myself get caught between the fun gambling of the prop bet and the permanent gambling of the game's maniac and suddenly realized I was in the throes of the Gambola. The side bet ended in a draw, after a nervous bettor shook the slow but steady candyman and he got nauseous about 320 M&Ms in. He called it off and the bets were declared dead, due to the nefarious and ignoble behavior of the shaker (who was rather whiskeyed at that point), and there I was, stuck in a game I should have been beating.

I stopped playing so many weak hands and the GV began to look elsewhere; one of the only real cures for the Gambola is simply not playing for a round or two (or year or three). The virus will almost always wander off in search of new victims, usually only one bad beat away. Chronic Gambola sufferers, such as most maniacs, have little recourse to logic and are left with the compromise of playing in games small enough for their bankrolls to stay above water as the losses mount. They will also have occasional massive wins; luck does tend to run hard for Gambola infectees now and then, and as semi- uninfected non-believers don't give enough respect to these runs the wins can be monumental, which of course only lets the virus get even deeper into the nervous system.

I ended up unable to recover and posted a small loss. Amused enough by the side bet and the other humor at the table, I wrote it off as a fair trade and a lesson learned yet again. Or so I thought. The next night I played in a PLO game. I had also beaten this game the week before. My first mistake was showing up feeling like I was far enough ahead to not worry so much about winning. This is never a good start. The only reason to sit down in a game is to win. Any other attitude will lead to losing.

Thinking I'd learned my lesson from the night before, I played very solid poker. In with the best of it and out when I was beat. My luck was weak, but I managed to double my buy- in over a few hours. I stayed at about that level for four more hours and when the main action player left I told myself, time to go. Just one more round...

After hours of not catching a decent starting hand I looked down at aces with a suited king and a weak dangler, called a raise, flopped the nut-flush draw and a gutshot, and when a very tight player to my right bet the pot, I put him all in, even though I was sure he had top set. I was a dog in the hand, if not terribly so; nonetheless I should have laid it down. But, said the little particle of Gambola Virus lodged in my spinal column (alright, medium-sized), "this is the first good hand you've seen in hours! How can you throw it away? It might WIN!!"

Duhhhhhh......

I missed my draws and was left with my original buy-in. I told myself to go, but once again our tricky companion the Gambola quietly encouraged me. "You can't leave now! You're only even! You've been up for hours...why leave without a win? Your luck is just starting!" Indeed it was, and a couple hands later I turned the nut and moronically got it all in with no redraw against two good players who naturally had separate redraws. I missed my hoped-for blank to split the pot (now there's some brilliant poker!) and left shaking my head at the tenacity and guile of La Gambola.

Two nights in a row it got me, after weeks of good behavior from us both. The first session it was mild, but consistent all night. The next evening it was kept at bay for six hours and then in ten minutes, a sneak attack of the GV took me from a nice little win to a ridiculously pointless little loss.

I've learned the lesson over and over, and it usually takes a little longer each time for the disease to show up again, but the truth is that not one poker player alive is completely and permanently immune to the Gambola Virus. We wouldn't be playing poker and risking money if we didn't have any gamble in us. It's a short and slippery slope from making an intelligent gamble to becoming a rabid Gambola victim, tossing in chips with both hands while foaming at the mouth and pleading with the dealer to bring that magic card "just one time!" As if La Gambola could be satiated with just one time. The fact is that the more we let the GV lead us into bad decisions and the brief excitement they provide, the more we will be faced with the longterm misery they guarantee. Put simply, the basic equation is that more GV equals less EV.

I'd like to think I am in total control of myself while playing poker but am honest enough to admit that sometimes I lose my rational self and get caught up in the Gambola madness that has infected the rest of the table. Often it even seems to be a lot of fun. But to be a truly good player you need to know how and when the Gambola Virus will attack you, and then how to shut it down before it gets going. Sometimes it means simply getting up and leaving. That is, as we all know, easier said than done, but your success at controlling the Gambola will in all likelihood be quite proportional to your ultimate success in poker.

So next time you make a bad move and pay the price, ask yourself, "was I thinking about that clearly, or was the Gambola Virus making my decisions for me? Am I playing to win, or just for excitement?"

It can be an ugly realization, but it's one of the most important things to really understand about yourself, if you want to be a top-notch poker player.

I sure hope I can figure it out some day!

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