To be a truly great poker player you have to hit the skids

By Villa777 on Jan 29, 09 11:00 AM in Cards

MOST great poker players have gone bust at least once in their careers.

Pick a top player's biography and you'll undoubtedly read how they hit skid row before bouncing back to profitability and fame and fortune.

Superstar Gus Hansen was recently rumoured to be broke after a losing streak of Nick Leeson proportions, claims he strenuously denied.

Yet he's previously admitted blowing $1 million in just two months, before winning it all back in an astonishing 50-hour on-line poker session.

Going bust in order to become a winner was a template for success that I wanted to avoid.

Unfortunately, over the last few weeks I've been on a freaky run that sapped my bank balance, battered my confidence and left me lower than a rattlesnake's belly on the Underground.

Ride a winning rush and the cards love you. You can read players like a book, you know when you're ahead and, most crucially, you know if you are behind.

But when those cards turn against you, boy you're in trouble - because that's when your play can be horribly affected.

Try as you might to avoid it, but with a fast diminishing bank balance you DO start tightening up as you try to stumble into those cash positions.

In the golden days you'd play aggressive with a marginal hand if you had position late into a tournament, boosting your chances of landing a higher placed finish and a substantial pot.

But the black cloud of doubt that hovers over a consistent loser can see you holding back at crucial times as you wait for a better opportunity - an opportunity that rarely comes.

Plays that worked perfectly well before also seem less certain as hesitation creeps in, a deadly 'tell' in poker.

All in all, you're in a hole that seems impossible to get out of.

I was in the hole for a good few weeks, suffering a rocketing number of bad beats and, let's be honest, playing some awful hands out of rising desperation.

The truth is that poker players are a lot like football strikers: they thrive on confidence. When the soccer stars are on a barren run, they just need a goal, any goal - even if it hits the back of the net via their backsides.

Thankfully, I scored my 'goal' a few nights back by coming second in a £12, 180 player on-line tournament - picking up close to $400.

A couple of games later and I banked a further $80 with a MTT third place, before finishing the night by winning $150 in a cash game, taking me into a weekly profit for the first time since November!

Ever the optimist, I'm now hoping that this is the start of a Gus Hansen-style comeback.
Truth is, we all know that the next losing streak could be just one bad beat away...
Either way, I'll keep you posted.

• Watch Gus Hansen talking about how he turned around his $1 million loss by visiting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWy_0_r3pJI

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