A - Z of Poker: Day 6

From London to Vegas in 26 Letters

Day6: F is for ...

F is for Fold. My fold button is generally broken, both live & online. That goes for both cash and tournaments. I take, rather literally, the view that you can't win by folding. I love the action too much (as most of my opponents quickly realise, whether they like it or not).

However, occasionally, I embrace the F-word. I have done so most notably at the WSOP events last year. It takes a huge effort of will for me to do this, but I was rewarded with some fairly deep runs. I was, briefly, able to appreciate the power of the fold !

Mind you, the hands that haunt in the long run are the bad folds, much more than the ill-advised calls. In fact the worst kind are those where I folded and forever feel that I had been robbed (having not seen my opponent's hand).

Folding QQ on the river vs Thomas Fougeron in the Main Event last year, for example. In many ways a routine hand, but I felt I allowed myself to get outplayed and I am still thinking about the fold a year later !

I do accept (in theory) that we're supposed to make the decision and move on. I think I feel those difficult folds more keenly because it is so counter to my normal approach.

Of course the other folds that annoy me are the ones that my opponents don't make when I bluff all streets and push all-in on the river !

F is for Forum. There's only one real forum in poker of course (and I don't mean 2+2). I didn't take to the forum at first (I'm too old!). It took me a while to get used to the way conversations are conducted on the interweb. Personally, I still stick very much to the offline and old-school maxim "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all".

But I must have found plenty of nice things to say, as I now am the 4th most prolific poster of all time on the Gutshot forum and am now catching "omen666". So perhaps it was quantity not quality which earned me the 2008 GOSCAR for "Forum Poster of The Year"!