CURING THE GAMBOLA VIRUS

After writing last month's column on the Gambola Virus, I started to think about the concept from other angles. When I sat down in a PLO game that week, I decided to put some of my theories to the test. The results were quite interesting indeed.

My basic idea was to carefully watch myself and how I reacted to my cards, my bets and my opponents' bets, and identify and neutralize La Gambola whenever she made an appearance. Hoho, easier said than done, right? Well, once I buckled down and committed to the concept, some very fascinating realizations began to occur.

The first was that every single time I'm about to pick up a new hand and see what I was dealt, I get a little GV rush. Not much, but a definite tingle. The next GV moment is if the cards turn out to be good. If they're very very good, I automatically try to stifle the external signs of my building Gambola ecstasy. It's funny to watch myself do this. Try it yourself next session and see if you do too (might prove useful...). From big tells on down to tiny little carotid artery stuff, we all have some giveaway, and it usually relates to La Gambola suddenly coursing through our veins.

So then I make a raise with some good cards. Ding ding! GV rush! What will they do? Will I win it right here? I hope not, says GV. I'd like more of this feeling and with more on the line, of course. So I pick up a few callers and off we go. If the flop sucks, the GV fades fast...but no one bets and the chance to take it down with nothing arises. Boyoyoinggg!!

What a great idea! Nothing gets the GV going like a chance to bluff! I'm excited just considering it. So I do it, what the hell. Then someone comes way over the top, and I get that very quick sinking feeling like I'm driving a truck around a hairpin curve on a mountainside and my entire cargo has just flown out the back and over the cliff. Sudden emptiness and the realization that the cargo/bet will never be seen again...unless I raise it once more...

But no, save some chips so you can catch the GV again!

After observing this process I tighten up completely and decide to play nothing but absolutely solid hands in proper position. PLO is tricky for this as its hands have so many more variables than Hold'em starters. I swear off danglers for a while and soon realize that this leaves me playing about one hand every two rounds, or less. Yes, it's boring, but it gives me lots of time to watch the effect of the Gambola on the other players.

It turns out that almost everyone is being buffeted on the seas of Gambola all the time, and it becomes clear that few of us ever notice it in ourselves, only in others (like so much of life). Now that I'm barely in the game and resigned to quietly folding most every hand, I see clearly that most of the players, even those who consider themselves solid, are here not so much to win as to get their Gambola jollies. All those little moments of excitement, from getting your cards to betting pre-flop to seeing the flop, more betting, the turn, the river!, etc etc... every one of these is another chance for the Gambola to amp up your bloodstream, until suddenly, there it is: you're pot-committed! I think that term was invented by La Gambola herself, as if to say, "dahlink, you can nevah escape me."
And in fact, we can't. But we can have a happy marriage.

After a while I picked up two aces with T4, single suited. Someone raised it up front and and after a few callers I jack it again from the cut-off. They all know what I probably have, but I'm not deep enough to merit any loose calls. The Gambola has a way of slowing down when confronted with someone who already has their GV somewhat under control. Duly noted.

We see the flop, nothing special for me but I am definitely pot committed and toss the last third of my chips in. He calls, has a nice wrap, but somehow my dry aces hold and I double up. As the pot is pushed to me I feel that almost ultimate Gambola moment: I won! I made money! And more money means...more gambling! Bigger pots! More rushes! Or not...

Since I'm trying to understand this inscrutable lady I watch my elation, minor as it is from such a small pot, and note the endorphins racing around in my head and chest, filling me with the false confidence on which great rushes and bad calls are built. I observe this feeling and enjoy it while holding it a little apart from the watcher, who just laughs at my excitement and says, so you still think you're in control?

To my surprise, I immediately gear back down. Catching no real hands, I see a few cheap flops, but fold every time to a bet because I just don't have the odds, and even though my image is now super-tight and ready for some larceny, I can't even make a semi-bluff. I am card dead and then some.

So I wait it out and over an hour later I pick up KKQJ, double suited. By far the best hand I've seen all night. I do the old Texas two-step again, raise the raiser, get it three-way, flop JT4 with a flush draw and straight draw and top pair and over pair (though I sure don't want to see a king on the turn!). I feel the Gambola surging as I realize I have no choice but to bet the pot and commit to this hand. After waiting over an hour and playing only one other pot all night, the GV is so repressed that it fairly bolts out of the dopamine gate and runs like Secretariat through my veins. I almost laugh out loud when I realize how powerful the virus is, and think about how hard it must be for those who can't or won't see it to cope with the wiles of this femme fatale deluxe. (And how much those who run games and casinos love Lady G: she pays all their bills.)

So I get it in there and catch another GV rush as I get called by one of the players. Now it's up to the Poker Gods, who clearly have a long-term affair going with the Empress Gambola. It comes 52, no flush, and to my amazement my kings beat his AKQJ (with the nut flush draw, I was rather canine there). I rake in the pot and now that I'm really watching I see and feel how thoroughly seductive La Gambola truly is. Rather than the feeling of "well done, you were patient and then got lucky," I feel that these new chips will now facilitate bigger and stronger Gambola rushes. I see myself feeling this and realize that beating the virus is a full-time job.

Moreover, once I start noticing and thinking about it, it seems stronger because I realize that I am not completely in control of my emotions and actions. I am being driven by a need to have bigger rushes every time. Winning slips away as the main goal and is quietly replaced by the need to trump the last rush. Hence the phenomena of tilting like mad and getting mad at your chips and getting all in on the last hand just because you have to leave and this is the last chance to get another Gambola rush! And so on.

I'm sitting there and realizing all this and feeling rather helpless in some ways. Then suddenly something unique happens. My higher self shows up, like the Principal coming in the classroom door during a food fight when the substitute teacher has gone to the bathroom. And the principal says, "Ok kids, fun's over. Time to clean up this mess and then I'm calling your parents." And I realize that it's not going to be my night, I'm not catching cards at all, I got lucky twice and it's not likely to keep happening, and above all my brain hurts from all this careful observation!

After another round of nothingness I get up and quietly cash out my small win, barely doubling my buy-in. As I leave I look at everyone's rapt attention on the hand in play and realize that La Gambola has given up on me and redoubled her efforts with those who still court her favors. And as I walk out the door I have a most unusual feeling, almost like a reverse Gambola rush. I realize that for the first time ever, I have very consciously and deliberately contained every single urge to gamble at a poker game.

Well, what fun is that? Oddly, after the fact, it was a hell of a lot of fun, in the way that attaining any worthy goal is fun. Yes, I won a bit, and that's always nice. But what really struck me on the way home and for days after was the wonderfully calm and content feeling that came from facing my biggest poker enemy head-on, and winning (just for a while, mind you; I'm not kidding myself, it's a lifetime challenge). And frankly, I look forward to occasionally letting La Gambola have her way with me again, at the right time and place.

The hardest part is not trying to watch and contain the virus in you, it's keeping it at bay every hand, and then knowing when to leave... and actually leaving. For when you do that, the GV is very disappointed with you, and keeping her happy seems like the whole point, when you don't really think about it.

But when you do think about it in depth and at length, you begin to realize this basic poker truth: the extent to which you can contain your own Gambola will determine how well you do over time. If you can watch yourself and continually control how and why you take chances, as opposed to merely gambling like most of us do sooner or later, then you will have achieved a real victory, not just in cards but in the quest for self-knowledge and self-control that is at the heart of the human game.

And that's not a bad deal when all you started out to do was play some poker.