Grasping at Smoke: On Luck and Top Players

There is a long thread at PocketFives started by a good player who suffered a bad beat against Legggggy (the same legggggy who took back the lead on the Extreme Tilt Leader Board yesterday). He essentially thinks leggggy is a donkey who gets lucky ... a super aggressive, all-in specialist who, when he does get called, sucks out. But, as I mention in that thread, leggggy is actually a tighter player than many pros and his success on multiple sites speaks for itself.

I think we've all seen top players get lucky and it makes your head spin. You wonder how can they make that play, then win that 3-outer, when my full house gets beaten on the river by a 2-outer higher boat? Hey one of my favorite lines is: "If luck really does even out, then [INSERT PRO NAME HERE] will not win a hand in 2006."

Now, if I really did understand how the great pros do it, then maybe I would be a top player. But I don't fully understand how they play. What makes them pull the trigger at that time in that spot when others would be folding preflop? And it is not as simple as: "He built a big stack and he can now take those risks." Sure that's part of it, but it's much more than that.

I get the feeling that these pros are like great jazz improvisationalists (no I'm not kidding). They become immersed in the ebb and flow of the game, instintively taking advantage of betting rhythms, players rushes, table image, stack size, position, bubble play, putting others on tilt, known player tendencies, the odds, and their own simple gut feelings to orchestrate a masterpiece ... and yet another final table appearance.

I think a lot of us pretty good players can sense this ... we've had our moments where we've reached this level of greatness, only to lose it, not fully undestanding what it was. And getting "it" back is like grasping at smoke.

Are the top players luckier than the rest of us? No way.

Just yesterday I was railing JohnnyBax. I suggest you all do this and it's something I do when my game gets into a funk. The first thing you realize is that Bax is a patient player. Not many people really understand this. He's very patient and then he picks a spot ... makes a reraise ... makes a big laydown ... makes a guy fold ... and the next thing you know he has 4000, then 6000, then 5000, then 12000 chips. Yesterday he was in that middle range of chips that I'm often at when he finally chipped up, then got all-in with AK vs AQ. He lost when the Q hit on the flop. Lucky?

This doesn't seem to phase him. Over the next 20 hands, he doubles several times. Once he was lucky when his medium ace beat a pocket pair and immediately the rail birds started screaming how lucky he always is ... guess they missed the AK vs AQ hand.

Finally, as they neared the final table, he's one of the chip leaders and only one player at the table can take him out. A player who was lowish on chips goes all-in, Bax calls, and the huge stack calls. The flop is 10, 7, x and bet, bet, bet ... Bax is all-in vs. the big stack. Bax flips pocket 7s for trips but big stack has pocket 10s for trips 10s, which soon turn into quad 10s and it's over.

So is Bax luckier than us? No. He's just better than us. And legggggy and DoubleLucky and AngryClec and Sheets are better.

It's our job to try and reach for their level of play ... to pressure them and test them and beat them when we can. I, for one, look forward to it. I get to test myself against top pros and good players and terrible donkeys every week. What other sport/game/hobby let's you do that? This is great fun. Next.