Poker and the great Chinese famine

Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 16 September 2009 / Leave a comment

During the great Chinese famine, which ran from 1958 to 1961, China experienced widespread problems with agriculture, ranging from natural disasters to mismanagement and ignorance of correct farming practice. Between sixteen and thirty six million people died during this period, and one of the most interesting policies adopted during the famine has a lot of relevance to poker.

Don't start changing your game just because lady luck is going against you.

Believing that sparrows and other small birds were eating large quantities of the sown grain, the government ordered the widespread destruction of all of these birds. As the birds actually predominantly ate insects, the government had actually severely hurt themselves by making such orders. Not only did the insect population explode exponentially - with the result that huge amounts more of the crops were eaten by insects - but useful workers were wasted on pointless and damaging bird hunts.

The relevance to poker of this is easy to miss, but is actually very important. Many times in poker things go wrong due to running bad. Although how you were playing previously is actually the right way to be playing, in the face of constant losses (and everyone has constant losses in poker at some point no matter how good they are), they start to change their playing habits, reasoning that they must be doing something wrong if they keep losing.

These changes are nearly always actually extremely damaging to the players game, and can easily turn a winning player into a losing one. Just as the misguided Chinese bird hunts actually reduced their crop yield, so can changing your playing style ruin your chances of winning in the long run.

Trying to trap people too often - with the result that they just get free cards and suck out on you; over playing marginal hands in the desperate hope of getting even; even just staying in bad games too long - all of these factors are common amongst players running bad, and all of them actually reduce their chances of getting even. Don't start changing your game just because lady luck is going against you. Most changes players make when running bad are negative ones in the long run, and the more you change your game, the more likely you are to lose a lot more over time.

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