The River Always Runs Wild

Poker players remember two kinds of hands: 1.) The hands they PLAY well and win. 2.) The hands where they are unlucky and lose. When a poker player wins he wants to believe it’s because of his skill. When a poker player loses he wants to believe it was because of luck.

Every hand in poker has the potential to be the equivalent to the 2-minute drill in football, 18th hole in golf or the bottom of the ninth inning in baseball. In those sports we consider those moments to be ‘winning time’. Every hand in poker has to be treated like its ‘winning time’. If you play eight straight hours of poker at the WSOP or a Buzztime bar that means you are experiencing the mental anguish of ‘winning time’ for eight straight hours. There is an argument to be made that the best Poker player in the world (Phil Ivey) has more mental toughness than ANYONE in ANY professional sport.

But even Phil Ivey can’t escape the River. No one can. The River is a friend to no one. Even when you win on the River you feel kind of bad about it.

This is why players usually only remember their bad beats on the River. It is THE card, and THE moment in poker that crystallizes just truly how much luck is involved in the game. There is an idea (and truth) that poker is about skill, mental toughness, strategy, math, logic, sociology, and psychology. All of those things are involved and truly matter, but the River is the constant reminder that Poker is indeed, at the end of the day, about luck. That is why players dwell on the River drowning them and not helping them. No one wants to tell stories of how they got lucky and gave someone else a ‘bad beat’.

For the fun of it though: Comment below and share some stories about how the River worked in your favor. Who knows, maybe if we dwell on THOSE stories more often the River will flow in our direction more often as well.

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