4:27am: Something hit me at one point during a match I played tonight: It had been a while since I had won a pot. No, check that. It had been a long while since I had won a pot. I checked the instant hand history and sure enough, it was true. “I seriously just lost 18 pots in a row”, I said to myself.

But did it matter? Sometimes it does, but a good portion of the time it means nothing at all. In fact, you might be surprised to know that I lose 56% of the hands I play. How can someone who wins so consistently lose so many pots? The answer is simple: it’s not how many pots you win, it’s the size of the ones you do win.

Let’s take a look at the instant hand history for a match I just played:

Three things should jump out like a sore thumb to you: First off, green text. It represents the 4 pots that I won throughout the course of the last 28 hands of the match. The second thing you should notice is that I basically lost the minimum in every pot that I lost. The third thing you should notice is that I basically won the maximum in every pot that I won.

So let this be a lesson in patience for those of you who’ve ever played a heads up match, and thought to yourself: “god am I EVER gonna catch a hand?” If you’re patient enough, and the blinds are still low, odds are you can weather the storm and wait for better spots to put your money in. Granted, it doesn’t always work out this way, but the good news is that when it does there are STILL people out there willing to pay you off when you’ve check/folded most of the last 30 hands you’ve played.