To the New, Aspiring Player

[QTip]

Things for the new, aspiring player to understand

Because of ESPN, Rounders, hearing stories of professional players, etc, the gap between fantasy and reality for new, aspiring poker players just seems to grow.

I’ve spent enough time now with newer players to notice some patterns to make some observations that may be helpful to the thought process.

A reading of the psychology of poker is a good thing. However, in a nutshell, people play for different reasons. Among these are: money, competition, a challenge, entertainment. For most people making it to this forum, the reasons for playing are probably a mix of these with the heaviest ingredients being money and competition.

It’s common for people to come to this game with many delusions. I’m not going to take the time to begin making an incomplete list, but here I can give the cure for almost all of them.

1. You won’t get rich quick.
2. You’re not half as good as you think you are (severely understated).
3. To consistently make any money worth talking about, it takes more work than you’ve imagined (severely understated).
4. To consistently make any money worth talking about, it takes longer than you’ve imagined (severely understated).

For most, a combination of the following things will take place:

They will have completed playing 5,000 to 10,000 hands and think they’ve accomplished something. Sticking with the “piss in the bucket” analogy, when speaking of limit holdem, this number of hands is a few molecules of urine on the floor of the Sahara Desert.

In these few particles of salty waste, a mix of the following results and deductions will have taken place with possible varying degrees…all of which are about equally likely for any person.

Results:

1. They’ve made a ton of money relative to the limit played.
2. They’ve broke even.
3. They lost a ton of money relative to the limit played.

Deductions (not necessarily correlating with the same numbered result):

1. I’m a highly skilled player.
2. This game is all luck.
3. These players suck so bad, I can’t make any money. No one respects my raises.

The new, aspiring player will have to go through most of the following stages:

1. They suck, but don’t know they do.
2. They realize and expose ignorance.
3. They start to learn some things.
4. They start to misapply things they learn.
5. They start to know some stuff they don’t know and repeat steps 3 and 4.
6. They start to know they know some things and recognize what others don’t know.
7. They start to think they’re good, and rinse and repeat.

Advice:

Luckily for those just starting this game, they’re not relying on the game for income. So, I offer this advice.

If you’re not dedicated to hard work and study, just accept that you’ll lose money and if you persist in playing, play for entertainment value. You’ll save yourself a lot of grief.

PLAY LESS!

When you’re just starting, it doesn’t make sense for most players to be playing a ton of hands. If you’re not studying at least twice as much as you’re playing, you’re doing yourself a HUGE disservice. Read and reread the books everyone here talks about, post hands, discuss hands, do math, think about hands away from the table, etc. There are plenty of things that go on in a 100 hands or so, that will give you something to think about, post and learn from.

When I started, I was reading about 3 hours a day, averaging about 30 posts a day and playing about 2 hours a day. It was about 3 months of this before I felt like I was a small winning player in the party poker 2/4 game, and I’m not a slow learner.

STOP MULTITABLING!

Most likely, you’re not even thinking about half the things you should be thinking about even if you’re playing only one table. Playing four and more tables when you don’t need to is only going to stunt your growth. Plenty of things generally happen in a hundred or two hundred hands that you'll have plenty to think and post about.

UNDERSTAND THE GAME

If the best limit holdem player in the world sat down with 9 people who just learned how to play, the expert would think nothing of losing money for huge stretches of hands. When we speak of huge stretches, we’re not talking about hundreds of hands…that number of hands is salty waste. This thread may help you start to understand the game a bit.

It’s a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.

Good Luck,

QT