My Thoughts on Poker (long but good)

[Eagles]

Jman wrote about writing your thoughts about poker down and while at the time I envisioned this becoming a post it wasn’t really my intention. This was largely an exercise for myself.

Now the more I play I start to realize that if you want to play poker as a hobby that is fine. However if your main goal is to make money you must treat it very differently. While it’s important to know what range to push with 7bbs from the co and when to use a blocking bet, if you want to play poker to make money strategy is not nearly as important as the mindset you need to play poker seriously and treat it like a job. I went through a very long break even stretch in cash games (65k hands) and this was my own fault. It had little to do with variance it was mainly my bad play which led to this and it was due to my inability to have the proper mindset to play poker seriously. I have certainly gotten better at this but it is still a problem and I imagine it will be for as long as I play poker.

Through the process of developing this mindset I have learned a lot, some of this I’m sure has been said many times by many people but I cannot stress the importance of it.

Lacky made an excellent post in Pineapple’s thread and I wish I could write something as good as that but I don’t think I can so I will link it and then add my own thoughts.
Link

Essentially the most important thing to realize from this is you must focus while playing, I know it’s tempting but while playing don’t watch TV, don’t talk on the phone, don’t talk on aim, don’t read 2p2. If you feel your mind start to wander off take a break get a drink, go the washroom, watch some tv and then when you feel ready again start a new set. I know personally I cannot play cash for much longer than an hour before my mind starts to wander or I check my account to see how much I’m up or down and at this point I almost always quit all my tables.

There is another side to this mindset also. The first one deals with what to do while playing and the second one deals with how to deal with poker when not playing and game selection. In order to truly be successful at poker you must always keep working on your game and trying to get better and better. If you find yourself getting complacent, move up play more tables, try a new game, but you need to keep pushing yourself because if you just sit there grinding you will eventually stop improving and eventually move from a winning player to a losing player. At the same time if you are playing a certain game where you legitimately don’t feel comfortable than move down and try something else. There is no shame in moving down or staying at a lower limit as long as you are constantly working on improving your game and expanding your comfort zone even if it is only baby steps. To use an example I recently tried 8 tabling 2/4 and had a lot of difficulty with 8 tables so I closed two tables and kept 6 tabling but I will try 7 or 8 tabling again soon. Along with this don’t feel necessary to move up to catch up to people. Because of internet dick waving and stuff people move up to high games to show how good they are but this is really unnecessary and far from the best way to develop as a poker player.

Now I will continue with actually strategy. First of all I have been very fortunate because through my brother (inyaface) I have been able to get advice from people who are better than me which has been very helpful because I can talk on AIM or in person about poker to people who would literally charge upwards of $500 an hour. As well having two brothers who play poker at high levels has led to my game improving more than anything as I have had numerous lengthy discussions with them about poker and everything I have learned from them can’t really be quantified in this post because I’m sure all the stuff inyaface and pudge have taught me is stuff that I don’t even realize they taught me and now is something that I just think is standard Also although I don’t mention them below I’d mention pasterbator, devinlake and theusher for helping me out a lot with hands and giving me a lot of good advice. From this I have learned some very simple lessons that are incredibly valuable and I will share them with the forum. Keep in mind many of these concepts apply to cash games but they are still useful to everyone.

I remember once discussing a hand with bigt and he asked me what I was trying to accomplish with my bet and I honestly could not answer him. This seems simple but it is a very good thing to think about when analyzing or playing hands. As simple as it seems if you cannot answer the question you need to rethink your play. This seems very basic but if you are having trouble with a hand ask yourself what are you trying to accomplish with a certain decision once you figure out the answer to that question you can start to analyze the best way to achieve what you want to accomplish.

Another time I was talking to apathy about a hand and I explained I made a certain play to mix up my play. At which point he explained to me that justifying a play as “mixing it up” is something you should never do. The more I thought about this I realized he was right. Now this is not saying you should play every hand the same every time. But rather the point of this is you should not mix up your play arbitrarily. If for example someone were to triple barrel a lot oop after being the pfr then cold calling his first raise with AA is probably a good play and calling is fine. However if someone opens and you decided to be tricky and for no good reason and call with AA to “mix it up” than it is bad.

Another one was reading Jman’s post on HSNL recently about decisions. I’ve started to realize that he is correct that poker is essentially a game of decisions where you want to be correct as often as possible. Now one thing this means IMO it is important to eliminate rules you learned when you were beginning to play. What I mean by rules are things like don’t fold sets, don’t fold KK pf etc. Now obviously most of the time following these are fine but every once in a while it will be the correct decision to break these rules. The ability to break these rules in the right spots in my opinion separates very good players from great players.

I will add my own thoughts of something which I will call the value of not acting. Many of us have played sports and are competitive. Because of this I find it difficult to make good folds because I want to win and if I fold I lose the pot. Because of this I went through a phase were frequently when playing hands instead of asking “what am I accomplishing?” or “what is the best decision?” I asked “how can I win this pot?”. This thinking was a huge problem as many spots the only way I could win the pot was if my opponent was bluffing so I decided he was. Although I spoke out against rules earlier I’d say if you are having trouble with this a good general rule is if you are only beating a bluff fold. Now today I played a few hands where I made two good folds on the river against the same villain, they were not great folds but they were good laydowns. Now to an observer who could not see our cards it would appear like I was getting owned because villain one both the pots but realistically I made the correct decision on every street and still lost. Now I’m not whining about being bad beated or coolered but rather it is an observation that frequently the best play is it not act or fold. However it is something that cannot be seen unless the cards are flipped over. To use a simple example if my opponent goes allin for $100 with the nut flush on the river and I fold the second nut flush to someone who doesn’t know our cards it appears like the other person outplayed me but in reality I made $100 by folding that river. When you consider my choices it’s either call= -100 and fold=0 so by folding I am winning $100 although it is difficult to see.

Anyways I’m not sure how much of this makes sense. Also I’m sure there is a lot of stuff here that I forgot to mention, or didn’t make clear so I see myself eventually updating this as it needs to be updated. But if anyone has any questions about what I have said don’t be afraid to ask.