battle of mistakes

[jordiepop]

I was reading this part of nltap and the authors say its ok to make mistakes, no one plays perfect. So if im in a game where people are making many more mistakes than i am, im ok? I just answered my own question, but still, i dont like donking it up. I find at times, that after a hand or two, im like wtf was i thinking. Does anyone identify with what im saying, and again is this ok, as long as you look around and you see people doing things ten times worse.

[metsandfinsfan]

By making mistakes it means that you put money in when you were behind, or that you called on a draw where you were not getting proper odds to call. The reason you make mistakes is because you cannot be 100% sure what your opponent has. If you use your knowledge and play smart you should limit your mistakes. If your opponent does not understand concepts such as pot odds and implied odds then they will make more mistakes than you will

[jordiepop]

thanks a lot. yeah i mean i play in a game where people call pot sized bets with gut shots or bottum pair because "hey i came to gamble." i guess im doing just fine

[Mal_Pais]

[ QUOTE ]
thanks a lot. yeah i mean i play in a game where people call pot sized bets with gut shots or bottum pair because "hey i came to gamble." i guess im doing just fine

[/ QUOTE ]

Those are major mistakes. You're winning the battle. It brings a tear to my eye and a smile to my heart to hear my regular home game opponents utter those words.

[jordiepop]

tell me about it. Its sick, but the swings are brutal. I mean my kind of mistakes are calling with AQ OOP instead of raising or folding, or maybe over estimating my implied odds. These guys are retarted.

[ChrisV]

This thread is kind of missing the point of what NLHE:TAP was saying. It's using "mistakes" in a specialised sense of any exploitable deviation from game theory. Their point isn't that to err is human and it's OK to make mistakes, it's that the way to exploit opponents' mistakes is to make smaller "mistakes" of your own.

[jordiepop]

That was only one part of it and i understand that aspect. But they clearly mention what i am talking about as well.

[noggindrill]

make less mistakes than oppenets

[Small Fry]

Poker is a game of minimizing your mistakes and maximizing your opponents mistakes. To the extent that you can improve both of these the greater your profits.

If you constantly ask yourself "WTF was I thinking" it's time to re-evalute your thought processes. But it's still going to happen from time to time.

[jeffnc]

[ QUOTE ]
I was reading this part of nltap and the authors say its ok to make mistakes, no one plays perfect.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well I can't really accept the premise. I mean it's no different than real life. I mean, you can play golf and take 4 putts to get the ball in the hole, and tell yourself it's cool because your opponent just took 5 putts. Well in a sense that's kind of true in golf if you're playing match play. But if you're playing a cash game, it's not match play, it's stroke play and every stroke counts. (I hope you understand golf enough to get the analogy.) In general, yes if you are always playing in games where the other players are worse than you, then you will make money (if you overcome the rake). But aren't your goals really
a) to make as much profit as possible (not just to make profit)
b) to become better at poker?