1. Poker is
a long-term game
The true
measuring stick of a poker player is what type of decisions they make. If they
make good decisions they will win in the long-run; if they make poor decisions
they will lose in the long-run: It’s that simple!
So, why do
so many players make poor decisions? The reason for poor decisions is quite
simple, most people view poker in the short-term. These players do not hit the
tables enough to think beyond a single hand or session. Even if they have heard
the term ‘long-term’, it has never been explained properly, and is too abstract
a concept to fully sink in.
In poker:
Winning is the result of good decisions, not the other way around.
This is an
extremely difficult concept for many players to wrap their heads around. It’s
hard to explain to someone who just won a huge pot that they made a blunder at
some point in the hand, and were merely lucky. Generally you’ll be told, “gotta
get lucky sometimes.”
The truth
is, just because you win a pot doesn’t mean you made good decisions during it;
and just because you lose a pot doesn’t mean you made bad decisions!
You will
find most of your opponents have this concept completely backwards. They feel
if they win the pot they did something right; they don’t realize that for every
1 in 10 miracle they hit, there will be nine other times they miss. And, it’s
these 9 other times that cause them to lose money. They remember the $150 win,
and forget about the nine $20 losses.
2. Your
money comes from your opponent’s mistakes
It’s
extremely important you understand this concept. Poker is a battle of mistakes;
the player making the fewest, and least costly mistakes, is the player who will
be taking home the money in the long-run (it’s not the player who knows the
most, or pulls off the best bluff). If you play in a game where your opponents
make more mistakes than you do, you will come out on top regardless of your
skill level. All you have to do to be a winning player is look for players that
are worse than you!
This holds
true for any game or stakes. If the five best players in the world are sitting
at a particular table, and the 6th best player pulls up a chair, guess who is
going to be the fish in the game?
3. You
don’t have to be the best to make money
Another
problem even the best players have is they try to beat everyone. Instead of
focusing on the weaker players, they are out to prove their superiority over
everyone at the table. In a typical
poker game there will be one or two players who are feeding chips to the rest
of the table (at the lower limits you may find three or four players feeding
the table). These are the guys playing 75% of the hands they are dealt, and
calling to the river.
Good
players will attempt to exploit these ‘feeders’ by isolating them in pots,
while avoiding the locksmiths with all but their best hands. There is no point
in continually battling skilled players, even if you feel you have a slight
edge over them, when you have people who are practically throwing their money
at you.
I'm not
condoning total avoidance of decent players; just contemplate the risks and the
reward before you get involved. Sure you can push a locksmith off a hand when
he bricks, but if you're constantly playing pots against players who make few
mistakes, you're fighting an uphill battle. Remember, most of your profits are
coming from your opponent’s mistakes, not from your good plays. And, the worse
an opponent is, the more mistakes he will make.
These small
gaffes you commit trying to ‘prove’ something, can end up being the difference
between winning and losing in the long-run. There is such a small margin for
error in poker that a single mistake can put you in the red (Barry Greenstein
guessed this edge to be around 3% for the best players, so imagine what it is
for you).