Learn Texas Holdem

I've always considered myself to be a fairly rational person. My thought was always that as long as I make the right moves, emotion doesn't matter. I mean, come on, does me being happy or mad change the cards? The concept of tilt seemed ridiculous to me -- as if I would get so upset I would forget how to play! Only as of late, within the past year and a half, have I realized how important the right attitude is to playing poker well. Not going on tilt is only the start, one needs to keep a positive state of mind. In this little addition to the site, I'm going to talk about what I've coined as a "humble optimist" and why it is so paramount.

-- Self Fulfilling Prophecy -- To borrow a

-- Stress -- Stress is bad (duh!). Any kind of disease or disorder is only worsened by stress. Stress can lead to all kinds of problems that weren't present before in an otherwise healthy person. We like to think of the body and the mind as two separate things, but they aren't. When we let ourselves get upset (keyword "let"), our body and mind react in a negative way: We don't function as well.

Good decisions are what poker is about and being stressed out just clouds the very judgment we need to win. When you get stressed you play badly which leads to more stress and more bad play. Poker has so many of these treacherous spirals that it is imperative you learn how to keep collected. You would be surprised how many good players can go on a run of bad cards and then seriously damage their bankroll in a binge trying to get even. I myself have done that a number of times.

What happens is that you get beat up some, then instead of taking a small loss and calling it a day, you try to get it back. Just the fact that you are willing to sit in the game for 24 hours straight to get even is a sign that you aren't thinking clearly, so the chances of you actually getting your money back is slim. What is more likely to happen is you end up giving back twice that or even more, only to go home pissed off at yourself for creating that situation.

I don't do that anymore. I'm perfectly content with playing well and leaving a small loser. I won't sit there and do a marathon session and leave with my legs cramping and my stomach all knotted up. By keeping a positive state of mind you are less likely to get this stressed out and more likely to recognize the signs if you are starting to.

I've listed a few of the negative effects that can happen when you aren't staying positive, but why do people get frustrated to begin with? I think the biggest reason why otherwise good players get frustrated is because they don't have a realistic view of the game. Holdem is a game of small edges, yet some people behave as if getting their AA cracked was a thousand to one.

Holdem is beautiful because it is fraught with negative reinforcement. Bad players go in, are up at one point in the day, and then leave losers. One win can keep them coming back for ages. Winning with one bad hand can make them play it forever. And even if the person knows what they should be doing, often times they don't do it because they see any two cards can win and start to play a few more hands.

There is no reason to get upset when a bad player beats you, it will all come back, either directly from them or indirectly back into the poker community. Everyday I play, I will lose hands. It makes no difference to me whether or not the guy got me with a 1 outer or a 10 outer, I still lost the hand. As long as I'm playing well, things will work out.

The next reason why people get upset is because they don't have confidence that what they are doing will win in the long run and they don't know what is par for the course. After they take a few hits, they begin to second guess their strategy and then adjust it. More often than not the adjustment isn't a helpful one and they completely spin out of control.

Swings are normal in poker. You want to minimize your loss and maximize the gain and adjusting your traditional style because of losing a few hands does just the opposite. No one is immune to losing sessions, but again what makes you an expert is how you deal with them. Will you lose your head and forget how to play well and join the masses of bad players with losing styles? Or will you use your strategy as an anchor and ride the bad times out still being able to make good value bets and maximizing your hands?

Another reason for players getting frustrated is that they don't have any idea what makes up a winning day. There is nothing that states you'll get an even amount of pots everyday you play. It doesn't work that way. Some days you'll get nothing. Some months you'll get nothing. Then some days and months you'll just kill it and it will seem like you can do no wrong. The correct perspective is to realize that the good times aren't that great and the bad times aren't that bad -- they'll even themselves out over the long haul. What is important is that you are playing well with the cards at are given to you, the rest will take care of itself.

The humble optimist is what I call someone who has enough experience and forethought to put everything into perspective. I added the word "humble" before the optimist because I think many people confuse confidence with just stupid ego. Humility is important because it allows us to think objectively. Ideally, we want to be able to think logically about the information at hand and take confidence in our approach, because it is based on a sound strategy.

There is no benefit in thinking we are better than the best and are invincible. Ego leads to entitlement, which causes a whole host of other problems for a poker player. We are optimistic because of necessity and expectation. It will be impossible to get us down. Does it matter that my AA lost 5 times today? No, because AA means nothing, it is just another hand. What matters is that I won with 10 other hands today and took them for three racks. AA is only another hand, a winning day can be made up of any number of hands, with or without big pairs.

The humble optimist knows that his/her play will win given enough time, and to lose the farm in the downtime is an error all too common. The humble optimist is content with just playing well and leaving the rest to the cards. Seems simple right? Well it is! 99% of what you need to control to win is yourself, but if you can't control yourself, you'll never win.

So that's it for this one! This may not seem like a great revelation yet, but you'll see! Find a really easy poker game and see how your optimism develops ;-)