Learn Texas Holdem

Fundamentally, winning at poker boils down to you getting paid off on your good hands and avoiding your opponents good hands. Many players have a problem with the latter of the two.

When they are getting good cards and having most of them hold up, they have no problem continuing to play well. On the other hand, when they get a few bad beats, everything changes. They play much worse than they normally do and end up losing more than they had to, making it harder yet to having a winning session. This isn't another article about tilt. What I want to introduce here is what I call, "Entitlement." Entitlement is when a player thinks that they deserve to win, based on some erroneous premise.

Let me give you an example: Let's say Bob has been playing poker for the past 5 hours and hasn't won a hand yet. Then he gets AJoff and flops and Ace and ends up losing again to Aces up or an Ace with a bigger kicker. At some point in the hand, the opponent raised him, suggesting his hand wasn't good, but Bob continued to play because he was stubborn. Typically Bob wouldn't have lost so much, but right then he was stubborn because he felt that it was his time to win a hand. Bob is thinking, "I haven't flopped a pair in hours, this is my pot!" Bob is a good player, but he doesn't fully understand how the pace of poker goes. Bob is used to winning, and because he wins so often, he feels like he should win whenever he plays.

The problem is, though, that he can't win without cards. Even if you are the best player in the world, you can't make much money without showing down the winning hand. (I suppose you could bluff a few hands here and there, but that won't amount to much in comparison.) This entitlement makes us feel as though we are supposed to win everyday and if we are not, we should be doing something else to bring up the slack.

What happens then is you start to try to create opportunities that aren't there and you end up losing money back that you shouldn't have. What Bob fails to realize is that there is nothing that states you get an even amount of cards over each session, week, or even month. There is nothing that says you'll win even amounts over each session, week or month. In my case, the complete opposite is true: I get rushes of good cards and then nothing for a long time. I have a couple small wins, small losses, then crush them for a few days.

What sets me apart from Bob is that I don't get rattled when my good cards aren't coming, I expect it. I don't go in and play everyday thinking I'm going to win X amount or bust. I don't feel obligated to "try" and win; I just let the cards take their natural course. This frees me from entitlement and it allows me to make more money over all because I don't piss away a bunch of my winnings when the cards aren't there.

I understand that today may be a day that I won't win much. But if that is the case, I'm not going to lose much either. I'm perfectly content with sitting there all day and leaving even because I know that each chip I save today is one more I don't have to get back tomorrow when I am actually getting good hands. Part of entitlement is based on ego. If you aren't doing well at a table and the competition is really weak, you feel emasculated. Here you are sitting at the easiest table you've been at in weeks, and you can't win a stack. But that is normal, there is nothing to get stressed out over or start playing badly.

Having a realistic perspective of the game is a necessity. Even if you have a solid strategy, if you can't see the game for what it is, it makes it almost impossible to play well over a long period of time. So next time you are running badly or in a month long slump, take a step back, cool off, and work on your understanding of the game. It could be your strategy, but it could also be that you just are trying to force it. Poker can be beat consistently, I do it, and you can too, if -- and only if -- you are able to have a realistic view of the game.