Play poker like the pro’s! I bet you have read that line at least once or twice? It is thrown around like everyone playing poker is out there winning a fortune, and living the good life. All you do is sit down, put your chips on the table, and start winning. As if it is that simple.
if you pay attention to the commercials, or read the poker rags, they are full of self confident men, beautiful women, and piles of chips or cash. Right…except it does not quite happen that way. In the real world, everything is a little different.
People at the table play scared money, are petty beyond belief, constantly whine, and take your chips away only to give them to someone else. After a time, all your chips are in the house drop box that belongs to the house. You feel like you have been blinded out, or lost with so many good hands there is no fairness in poker. That has been my experience at the tables in the past, and likely your experience too?
So what do you do about it? If you are stubborn like me, you have tried lots of different options, not limited to:
- Read more books, if two are good, ten are better
- Study more, if you are going to read each book four times, you may as well read each book five times
- Try and play better cards, more cards, any cards, because that is how the Poker Pro’s do it and they are, well the Pro’s
If poker not seem to work for you, I have an idea? Maybe it is not you? You are the person sitting at the table. You are the person putting in your chips. Maybe it is the dream rather than good decisions that are at fault?
All those books are not wrong. We mix everything up when we play in a state of what is and what we want. Remember the good looking confident player in the poker ads? What is he or she doing? Do you share any traits with them except maybe looks
Do you:
- Play in the best games?
- Play only good starting hands and not chase?
- Play only when the odds are more than even?
- Play to win chips, and not hands?
- Welcome someone raising when you are in the pot?
Poker games used to be softer compared to games around today. It was so easy to play a looser, make bigger mistakes, and still show a profit. These good games are still around! People are still trying to give you money, but you won’t take it!
It is frustrating to watch big pots be pushed to player after player. You must know people winning those big pots are not really winning, it is an illusion? They are just holding extra chips for a few minutes before passing them on to the next losing player, who passes them on to someone else.
The player at the table who is in few hands, yet wins most of those hands is the real winner. That player has a real understanding of what s reasonable for an individual to win at your table. When playing poker, they know what is a reasonable expectation for their investment. Anything more or less is temporary at best.
Better players play within the parameters they know are real. They know they are not going to turn one buy in into a years wages in a few hours. They know the long run is how profit builds and grows.
You can be a steady long term winner if you play like the players in poker ads. Look closely at the cards they turn. Are they turning over 92o, or AA? Are you playing 86s late with six callers before you, or are you first in with the 86o finding yourself calling a raise against three strong players? Why not be a winner? Play poker like players in the ads do.
