Tilt has many causes and kinds, but it has only one effect. It makes us play bad. It makes us do things we wouldn’t do if we were at our very best. And that’s how I want to define it, exactly like that. Tilt is any deviation from your A-game and [...]
Categories: Poker Strategy
One reason that poor players are prone to making mistakes at the poker table is that many decisions in poker require assumptions or thought processes that are vastly different to those we require in our everyday life. In fact, many of the attitudes required to play good poker actually go against our instincts.
Ian Taylor & [...]
Categories: Poker Strategy
Tagged: bad players, Hilger, instinct, mind, Taylor
Virtually every poker situation can be broken down to a simple mathematical formula. If there is $600 in a pot and you bet $600, you’ll be getting even money on your proposition. That means, in the long run, you’d have to win that pot half the time to make it a profitable play. When you [...]
Categories: Poker Strategy
Tagged: control, good players, Negreanu
I think emotional control is a very common hinderance to poker players, it really amazes me how often otherwise great players allow themselves to lose far more than they should because they have a desire to keep playing to get unstuck.
Brian Hastings – 12/2009 – in CardRunners Blog
Categories: Poker Strategy
If you keep whining about your bad luck, you will play like a weak, scared, passive victim. You will lose, and deserve to lose. If you realize that you’re about as lucky as everyone else, you can play like a confident, decisive winner.
Alan Schoonmaker – 12/2009 – in CardPlayer
Categories: Poker Strategy
Tagged: luck, mind, Schoonmaker
A good bluff tells a story that the victim believes and understands. [...] You have to make your opponent feel certain – certain that he is doing the right thing by folding. You don’t want to leave any doubt in his mind. Let him remain confident in his fold, because creating confusion in your opponent’s [...]
Categories: Poker Strategy
A rule of thumb for cash games is that the first raise means nothing, the reraise doesn’t mean much more, but the four-bet starts to get scary. In tournaments, the first raise still means nothing, but the reraise is already frightening.
Matt Matros – 07/2009 – in CardPlayer
Categories: Poker Strategy
Tagged: aggressivity, cash game, Matros, tournament
I think even good players sometimes don’t adapt very well. They have pretty good basics, usually, especially these days online, but they don’t adapt enough to the flow of the game. They have just a basic strategy, and they aren’t very flexible. It’s very important to be flexible with your strategy in poker. If something [...]
Categories: Poker Strategy
Tagged: adaptation, Grospellier
Nine out of ten times, when I’m waiting for a bigger game, I’m in the $10-$20 games because there are more tables and a constant stream of people. It constantly amazes me that people don’t understand how big $10-$20 is. [...] You can sit in the $10-$20 and make $1,500 a day and it’s so [...]
Categories: Poker Strategy
Convince yourself that you are neither lucky or unlucky. Luck is a label that can only be applied in the past tense, never in the future. The odds of any random event occurring are precisely those dictated be the laws of probablility. If you miss ten flush draws in a row, then the odds of [...]
Categories: Poker Strategy