I just returned home from playing a few medium stakes poker tournaments, and I was surprised, shocked, and confused to still see players having humongous mindset leaks.
Today, I'm going to be sharing with you three mindset leaks that you must avoid if you want to succeed at poker.
Understand that mindset matters. You are not a robot who can study away from the table and then show up to the table and play exactly the strategy that you studied. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just study and then show up and play it perfectly? Anytime your emotions come into play, you may be prone to making mistakes. Emotions can arise when you are sad, annoyed, frustrated, angry, or perhaps even when you are super happy and elated. If you are tired, drunk, or feeling anything like that, your feelings and your mindset will impact your play.
The best players in the world are typically less susceptible to this because they know how to play poker extraordinarily well and are used to implementing really good strategies regularly. However, if you are not as skilled at poker because you haven't studied a lot and are essentially guessing, and if you are not used to the inevitable swings of the game, your mindset may lead you to make all sorts of blunders. If you've ever had a humongous blow-up at the poker table, let me know about it in the comments section down below. Click the like and subscribe button while you're down there.
Once you realize, fully accept, and understand that variance exists and that you will experience it regularly, it will hopefully help you have fewer emotions during the inevitable downswings or upswings.
Mindset Leak 1
The first mindset leak you need to avoid is caring about bad beats. Many players, especially in small and medium stakes games, care too much when they get bad beats. Usually, they become mad, angry, and frustrated, leading to going on tilt—either by playing a little too loosely or maybe a lot too loosely. Some people tilt in the opposite direction; they play really tightly, thinking, "Okay, next time I'm going to get it in really good," and they don't want to make a mistake. Either way, it's bad. Anytime you deviate from good, strong poker that takes advantage of the mistakes your opponents are making, you are making a mistake and therefore giving equity or money to your opponents.
If you get all in with pocket aces against Jack-four offsuit, you will lose 12.46% of the time. Now, that's not a lot, but you will not win 100% of the time. You hear a lot of people say, "I should have won; I had aces against Jack-four." Well, no, you should expect to lose 12.46% of the time if you get it all in with aces against Jack-four before the flop. This frustrates many people. Jack-four against aces is a pretty good spot for you, but imagine getting it in with queens against ace-jack suited. I don't know what the odds are, but you're going to lose something like a third of the time. Losing a third of the time is significant. Often, you'll get it in with queens against ace-king, and it's 50/50; you're going to lose half the time. A lot of people think, "Oh, I got queens before the flop; I should have won." No, no, no, no, no. Stop worrying about what should be and simply make profitable decisions.
Also, if you are playing in games where your opponents are loose, splashy, and crazy, and you just play good, tight, aggressive poker, you will usually get your money in ahead because they are playing all sorts of garbage, while you are playing good cards. So when you do lose, it will be because you got bad-beaten. Get used to it; it's normal. It's nothing to be mad about.
Something that happens in many small stakes games, or games in general, is that people model their behavior after their opponents. If you are sitting and playing poker and you see someone get bad beaten, and they get mad and go crazy, and then someone else gets bad beaten and does the same thing, you may naturally think, "Oh, I got bad beaten; I should be mad." Just because everyone else gets mad doesn't mean that you have to.
Mindset Leak 2
The second mindset leak is caring about being card dead at a full table. You may only want to play something like 20% of the hands you are dealt, and sometimes you simply won't get very many of those hands, especially if you don’t play sessions that are all that long. This can result in you sitting around and blinding out. When playing live poker, this can happen for many hours at a time. I play a nice game every once in a while, and the game only lasts six hours. There have been, I don’t know, three days out of the last ten where I just didn't get many good cards. I probably played 8% of hands. My opponents were making fun of me because I was being overly nitty. I know I am just getting the Jack-four offsuit every hand, and I don’t like taking the Jack-four offsuit against anything decent.
So what can you do about that?
You don't need to loosen up for image concerns; just keep playing good, fundamentally sound poker. If your opponents think you are overly tight, maybe you can sneak a bluff in here and there. I would certainly consider putting in three-bet bluffs or calling the big blind and checking and raising a little bit more often if my opponents think I'm going to be overly tight and straightforward.
However, if your opponents are good and they think you're good, they'll just presume you're card dead, and that’s it. They won't suddenly think you've decided to show up and not play any hands; they'll just believe you're card dead, and that’s okay. Whenever I'm playing high-stakes games in the PokerGO studio, sometimes players known to be loose, aggressive players sit there and effectively blind out for two hours. You may wonder how that could happen. They're loose and aggressive, and they like to battle. But if they get the Jack-four offsuit every hand, they just fold because you can’t properly play it. That happens, and it will happen for many hours at a time. So, get used to it. Once you realize this, it's nothing to be concerned with.
Mindset Leak 3
The third mindset leak is caring about short-term results. This is something that crushes most players because they don’t get to play all that much poker. They think, "I'm going to go play poker for six hours, and I'm going to try to win some money." But in reality, you have little to no control over the results during any short session or even in tournaments over a decently long period of time. Many players in cash games hate the idea of being down. Players in general hate being down. We have to understand that daily results and weekly results do not really matter much at all.
You’ll find some players who hate leaving the cash game table as a loser. They think, "If I leave and I'm down, then that's really bad. I don’t want to be a loser." You have to realize that the last hand of today is essentially the first hand of the next day. You'll see many players tighten up towards the end of a session if they're up, thinking, "I really, really don’t want to lose my profit." It doesn’t matter. You'll see other players, if they are down five or ten big blinds, might start playing crazy to try to get even.
To make as much money as possible at poker, you simply have to play each spot as well as possible. Sometimes, when you make a good play, like running an obvious bluff with the best possible bluffing candidate, and you get called, you're going to lose a pot, and that's okay. Don’t get annoyed about it or frustrated.
Going back to the idea of some players hating being down: if you primarily play tournaments, you will almost always be down from your peak poker bankroll or net worth. Why is that? Well, whenever you play tournaments and you cash, let’s say, 15% of the time, that means 85% of the time, you leave the table a loser. And that’s okay.
If you look at the graph of every tournament player, their graphs trickle down—they go down, down, down, down, down, down, and then they get a win, and then they spike. Then they go down, down, down, down, down, down, and then get another win and it spikes again. So, way more often than not, you end up being down if you are a tournament player, and that is okay. Accept it, understand it, get used to it, and don’t let it bother you.
These are three of many mindset leaks that you must avoid, but these are three major ones. To recap, you need to stop caring about bad beats; they are going to happen, especially if you get your money in good more often than not. You also need to stop caring about just getting bad cards. Quite often, you will receive bad cards; sit there and play good poker. Finally, stop caring about short-term results. There’s a lot of variance in poker, and you better get used to it if you want to have any chance of succeeding.
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