We often let emotions take over control and have a certain influence on our actions, often this results in a disappointment when the own expectations are not met. A typical reaction is a wide range of swear words to blow off some steam and most are blocked within the poker room chat. But the new magic word is the d-word … not the f-word anymore, but the one that is related to a stupid and stubborn animal.
I think almost every poker player used it and it is a typical reaction after a bad beat, yet last time I checked there is no golden rule that the best starting hands will also win when you go into a showdown after all community cards have been dealt. This is called variance and happens quite often, yet most of the time we always try to blame someone else rather than analyzing what just happened.
Don’t get me wrong, I have also been guilty of that but I try not to use the d-word as often anymore and rather stick to “well played” – might be a bit sarcastic, but there is no need to use swear words. The time wasted with blowing off steam can be used in a by far more constructive way to look through the hand history. In the heat of the moment we don’t always realize that or don’t pay attention to all details to judge it in a reasonable way.
Good beats and bad beats are part of the game and make it more exciting, it can obviously be frustrating at times but the ultimate goal is to always make the most logical decision based on specific aspects. None of them actually contain the d-word though, quite a few actually start with a p … p as in poker.
The game of poker and gaining knowledge about all its various aspects it is a long and difficult progress, you constantly have to work on your game and if you stand still, you already fall behind. The popularity of poker has seen a tremendous growth over the last decades, especially since the man with the perfect name and the perfect story won the Main Event of the World Series of Poker.
Nowadays, you can see poker on TV almost every day and most of the formats there are action filled and you will see a lot of spectacular moves. Why is that? Because it doesn’t make much sense to show boring folds, they don’t attract potential customers because they always want to see the highlights and also need a certain entertainment to try it out themselves.
What you see is a by far more aggressive younger generation that plays reckless and has no fear to make moves. They use the power of position (an important p word) as well as the power of chips to outplay their opponents and take advantage of more tight players that will often fold when faced by too much aggression. Of course there is no guarantee that an aggressive play will always be profitable, but if you can use a variety of strategies and can adjust to different types of opponents quickly, you have by far more options in various scenarios.
The power of chips, especially in position, is a common tool against tighter opponents that will fold by far more playable hands, because they are afraid to play postflop and even if you get reraised one out of ten times and have to fold, you will win more chips on the other nine successful steals. It is not wrong to play fewer hands, but it is by far more difficult to win chips when you always throw your hole cards in the muck.
If you always wait for premium hands, you limit your own options to win chips because you reduce the possible hand range and give away by far too much credit to your opponents with your passive play. They also just get the same number of hole cards (this might vary depending on the game type) but will make more moves because they know you will most likely fold. The principle of “tight is right” may have applied in the past, but nowadays it more likely can be called “nit is sh1t”.
Another important p word in poker are the so called “pot odds”, you don’t have to be a genius to figure out the ratio and when it is profitable to have the right percentage that will justify decent odds for the correct return for investment. At online poker you see the total pot and how much more you have to call, at live poker you can always ask the dealer for a count. Of course you are aware that you will probably not have the best hand preflop, but there are still community cards to come on later streets.
The key is finding the right balance and making the correct and most logical decision without letting emotions have any influence on it. That may be difficult at times and some are better to master this dilemma, but if you want to improve it is an important step in the right direction. If you limit your own play to specific standard moves, you become predictable and this can be exploited by your opponents.
It will be easier to get a read on you and this is the worst nightmare ever when you sit at a table and you are like an open book and could also play with your hole cards exposed. The final result in that case would be the same if there is still a betting round to come because your cards will get mucked. But if you really want to improve, you will have to invest time, money and efforts into your poker education and this doesn’t include sharpening up your vocabulary of swear words.
If you want to talk about poker, use more p-words and less d-words … . And if you still don’t know which d-word I mean, it will probably look like that:
P.S. Did you actually know how the word "donkey" or "donk" found its way to poker and why it is used? It actually comes from the noise made by poker machines ages ago when people jammed in their coins to start playing. Another reasonable explanation/assumption would be the fact that this type of player is as stubborn and / or stupid as the animal ...
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