Poker is a strange game. Every part of the game is filled with deception and misdirection. It’s not just the players trying to mess with your mind though. The game itself can get you lost behind smoke and mirrors if you don’t stop and try to see through the illusions.
Poker is not a card game, and one does not win at poker by playing the best sets of cards. Poker is a game of mental challenges and strategies that just happens to use cards as the vehicle for setting up the situations that a player must navigate. We do not play poker against the cards, we play against the other players. We do not always win when we have the best hand, and we do not always lose when we have the worst hand. A good player must learn both how the cards work, and how his opponents work. Someone who only understands one or the other is severely handicapped when playing against someone who understands both.
“Winning” at the game of poker is not about having the best hand when all the cards are on the table. Someone can win several hands of poker by showing down the best cards in a short period of time, but still be an overall loser because they continue to lose money over longer periods of play.
Making money in poker is not necessarily based on winning hands. I, for example, average a fairly good win rate in terms of money made for hands played, but when I examine my stats I see that I normally only win in about 5% to 6% of the hands that are dealt to me. I “lose” roughly 95% of the time that I play, but I make money.
A poker player does not earn money by winning large amounts when he wins. Everyone at the table is going to get the same number of top hands eventually if they play long enough. Everyone eventually will win a big all-in hand and maybe even get stacks from 2 or 3 players all at once. The difference between making money and losing money though, is that a losing player will continue to play and eventually lose it all back to another player or players. A winning player, while still losing plenty of hands, will lose less money as he continues to play, then when he wins again he will show a net profit after his series of losses. A good player does not make money by winning more, he makes money by losing less.
These are just some of the things that go through my mind as I sit with my fist under my chin, humming along to songs I’ve heard 1000 times, waiting for the next 2 cards to fly across my screen and add a few more cents to my bankroll.
May the fish be with you…