2+2 wisdom

I was just checking some of my older notes out and stumbled upon this. I believe I took this from either J-man's well or Fabian's.

For anyone serious about this game you need to put in the work. Not just looking over HHs and reading posts, but also forcing yourself to be a critical thinker about the game. Stop thinking about results, and what the “right” answer is in certain situations. Think about why you are making your decisions, and why the answer is right.


Something that I read from a Gergery post, that I believe in very strongly, is that the better players essentially have less moments of stupidity, and not really that many more moments of brilliance. If you are an amazing poker player when you are in the zone, but you tilt easily, or lose focus, then you’re still crap. Why has Mike Matusow won a million dollars twice, and gone broke both times? Because he is a world class tournament player when he is playing well, but that just doesn’t happen often enough. Especially in a tournament all it takes is one lapse, one mis-step, and all your hard work is lost. Losses and bad runs are inevitable, but you will only be a “loser” if you let the losses push you off your game. There are plenty of talented losers out there, because they let results skew their vision of what they should actually be doing.

My last point is just to remind ourselves that we get everything we deserve in poker. No one gets [censored] over more than anyone else, and if you convince yourself that you do, then you are leading yourself down a bad path. It happens all the time that someone will make 5 bad plays in a row, then get all their money in as a huge favorite and lose, and then blame their loss on bad luck. All you can ever do in poker is make the best decision possible. Anything beyond your control is just that, immune to your complaints and self-pity. Any time someone will ask a question like “was he good, or did he get lucky to win that tournament?” I want to smack them in the face. As if the two things are mutually exclusive? Even if you were all in as a 5-1 dog multiple times in a tournament, and won every time, that doesn’t make you “more lucky” than someone who was all in with the best of it every time. If you get all in with TT and your opponent happens to have AA, you are at that point 20%. But when you got your money in, if his range was 55-AA, AJ+, KQ, then you really aren’t getting yourself in as a 20% shot in the long run. In my mind thinking that you are somehow more lucky to win against the AA than against the 99 is silly. It is like people who think it is a bad beat to have AA all in preflop, your opponent outflop you, then you river a set. All you can be concerned about is getting your money in in profitable situations.

Ok my final final note, is just to remind people to make sure they know why they are playing poker. If you are playing casually, then have fun and enjoy yourself. If you are playing for the money or like me for the challenge, then step up to the freakin plate and don’t be so lazy. Everything is within your grasp if you set your mind to it. Poker is a game not like much else out there. Not everyone can be a great basketball player, not everyone has the intellectual capacity for chess, etc etc, but in my mind anybody can be a winning poker player if they can pass a basic IQ test, and can learn discipline, and have the drive. Don’t let bad runs discourage you, think of the bigger picture. If you want to be playing WPT events in a few years, and not 5 dollar tournaments, it is more attainable than you think.