Poker Psychology

Knowledge and Understanding of Poker Realities

First of all, you should understand and accept the realities that govern poker. Poker is a great game, but it often seems to be unfair. Keep in mind: it is just a card game and you may affect many aspects of the game, leading to your winnings but, unfortunately, not all of them. And the sooner you understand this, the better will be your results. Keep in mind that poker is a game based on both skills and luck!

It should be noted that you can not win all hands, even with the best cards and playing against a weak opponent. Play those hands where you have the advantage and the luck will allow you to dominate others. The best poker players play a few hands, but they win a lot of money. Pay attention to this fact at the table.

Luck is a Short-term Factor

Having two aces, you can not be one hundred percent sure that you are a favorite. From time to time your aces can be a lower-ranking hand. The outcomes of particular hands mean nothing. Your results in the long run can tell something about your skills. The longer you play correctly, the bigger role the skills will play and the smaller role will play the luck.

If you have decided to play poker professionally, you should play as much time as possible to understand the features of this game. You will stop paying attention to split aces and river cards of wrong color. You will understand that this does not make any difference, and an incompetent opponent who has accidently defeated you will lose in the long run. Keep in mind: the luck is a flighty thing. Today you have caught it and tomorrow it will smile at your opponent. Anyway, the luck is distributed equally. The longer you will play correctly, the more you will win, regardless of the particular losses. Fortune favors the skillful. This rule is valid in poker.

Skills are Important in the Long Run

Imagine that you have come to a casino and wagered on black. According to the probability theory, you have to win once out of each two spins (let's assume to make it more simple that there is no zero). But everything may be different in the short run. The ball can fall into a pocket marked black three times in a row, then red may appear once and black comes up five times. To reach the theoretical option (black comes up in 50% of spins), you will have to play for a long period of time. Well, the luck determines the outcome in the short run, either red or black comes up more frequently but never one by one constantly.

This statement is suitable for poker. Many times you can come across a situation called coinflip. What happens if your cards and the cards of your opponent have equal chances of winning the hand? The classic example is the duel of two hands: AK and QQ. How many times will you be able to win such a coinflip? The answer is 50% but only in the long run, but you may lose five times in a row in the short run. It is obviously that this example shows that you should not hope for luck. The better skills will bring you an advantage in such coinflips. Therefore, it is important to develop your skills and play properly without worrying about the possible loss.

If You Have an Advantage, it is Insignificant

Poker is a game of small advantages. During the gameplay the chips are going about from one player to another. The winner is determined at the end of a gaming session and the outcome usually depends on small one-time winnings. You can double the size of your stack in one hand and leave the table. Any professional poker player will never do this. He or she will play until he or she will run out of money. One session is nothing for a pro player, since only monthly or quarterly profits are taken into consideration.

The players who usually win do not earn on good cards or big jackpots. They make money using the mistakes of their opponents. Now more and more gamers are playing at least adequately. They make a minimum number of errors, but these minimal mistakes allow experienced players to beat less advanced opponents in the long run. Play a lot and do not make mistakes and your bankroll will grow.

How to Control Emotions

However it is not enough to understand and accept the poker realities to be a good player. That's not all. On the one hand, you need to know the rules and the features of the game. On the other hand, you have to master a set of behavior patterns and a set of emotions of your opponents. The sooner you learn to understand them, the better your results will be in this great game. Then we will focus on the discussion of emotions that ruin your game. Let's move on to the specific things.

• Annoyance

Various things can annoy different players. You can be nervous, because you just paid a large entry fee and that is why your behavior at the table is far from perfect. Many players get annoyed when the opponent, who has won a big pot, immediately exits the game without leaving a chance to win money back. Bad beats are really annoying. It is vey annoying when the opponents are thinking too much over the next move. The irritation of most nervous players may manifest in the form of non-verbal signals, which can be noticed by competent opponents. Some players have even a tremor when they get a strong hand. The others start scratching a nose while bluffing. This is a result of frustration and you should avoid this emotion at the poker table.

• Pride

Actually, pride is not a bad feature of character, but when you are at the poker table your pride can lead you to troubles. For example, your opponent has won three times in a row, and every time after the showdown you have been able to see that he was bluffing. It seems humiliating, doesn't it? Do you want to try to show the same thing? Do you want to call bluffing with a low-ranking hand to make this bastard feel like you used to? If you want to do this, your pride may lead to the loss of money. Poker is not a personal rivalry. It is a game in which you are fighting for money. Only those players who are able to distinguish the disgust for an opponent from the disgust for the loss of money can win playing poker.

• Anger

Every player at the poker table can tremble with anger, since poker is sometimes really unfair. You can play well for a long period of time, but the bad player will be able to defeat you. Naturally, this situation can anger. However you have to control your anger while playing poker, since when you are angry you can try somehow to show your emotions. It does not matter whether it is the fact that you are playing with low-ranking hands, or insults of other players, or something else. Anyway, this will not lead to the victory both in the long run and in the short run. If you are angry, it is necessary to make a break, calm down, and only then keep playing.

• Disappointment

Poker is a game full of disappointment. Sooner or later, every player gets into a situation that seems to be illogical and unfair. The disappointed player is not able to take the correct decisions. You should accept these poker realities and disappointment will turn into indifference. When you stop paying attention to your disappointment and become able to focus on the gameplay, the outcome of your poker sessions will certainly become better and more profitable.

• Fear

Sometimes it can be scary to sit at the poker table.

• You can be afraid, because you think that your opponents play better than you. Then this weakness will be used by the players who like to bluff.
• You may be afraid of losing money, because you are playing making very high bets. Then your strategy will be far from optimal, you'll be too careful and will fold any time if you don't have cards that are the same with those that are in the flop.
• You may be afraid of looking like a fool or a coward in front of your opponents. Then you will not fold, when it would be appropriate and correct.

You can be afraid of many things. Try to get rid of this fear by preventing the appearance of situations that may lead to it.

• Sorrow

If your mental state does not seem to be perfect and you feel that you are depressed, you should better avoid playing poker. If you feel that today the

world is against you, you should not try to take a rest at the poker table. It will not change your mind and your attitude towards the situation at the table will be the same. Each bad beat will prove you that the world is against you and everybody wants to deceive you. Anyway, you will lose money. You will play in a very passive way and you will not be able to gain the maximum profit from your cards. When you feel sad, when you feel bad, you should not play poker.

• Compassion

Poker is a tough and unforgiving game. You play it to win money. The amount that you have won is money of the other players. To succeed in poker, there is no other way but to deprive your opponents of money. Sometimes when you have won a lot of money at the table, you may feel compassion for your opponents, you can start playing more gently helping someone in the game. It's really very noble, but has little to do with the most important task of every poker player: to earn the highest possible amount.

• Happiness

It would seem that happiness is a positive feeling and should be harmless at the poker table, but... Happy players usually do not see any problems in the game. They often succeed in winning a pot in this state. However excessive feeling of happiness and carelessness at the poker table can lead to too negligent game and exaggeration of your abilities. Don't deceive yourself!

That's the theory. It has been known that every person feels emotions. Try to show them as rarely as possible and you will get an advantage over them and therefore win their money.

Tilt and its Kinds

The final part of our article about the psychological aspects of poker deals with a tilt. Have you ever played worse than you have to or worse than you can? If so, the reason for this is a tilt. It is the main enemy of players.

What is tilt? In a few words it can be defined as a state of emotional frustration. The player loses self-control and thus his behavior at the poker table deviates from the standard norms. However it is a simplified definition, since there are many kinds of tilt and many factors that can cause it.

• Hate-Losing Tilt

The first type of tilt is a so-called hate-losing tilt. This means that you start playing too many hands in the preflop. You fold rarely after the flop without taking into account the ranks of your hands. This type of tilt develops easily, because no one likes to have to fold in three-fourth of cases. Poker is a game in which you don't need to act constantly and sometimes it is painful. It is very easy to be tempted to expand your optimal range of hands.

What are the main causes of hate-loosing tilt? Without any doubt, the first one is boredom. When after a long period with high-ranking cards you finally get a hand that looks a little better, you will unconsciously start estimating this hand higher that it deserves. After all, it's just a monster compared to the trash hands dealt earlier! And it is very easy to forget that this type of hands should be played only in the favorable conditions, when you have a good position or chances.

Another factor that may cause a hate-losing tilt is the desire and attempt to win back the lost money. It seems that you are doing everything correctly, but you lose a pot again and again. You thing that you should finally beat the aces of your successful opponent in the same way as he or she used to do several times playing against you. However the game that aims at winning back your lost money is always unprofitable in the long run even according to the right strategy. Do not deceive yourself with attractive suited connectors or a fine position. In any case, you will be the victim of this game. 

Disappointment can serve as another cause of hate-losing tilt. Sometimes it happens due to too many bad beats, so you want to show everyone how to play. You start bluffing too much at the most inappropriate moments, the opponent defeats you again and you become even more disappointed. If after a new bad beat you want to smash the mouse against the wall, it is better to do so rather than to vent your anger at the poker table. It depends on your cold mind whether you will become the future owner of a pot or not.

The last emotional situation that can lead to a hate-losing tilt is excessive luck. Sometimes you win everything, all possible and impossible hands. You are incredibly lucky and your 72 beats aces. When you see that you can win each hand with any cards, you stop paying attention to the correct selection of the range and always try to raise and call. Keep in mind that this will not last forever! It might work in the short run, but if you lose your head, you will be in trouble. The period of incredible luck always comes to its end. If you do not return to the correct strategy, you will inevitably lose everything that you have won and even more.

• Tight-Passive Tilt

The tight-passive tilt is opposite to the hate-losing tilt. You play your hands in a narrow range and raise in the flop very rarely. You try to wait for cards and to call sometimes. You play in such a way subconsciously to minimize the losses instead of maximizing profits. What can serve as a reason for this?

The first reason is bad results. When you lose, you stop believing that you can win. So, you start playing in a way that allows making the potential losses less fatal to your reduced bankroll. You can think that you have been unlucky, it's not your day, and it is better to avoid taking risks in order to stop losing. However keep in mind that poker is not just a comparison of the cards after the deal. There are also turn and river apart from flop. You unconsciously deprive your hand of a chance to win the hand, folding when you have an opportunity to win.

The second reason of the tight-passive tilt is the selection of higher bets. This often occurs when the limits are increased. You start subconsciously counting the cost of chips and trying to decrease risks, even in situations in which the risk is clearly beneficial. In addition, you can unconsciously start treating your opponents as better players. After all, they have been playing using these big bets for a long time, they are surely the best! You are afraid of playing against them, bluffing and reraising.

The last factor, which causes a tight-passive tilt, is insufficient bankroll. When the balance of your bankroll can not survive a long period of losses, you subconsciously start playing in the way that allows minimizing the loss avoiding the risks. And that is the main cause of your bad results. When you have adequate financial capabilities, this tilt does not threaten you.

• Formal Tilt

Another kind of tilt is a formal tilt. It is quite a controversial question whether it is a real tilt or not, because this state is not associated with strong emotions. Anyway, it is a state in which you can not do your best. Thus, we can formally assume that it's a tilt.

What happens in this case? The formal tilt manifests in the way of playing. Users play automatically, dogmatically following the recommendations of poker books. You will automatically fold when playing under the gun, paying no attention to the actions of the players sitting in front of you. You automatically call when you have a middle-ranking hand. You automatically protect the blinds when you have the hands that are mentioned in the textbooks. Poker is a game of small advantages and a formal tilt leads to the loss of them.

What can be the reason of it? First of all, it is boredom. Playing too much, you often start playing automatically. Many things can distract you from the game when you're bored, and you are not able to control the game at your table.

The second cause is fatigue. When you are tired and sleepy, you can easily miss some of the nuances that affect your game. You automatically click on the buttons in accordance with the cards that appear on the screen in front of your eyes that are puffy from lack of sleep and do not see how your opponents are playing. If you are tired, it is better to stop playing.

The decrease in limits can serve as another cause of the formal tilt. When you have to reduce the bet, you subconsciously stop feeling the price of chips and respecting your opponents. You begin to think that it is enough to use basic strategy to beat these fishes, since they play worse that you in any case. Maybe you can win, but not as much as you could.

Perhaps in the case of a formal tilt you will not lose a lot of money, but you will win less. This is the mildest form of tilt, but it still affects the amount of income earned by you, since you can not do your best in order to earn the highest possible sum.

• Aggressive Tilt

We have already discussed mild kinds of tilt and reached its severe forms. Aggressive tilt is the worst kind of tilt, and, fortunately, not everyone had the opportunity to experience it. However perhaps this article will save you from falling into this trap. What are its features? - First of all, it is associated with aggressive game, unreasonably aggressive play. You raise in situations where you just need to call or even fold. You play each hand and always go all-in. It's a real insanity.

Causes of aggressive tilt are different. They mainly include negative emotions that exceed a certain breaking point. It happens that the player has experienced so many bad emotions, so much anger and sorrowness accumulated in the soul that he or she does not understand that he or she is sitting at the poker table. He or she plays very aggressively trying to win each pot without taking into consideration the loss of money. Most often, he or she calms down only after the loss of the whole bankroll.

Aggressive tilt can also cause a desire for revenge. For example, someone defeated you and you lost a lot of money. It was shameful and humiliating, because your opponent was bluffing. Now you are feeling vengeful against him. You do not want to save money. Your task is not to win a big pot. Your aim is to get even with that particular player. Well, this desire almost always results in the loss of the entire bankroll.

The good news is that you can easily notice an aggressive tilt and, therefore, take countermeasures, for example, just turn off the computer, take a cold shower and go for a walk. It is necessary just to take a break, since aggressive tilts are usually short-term, very intense, and often end with the loss of large amounts and damage to such PC peripherals as mouse, keyboard or monitor.

• Tight Tilt

One of the rare and not really very painful types of tilt is the so-called tight tilt. No one initially likes to play tightly, because it's just boring, so this kind of tilt does not occur too often. What is it? For example, you fold in the preflop too many hands with high potential without paying attention to the position, or you fold a flush draw and a straight draw after the flop. Poker players primarily want to protect their winnings. You have built a tall stack and now you're afraid of losing it or significantly reduce it. You know that you play well and you do not want to finish the game right now, but the fear of losing the won amount you does not allow you to try your best. Therefore, you play tightly counting minutes till the end of the session and earned profits.

Another reason for the development of a tight tilt is a situation that is widespread among the players and if it is not shameful, it is definitely funny. Well, some players believe that some hands are successful for them, and the others are, on the contrary, unsuccessful. For example, as soon as you get a couple of bad beats of pocket queens, you start thinking that QQ is an unlucky hand for you. You will always lose having it and nothing in the world can persuade you. If you have such an unlucky hand, it is more than enough for you to join the players experiencing the tight tilt. You deprive yourself of the game with good cards and high probability of winning money due to silly prejudices. In general, we can say that the tight tilt is cased by lack of self-confidence.

• Fantasy Tilt

The last type of tilt discussed in this article is called a fantasy tilt. It is the opposite kind of the formal tilt: in situations in which you need play simply and optimally, you try to play with exaggerated imagination. The most common symptoms of this type of tilt are excessive bluff and slowplay.

The main reason for the development of fantasy tilt is the excessive greed. When everything goes well, some players are trying to do crazy actions to win even more. Playing with success in this mode, the player does not understand that he or she wins despite this way of playing and not because of it...

Another reason is the wrong table. When all rational methods from textbooks do not bring effect, it may seem to the player that perhaps it is time for a little magic trick. Maybe the well-prepared bluff will help, or, on the contrary it is necessary to slow down the game. You can surely be lucky and your fantastic action will be successful, but this is usually useless. Unusual steps are efficient only for the players who also have them in their range of activities. You should just play well in order to win more frequently.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are a lot of demons that can enter your head to prevent you from making money at the poker table. And the best exorcist who can cast them out is you. Keep a cool mind and do not follow your emotions. This is the best recipe to win while playing poker.