Poker Articles

I work hard all the time to improve my poker game.  I analyze, re-analyze, discuss, and practice, and then I do it all over again, over and over.  A natural and healthy part of working hard at something is feeling a lot of pride about what you do, and like many of you who read this site, I take a great deal of pride in my poker abilities and accomplishments.

Pride can be an excellent motivator, but it can also be destructive, and even worse, it can prevent new changes in your game that may increase profitability.  In this article, I'm going to try to examine the role played by pride in the game of poker.

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It's very common for poker players to be concerned about appearing to be a good player at the table.  With all the talk about donkeys and donk plays and donk moves, people certainly don't want to be at the butt of criticism.  That's all fine, really, but in the end, people's opinion of your play does not put money in your wallet.  Nobody's going to think you're great because you keep getting in with the best hand---you have to have real results to get any respect in the poker world, and even then it's hard, as the more you are noticed, the more frequently your play will be subject to scrutiny.

Just put it out of your mind and worry about the bottom line.  Respect will come with winning---maybe not the respect of random railbirds, but the respect you really care about, that of the experienced players who know the difference between a break even player and a real winner.  Taking pride in what others say about the way you played a given hand is pretty meaningless, because good poker is about how you play all the hands together, all dependent on one another.  Ability to determine whether or not you're ahead in a hand is only a small part of a winning formula.

You really might make plays that appear *awful* to the average railbird but are actually quite basic and hardly questionable after a small amount of analysis.  You may also make a high percentage bluff or resteal and run into a big hand.  Sure, you look foolish to people when your 8 3 is shown down against pocket aces, but maybe it was a great play anyway.  You have to figure that out for yourself, rather than letting people's criticism keep you from making "out of the box" or unorthodox plays.

One of the biggest ways pride can interfere with sound poker judgement is the ever so common situation: The board reads Q 8 3 rainbow, and I have QQ and bet out, only to be raised all in.  After I of course call with the best possible hand at this point, I see my opponent's J 9, and I watch in horror as a ten rolls off on the turn.  We've all wanted to strangle someone when this happens.  Did he really just get all in against me with a 6-1 underdog and hit his card?  How could this happen to ME?

The truth is, it will happen 1 in every 7 times someone makes that horrible play against me, and I will be hard pressed to find a better situation to get my chips in.  If I blame my opponent for what happened, I'm missing the entire point of what I'm trying to do at the table; or my goals are just way out of whack.  I don't need to tell my opponent he's a bad player, or to complain about how bad my luck is.  Anyone who knows anything knows that I got unlucky there (and that as a poker player, it will happen again....and again....and again), and if they don't know, or even if they do know, I really shouldn't be evaluating my play based on what they think.  I could sit around and feel like a victim, which is easy, because then I feel like I've done everything right and am just the most unlucky person on the planet.  Or I could just move on and smile, knowing that I'll do the same thing over and over and over and make loads of cash.

Another way pride can hurt you as a poker player is if you are dishonest with yourself or others about wins and losses.    Everyone wants to be respected, and as a result, there is a lot of talk about how much money so and so has won.  It makes for good discussion, and it is probably about as good an indicator as you can find of how "good" someone is at poker.

The negative side effect of all this is that someone might be in denial about being a losing player---it's hard to be proud of that, even if you are improving your game.  The solution is to keep working and finding ways to get better, but a lot of people just convince themselves and/or others that they're doing well, while putting off any actual improvement.

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So now I've talked to some extent about some of the negative consequences of pride at the tables, and how it can interfere with profitability.  But as I originally stated, I think there is a lot of good that can come from having pride in your poker game.

Analysis and study are extremely important.  Nobody can just go through the game hand by hand, without ever thinking too much about anything that has happened, and still be a long term winning player.  Poker is just too complicated for people who don't put extensive effort into it to succeed.  Take pride in all the hard work you do, and exercise humility in regards to how much you (and all of us) still have to learn.  Enjoy learning for the sake of learning, and have faith that your efforts will eventually translate into wins.

When you make a difficult decision that turns out to be a correct one, feel pride in your ability to correctly reason in the hand, knowing that at an earlier time, you would not have been able to make such a strong play.  Whether or not you win the hand, just be content that you've taken another step towards optimizing your long term profitability.  The same goes for folding---you may never know if a fold you made was the correct one, but take pride in showing discipline and going with your gut; trusting yourself to make the correct read is very central to being a winning player.

One of the most difficult things for many of us is sportsmanship at the tables.  It's just flat out hard to say "nice hand" to someone after they beat you for a big pot, whether or not they played the hand well but especially when they made a mistake and got away with it at your expense.  We all hate losing money, but it's going to happen sometimes, and it's best to learn to maintain composure when you are beaten by a weaker player.  Go straight to analysis of your own play, rather than dwelling on what the other guy did wrong and how unlucky you were.  Make it a routine to do this, and you will find your head clearing much more quickly, allowing you to continue to make sound decisions in the game.  I have come a long way (and still have further to go) in coping with bad beats, and I feel a great deal of pride in my ever-growing ability to shrug it off and focus on the thing I *can* control---my own play.

Finally, take pride in your long term results.  This one requires some extra effort, as you must keep some pretty decent records to have any idea how profitable you actually are as a player.  So if I log 6 months of play and see that I was losing 5 cents out of every dollar I bet, and then in the next 6 months, I broke even, that's something to be proud of---I improved.  It may not sound great to be a break even player, but it is a step along the way that we all must make.  Very few if any people start out as winning players, and the ones who get there usually do so through a lot of hard work.  Take pride in your upward progression in the game, even if it has only propelled you to break even status.  If you know you're getting better, you've got a lot to feel good about and a lot to look forward to, and you can sense that your efforts are paying off.

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Pride is, and will continue to be, something that affects all serious poker players at every level.  You have a choice in the role it will play in your game.  You can let it bury you or you can let it push you to a level of play higher than you ever knew you could attain.

Good luck, everyone.

---Adam