DALTXCOLTSFAN'S THE MENTAL GAME OF POKER FOR BEGINNERS

Introduction

Hello! I am DalTXColtsFan from the 2+2 forums, and this is the first in a series of articles that I will call "DalTXColtsFan's the Mental Game of Poker for Beginners (TMGOPFB)".

I've been posting here for about 3 and a half years. Many posters on here have given a LOT of their spare time to help me learn this game. Sadly, I'm still not a great player. But nevertheless, I'm nowhere near the clueless spewtard tiltmonster I was 3 years ago. I've learned some things that I believe will be valuable to those who are just getting started in the game. These articles are my attempt to "give back" to a 2+2 community that's been so good to me.

My series of articles is going to focus exclusively on the mental aspects of the game. Reading books, posting hands and learning odds and theory is great, but I feel like the true foundation of a good poker future is making sure your head is screwed on straight.

So, if I've piqued your interest, read on!


Chapter 1: Be honest with yourself

I have a theory. That theory is that most people who get into poker are not being honest with themselves. They're telling everyone and themselves that they think poker will be a fun game and they play it for the white-knuckle excitement, but in reality, if they were truly being honest with themselves, they're getting into poker because they believe they'll be able to supplement their income with it.

Is that you? If you stand up, look into the mirror and say to yourself, "I'm just getting into poker because it's a fun game - if it ends up being an easy way to supplement my income that's a plus, but I really don't care about that", would you believe yourself?

Here's the harsh reality: It's very, very, very, very difficult to supplement your income with poker. If you're getting into poker as a way to supplement your income, you're getting into poker for the wrong reason. You're setting yourself up for frustration, insanity and heartbreak.

I believe that the single most valuable thing I can do for any beginner to the game of poker is make sure they understand just how hard it is to make money at this game.


Reason #1 - Rake!

When you go to a casino, the casino takes a piece of every pot. It's how the casinos make money from the poker tables. Most casinos take $1 from every pot for what they call the bad beat jackpot. You're also expected to tip the dealer $1 per hand. And they will take a percentage of the pot, usually up to a maximum - this is what's called rake. At most casinos the rake is 10% of the pot up to a maximum of $5. So if you bet $50 with a pair of aces and get called by a player who has a pair of kings, you don't win $50 - you only win $43.

Now not every pot is going to grow to $50 and therefore generate the entire $5 of rake. So let's say the table deals 30 hands an hour and the average pot size is $30, therefore we're generating, on average, $3 in rake per pot, plus the $1 bad beat jackpot pull and the $1 tip per hand. That's $5 per hand or $150 an hour that's coming off the table - NOBODY wins that money, only the casino wins it. Think about how awful that is: Suppose 9 people sit down at the table and buy in for $200 each. THE ENTIRE $1800 THAT THEY ***ALL*** SAT DOWN WITH WILL BE TAKEN OFF THE TABLE IN ABOUT 12 HOURS.

I hope you're starting to get the picture here: To actually consistently make money at a table like that, you have to not only be better than everybody else at the table, you have to be so MUCH better than everyone else at the table that you're not only winning their money but *also* winning back the money that the casino is taking out of your pots!

The rake in the online game is similar. I won't go into the structure here (your online site's website will have the information about the rake), but I'll give one example: I've played 9,000 hands of .10/.25PLO on Bovada and I've paid $447.76 in rake. How insane is that? That means I'm paying $4.97 per 100 hands - that's 20 big blinds! I have to be able to consistently be 20 big blinds per 100 hands better than the competition to be able to make money! Do you know how HARD it is to consistently be 20 big blinds per 100 hands better than everyone else, even in an ocean of fish? It's darned near impossible!

I apologize that at the time of writing this I don't have data on how much my no-limit hold'em play is getting raked - hopefully some other posters who have played 100,000+ hands of online NLHE will be kind enough to post how many hands they've played and how much rake they've paid to give you an idea. Typically NLHE is not raked nearly as badly as PLO because most poker sites increase the maximum when more players are in the pot. PLO is infamous for multiway pots.

Let me word this in a very scary manner: AVERAGE PLAYERS ***LOSE***. It's not an old wives tale, it's not a statistical anomaly, it's a MATHEMATICAL FACT. If those 9 people play 50,000 or so hands, the 5th-best player at the table is GUARANTEED TO LOSE IN THE LONG RUN because of the rake. I would wager a guess that only 10 to 15% of all players who sit down to play poker end up making more than they lost over the course of their poker careers.

I hope you're starting to get the picture that if you're getting into poker because you think it's an easy way to supplement your income, that perhaps it's not quite as easy as you thought!

I'm just getting started.


Reason #2 - swings

Here's an exercise for you: Go get 2 dice. Start yourself with 240 points.

Each time you roll a 1 through 5, you lost a hand - roll the 2 dice again to determine how much you lost. Subtract that from your point total.
Each time you roll a 6 through 12, you *won* a hand - roll the 2 dice again, subtract 1 from the total (to simulate the rake). Add that to your point total.

It should be clear that this is a game you should easily win in the long run, even with the "rake" taken out of your point total.

But throw the dice 100-200 times and tell me that NONE of the following ever happened:
Tell me you *never* lost 5, 6, 7 hands in a row
Tell me that you *never* encountered a stretch where every time you lost you lost 8, 9, 10 or 11 and every time you won you won 1, 2, 3 or 4.
That's poker folks. It's not about sitting down with $5 and grinding it up to $200 in 5 hours. It's about sitting down with $5, watching it go up to $7, down to $3, up to $8, up to $12, down to $7, up to $14, back down to $5, back up to $16. And even THAT process can take days, weeks, months.

There will be times when you get it all-in preflop with KK against a non-nit and he'll have AA 4 times in a row.
There will be times when you flop a set, get it all in against a flush draw or OESD and have him get there 5 or 6 times in a row.
That's just the beginning.

I was planning to address suckouts in its own section but I think it makes the most sense to lump them in with swings, because they're part of the game and they're a reason the swings are so demoralizing.
Very few aspects of poker are more infuriating than flopping a set, getting called by an overpair and a 3-flush and watching him runner runner a flush.
Very few aspects of poker are more infuriating than raising AK before the flop, getting 3 callers, flopping A35, betting all 3 streets, getting raised on the river and watching one of the villains flip over 24o. "HOW THE (*$@#*(#@$(@ DO YOU CALL A TIGHT PLAYER'S PREFLOP RAISE WITH THAT TRASH?!?!?!?!?!?"
But do you want to know something? THEY HAPPEN.

So, again, I ask, are you playing poker because you think it'll be an easy way to make money? I hope you're REALLY starting to think again.


Reason #3 - the temptation to gamble (AKA TILT)

I'm going to dedicate an entire future chapter to the importance of making good decisions at the poker table. For now, suffice it to say that there are a lot of temptations to purposely NOT make the best decision in poker.

Have you ever been at a table where a guy calls pot flop and turn bets with second pair and then rivers two pair to win the pot over an overpair?
Have you ever seen that same guy, 3 hands later, call pot flop and turn bets with a gutshot that gets there?
Have you seen that same guy hit 5 improbable draws in a row and end up with the biggest chipstack at the table by far?
Have you ever thought to yourself, "I'm playing good poker and I have this tiny stack - this lucky fish has a monster stack - I'm going to start playing like him and hope to get lucky"?

If you haven't, you will. The same temptation will happen when you see players playing horrible starting hands and nailing flops with them. You *will* be tempted to start making bad decisions hoping to get lucky. And you *will* bow to those temptations occasionally.

Here's the most frightening temptation you will ever face: The temptation to play up, to try to win your losses back in one fell swoop. Sitting down at an NL25 table to try to win back the 6 buyins you lost at 4NL is a lose-lose situation. If you *win* at NL25 and manage to get your 4NL buyins back, you will suddenly feel invincible, that NL25 is a good idea, and you will eventually lose. BUT - you will remember in the back of your mind that it worked once and reason that it ought to work again AND END UP LOSING MULTIPLE NL25 buyins. Seriously, it's better for you if you LOSE the first time you try it so that you only lose once.

And you know what? THE REASON YOU WILL BOW TO THOSE TEMPTATIONS IS BECAUSE YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY!!!! You want to make money so badly, in fact, that you're willing to gamble for it instead of playing poker for it! You want to make money so badly you're willing to forego making good decisions!


Reason #4 - Competition

As I mentioned in the previous section, I'm going to dedicate an entire future chapter to making the best decisions.

Clearly, to have a realistic chance to consistently make money you need to consistently play in games where you are consistently making better decisions than most if not all of the villains at the table (no jokes about how I'm consistently using the word consitently). One of the "temptations" that I did not address in the previous section is the temptation to purposely overrate your relative skill level, a.k.a. "Telling yourself what you want to hear".

Can you honestly tell yourself that you even know *how* to evaluate your skill level at making good decisions vs. everyone else's?

Can you honestly tell yourself that you know *how* to exploit the less than optimal decisions by the villains that you *do* find?

If you can't spot the sucker at the table, you *are* the sucker. If you sit down at a table and realize that there are no bad players at the table, you either have to accept the fact that you're just there to practice and you're only going to make money if you get luckier than everyone else, or you have to get up from the table and find a better game.

It is true that at many microstakes online tables and even some live tables at the lowest limits like $4/$8LHE and $1/$2NLHE there are often 2 or 3 drunk retirees who are there to give away their grandkids' inheritance, or college kids who think they can earn some spending money by playing poker. But even at tables like those you still need to know *how* to exploit their bad decisions, and you need to be prepared for the inevitable instances that they get lucky against you.

So here's the point of this section: So you're playing poker because you *think* it will be an easy way to supplement your income, whether you admit that to yourself or not. Well, guess what? THOUSANDS OF OTHER PEOPLE ARE THINKING THE SAME THING. What are you doing that they're not doing? What poker talent do you have that they don't have? Are you being realistic about your relative skill level? Do you understand that if you're even 20% above average YOU'RE STILL GOING TO LOSE IN THE LONG RUN because of rake?


Conclusion

OK, so I hope I've convinced you to be honest with yourself about why you're taking up this game. That's the most valuable thought I can convey to you. And I hope I've convinced you that if you think you're going to be able to supplement your income by playing this game that it's going to exponentially if not astronomically harder than you thought. That's the *second* most valuable thought I can convey to you.

So if playing to make money is the wrong reason to play poker, what's the right reason?

THE RIGHT REASON TO PLAY POKER IS BECAUSE POKER IS A FUN GAME. It's as simple as that.

I would go as far as to say that if you plan to deposit $100 on a poker site, that you stand in front of the mirror, hold up the money, and tell yourself, "I don't give a rat's left front tooth if I *ever* see this money again - I truly don't." and see if you believe yourself. If you don't believe yourself, you're not going to be able to make good decisions because you're going to be worried about winning or losing the money.

If you're planning to go to the casino, do the same thing - hold up the $200 to $400 for 1 or 2 buyins and say the same thing. Do you believe yourself? Again, if you don't, you're not going to be able to play well.

It's a bit ironic that the few people who do manage to supplement their income by poker are the ones who care least about the money, but (and I apologize if I'm beating a dead horse to death here) it actually makes perfect sense if you think about it: The best poker players are the ones who make the best decisions. And you can't make the best decisions if you're worried about losing the money you bought in with. You also can't make the best decisions if you get upset about making a correct play and having a fish get lucky on you.

I hope you enjoyed reading the first chapter of my ebook and that you will leave feedback.

Chapter 2 - "Poker is about *decisions*, not *results*" is coming soon!

DTXCF

I am honestly playing Poker because it's fun and I like the challenge of trying to reach my goal of $200 and a shot at 5nl.

I am under no illusion that I am in this to one day try and supplement my income.

However, I think you are right and there are loads of new players (mainly youngsters) believe they can climb the stakes pretty easily and make an income from Poker.

I have a theory that this attitude is the biggest reason why new players 'go on tilt'. Every cooler, every bad beat is 1 BI further away from their dream to become a pro. They can become frustrated very quickly with the lack of instant success and probably will blow their BR on random shots at bigger stakes.

I'm not saying it is impossible to achieve this dream, but people need to set realistic short term targets or they put too much pressure on themselves to succeed and this ultimately leads to what they consider failure.

Play poker with a buoyant and relaxed mindset and don't be under the illusion that you will become a pro one day.

Maybe if you get to 100nl, then you can consider the possibility of making this a longer term career option

First
Subbed

Thanks for the feedback. I've posted chapter 2 and will probably wait a few days to post chapter 3.

Good luck at the tables, as long as you're not drawing against me!

DTXCF

Don't post each chapter in a new thread; post them here. That way people can subscribe and read them. You'll get better discussion that doesn't go over ground already discussed in the previous x threads, and you won't clutter the forum.

Not sure I agree with that thunderbolts. I'm only planning to "release" 5 chapters and they're fairly disjoint, separate topics. DiamondDog and WCGRider have released serieses with each chapter in a separate thread in the past and it's worked well.

I hope the 2nd is better than the first. You do realize you're trying to talk money OFF the table here right?

Kinda sounds like you're half complaining about rake and half trying to talk fish away from the table.

not impressed so far.

Nice you made some good points and definitely put a lot of effort into it. I for one have struggled with the ego part and thinking that i "deserve" the pots more than they do because of the amount of time i study and dedicate to poker. This of course is not true. I dont become bitter at the table though and my tilting is way better than it used to be. Especially after reading the mental game of poker.

Rake really is high at casinos when you put it in those terms. Imagine how profitable it would be without rake. Gotta stay ahead of the competetion.

I somewhat agree with crow that we dont want to discourage anyone from playing. Admittedly i play poker with the dream of playing as a living but i have seen all the difficulty and struggles but i still am working towards it as level headed as i have ever been. The majority of the players at the casino are there for fun but if they were to start making only +EV decision then they would be having a lot less fun. As we all know poker is a grind.

Looking foward to the next parts.

crow and killme thank you for the feedback.

I hope it was clear in my OP that I am absolutely, totally and in all other ways NOT trying to discourage people from playing. I'm trying to discourage people from playing FOR THE WRONG REASON.

killme37 I like this quote of yours: "I for one have struggled with the ego part and thinking that i "deserve" the pots more than they do because of the amount of time i study and dedicate to poker. This of course is not true." I struggled with entitlement tilt too - didn't I, DougL? If I ever do a future, cleaned-up version of this I will definitely address that.

Good post there is a lot of truth behind it though it does take on quite a depressing tone. I agree with most of what you said but the thread seems to be projecting this "lost cause" idea, making it seem as if its impossible to make income through poker. If we're talking about going to the top then yes that is extremely difficult especially with the way nlh is nowadays (assuming we are talking nlh) but I personally am still a firm believer in the possibility of supplementing a side income or income through poker and I don't see it as unrealistic in any way. I was told my goals of beating 25nl were unrealistic by many many of the reg users about a year ago when I started taking poker seriously and now I've been beating 50nl at 3bb/100 for over 100k and yes I know that sample isn't all that reliable but if I can maintain just half of that (and I believe I can) with my rb and currency exchange rate I'm making more of an hourly 8tabling .25/.50 than I was at my last job, granted which wasn't that much (think avg income for that of a 20 year old Canadian). That said I don't want someone to start calling me a naive punk or anything as I will admit I don't play nearly as much as I should in order for what I stated to be an actuality.

Now if we're talking about someone seeing a longterm future for themselves in poker as a career with a high pay grade then that could be labeled as naive and unrealistic (depending on their poker history) but making a side/small/decent income through poker even in 2015 imo is not all that unrealistic.

And in all honesty I do play in the hopes of making a small income and I wanna build up a nice roll but I don't plan on running it into the grave or anything. I don't see how someone who treats the game as a hobby can progress faster than someone who treats it like a job. Imo someone who is multi-tabling 5/10/25nl (be that what it may) any more than 30+hours a week falls into the one of two categories: obsession or ambition. Just like someone who plays counterstrike 30 hours a week, its a bit more than just hobby.

I think everyone can agree that the hardest part about sustaining a real income in poker is coping with the stress but the "gaining an edge" part imo isn't nearly as hard because the biggest edge you can have in poker is to be impervious to tilt. And if you can cope well with that then the rest is just a matter of study.

Thanks Play4Keeps and congrats on your success at 50NL - it's tough up there!

So what was it like for you in the beginning, i.e. did you take up poker because you thought it would be fun, because you thought you could make money, a combination of the two? Did you have bumps and bruises along the way? What were your a-ha moments where you felt your game improving?

Thanks
DTXCF

I am a newbie and I absolutely loved it. I was aware of many of the points but reading it again definitely helped. Especially the example of losing all $1800 to the casino in 12 hours (even though in reality players rebuy, fresh money comes in etc.

What's nice about this is, not too many books will discuss this.

Can't wait to read your other articles.

Thank you

Thanks for the positive feedback (though, for the record, *all* feedback is welcomed and appreciated)!

Here are links to the other 3 chapters:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...sults-1514943/

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...-plan-1515455/

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...arted-1515995/

Thanks and I had a bit of home game experience with my friends for $10/$20 buy in sng's which I usually won and had some success in play money tourneys so when I started I thought I was naturally better than most (as I'm sure many do lol). Due to this my goal was to play for a source of income from the jump but after I started getting involved with the forums and after spending a bit of time at the micros (mainly break-even) I realized the actual difficulty of beating the game. Also those "temptations" got the better of me a few times after running up a few $50 rolls. At first I really enjoyed PLAYING the game which doesn't appeal to me hardly as much as it used to. Now I enjoy the learning process and progression more than the game itself.

My "a-ha moments" were probably when I really started studying the ev side of things, discussing with friends or people from my study group and just really focusing on the possibilities on each street and really thinking through each spot. Also I think a lot of my progression was ego driven at one point where I had opened a thread asking for tips from players who play pro and had like 95% of the community bashing me saying I don't have what it takes to beat 25nl and stuff. After a few months (in between which I had taken a break) I posted my graphs of beating 50nl over a significant sample and it shouldn't come as a big surprise that out of 100+ replies none of the previous posters acknowledged it, which goes to show what kind of "support" people around here offer. Also I'm aware beating 50nl isn't that difficult so I don't mean to write a victory speech just yet but all in all I think the biggest help to me was just study and I think in general most people don't think too deeply into spots at the lower end micros even nowadays and I don't think it takes THAT much skill to beat 50nl>.

Well that was depressing, specifically about the rake.

FWIW I'm both fun and money. Like anyone I'd love to win big money and if I did, you can bet the majority would be taken out of poker forever but I know this is unrealistic so my real-world aim (maybe also a dream) is to make a bit of side money. My 'ultimate' aim in this regard would be to make £350-£500 a month (and it's all tax-free!).

So far I'm all about the money but at the same time I do do it for fun. I used to treat myself to a few MTTs at the wekened instead of partying in bars. Funnily enough, since I switched from tourney to cash my enjoyment has increased and my tilt has dramatically decreased. I'm no longer panicking over my sharkscope stats or steaming over the bad beat that dunked my out before the bubble.

However, back to rake, I guess this is the importance of rakeback but do sites even do this anymore and if so, are there any catches? After all, what's in it for the sites if they're giving you back rake? I remember getting an insider deal on IQ Poker but never used it and lost all my login details (which were registered to an email that is now
defunct).

On another note, I read that even 25NL is exremely difficult to beat so does this mean NLHE is a dead end? When I first got into the game 10 years ago I knew it was a losing game for most players but now it seems it's a losing game even for serious players who learn the strategy and put in the hours.

The days of "generous" offsite rakeback are largely over (sites would pay affiliates money for attracting new customers, but the sites resent continuing to pay once the "regs" are already hooked) but sites still offer on-site rewards at a lower rate. It works in the same way as a supermarket loyalty card. The reason they pay "rakeback" is to stop you taking your business elsewhere. As you can imagine, sites like Stars love the fact that someone has to commit to playing for virtually an entire year if they want to get Supernova Elite rewards. Most new players' bankrolls don't even last a month.

people on 2p2 set a really dark tone about online poker but theyre generally all over exaggerating, yes its hard to beat 25nl but its not "extremely difficult". Its all about approach. You need to read the right books, watch the right videos, talk to the right people and have a well thought out game plan. Its definitely not as easy as it was pre black friday but there is still money to be made, you just gotta work harder than your competition and thats all.

Thanks. Good read. I'll check out the other chapters next.

FWIW
- I play in a no-rake 'home game' weekly. Over the years, it's moved locations, players, games and stakes. I still 'make' money over the long run. I really just play for social reasons, winning money is just keeping score.

- I also play microstakes online, usually just to keep busy when having a cigar on the deck. Winning money is a way to make sure I don't have to deposit. In NJ, they give cash to start, have freerolls and bonus cash occasionally. I've dropped money into the accounts once, and have withdrawn more than I've deposited. If I subtract the 'free' money I've gotten, I'm sure that I'm an overall loser. I'll casually explain it away with tilt issues, playing higher at the wrong times, and playing against better competition. After all, they took the time to sign up and log in, all to make money.

- Finally, I do play 1/2 in the casinos. Overall, I'm doing better recently after reading some books, and talking IRL with successful LLSNL players, and reading and participating in more LLSNL threads.

For those who are following, I created a new chapter:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...33/?highlight=

Interesting discussion.

There is no easy road to success, no matter what you're after.

Donald Trump told his kids that they could get a good job in one of his companies--after graduating from a good business school, then working in the low levels of the company for a while.

Yo-Yo Ma, who is probably the only classical musician to be on The Simpsons, has played all over the world, including at the White House. He lives the glamorous life of a traveling musician--he has been known to practice scales for six hours nonstop in his hotel room.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-Yo_Ma

In a thread a few years ago, some of the top pros were asked how much time they spend studying--some said 20 hours a week. At about the same time a friend of Andrew Robl was interviewed on TV. He said that Robl was "fanatical about studying the math."

http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=96130

When I saw the thread about pros studying 20 hours a week I was using 10% of my poker time for study. I started gradually increasing my percentage of study time.

I'm not rich. I may never make six figures in a year. But I'm loving it, especially after working for 14 different companies that closed or moved. I'm taking charge of my life, and I don't have to depend on a resume or an employment history.

I played my first hand of poker in a $1 SNG on Pokerstars at age 50 with a $50 deposit, and it took me 3 months to lose that money, so I did it again, grinding my way up to $5 SNGs, then $10. It's been a long tough grind to make any real money at it, and the swings are nasty. I play only tournaments (mostly live now) so variance is a very big deal. My first thousand dollar month was followed by two losing months.

I know that I will continue to get better and make more money. It's hard, but I came into it with my eyes open. I play with a bankroll. I don't tllt. I understand variance, and I made sure that my wife understood variance before I took the plunge. I don't get too excited about a big cash, and I don't get depressed after 10 tournaments without a cash.

I spend time learning from better players on 2+2. Six or seven days a week I'm on a coaching site or studying a poker book. I don't go anywhere without my Kindle. I even make flash cards for math and situations that I want to memorize.

There is a chance that you can make money playing poker, but you have to go after it. If you want it like Yo-Yo Ma wanted to play music, the way Andrew Robl wanted to make money playing poker, then your chances are a whole lot better.

The main article read was sobering I have to admit, yeah theres maybe a chance I might not make it, look at Doug Polk, he was on here posting a thread on wanting to give up poker. Now he's pretty much a millionaire. This post was inspiration. 50 and not giving up on something he loves to do, while trying to make money too. In anything you do, practise is key to get above everyone else not everyone is naturally good at something, it takes time.