New/Old Realizations

Now that I've been playing poker almost 5 years now, there are a few things that I've realized over the last year. A lot of these are things I may have read about a long time ago, but experience is solidifying them.

1. Narrow the range, but not to a single hand - While it's fun to put someone on a specific hand, it's important not to dismiss the other holdings he could have. I've realized that I sometimes pick a specific hand my opponent might have and proceed accordingly, only to find out that I didn't account for the other holdings (some of which beat me). The lesson is that I need to work on assigning a % to the different holdings in a hand range and then make my decisions based on my gut from there.

2. Get into the flow of the game - When you go into a game trying to make pre-planned specific moves they can often blow up in your face. You have to get into the flow of the game and then make decisions accordingly. You can have a certain mindset (i.e. be aggressive), but you have to pick your spots according to your reads.

3. You can't force results - It just doesn't happen that way. If you go in with a results oriented mindset, you lose sight of your reads and you make decisions that can cost several chips. Examples are 2 or 3 barreling on a scary board out of not wanting to lose the pot vs. based on a specific read. You may trick yourself into thinking you are making a good aggressive play, but the reality is you are failing to put the person on a hand range.

4. It's okay to fold sometimes - The goal is to minimize losses and maximize winnings. While sometimes it is appropriate to make a hero call based on your reads, no one knows what cards you hold. It can be sometimes be correct to make a laydown and be bluffed out of a pot. You don't have to win every battle, you just have to win all the chips at the end of the tournament.

Don't Bring Baggage to the Table

A year or so ago, a very good online player named Soupie said something to me that clicked one night. When referencing a hand where I contemplated raising on the button and didn't because I was afraid that the big blind might re-raise all in, he asked me why I was worried about the big blind shoving. I said that it seemed like lately everyone is shoving to a button raise and his response was, "so was this person re-raising people's late position raises?" I thought for a moment and realized that the particular player had not shown this tendency and I was making an assumption based on other games I had recently played in. He coined this as "bringing the baggage to the table".

But let's be clear...baggage is not tilt. Tilt is a short-term emotional response based on one or two negative outcomes. Baggage masks itself as a logical response that, like scar tissue, has started to build up from recent experiences. These experiences could be as recent as a few hours of play from other tables to as much as a few weeks of play. And like scar tissue, baggage can start to make itself permanent causing the decisions you make to be skewed.

So just because a certain play hasn't worked recently or you've recently gone through a hard patch of variance, it doesn't mean a decision is not +EV.

Examples of Baggage:

• Fear of Negative Variance - "I always lose coin flips, so I'm gonna fold even though I probably have the best hand"
  
• Negative Assumptions - "I'm not gonna raise since someone will probably shove on me" or "I don't want to get sucked out on, so I'm gonna bet big since people usually suck out on me" or "I might as well not bet since he's probably gonna call"
  
• Generalizations - "People who play these stakes always play a certain way" or "Pros are always bluffing"

So what can you do to overcome this? The key is to remain level headed and keep in mind is that each decision at the poker table is unique because each player is unique. You should also not let recent outcomes emotionally affect your decision making. Each time you start a new game, you must reset your head focusing on the present moment. And while your previous experiences are a reference tool, you should constantly evaluate your plays and analyze their expected value to keep your decision making crisp.