Hey,
since gambling and also poker - which definitely is another story - is big in this forum, I thought I would share an article with some misconceptions regarding the best of all games there are. I hope those tips will help some of you becoming better poker players and make you more money playing poker. Feel free to share more poker myths with the community.
Over the years, a number of misconceptions have built up around the game of poker. Many of these misconceptions seem quite plausible, they just “feel” right, and so they get repeated and elaborated upon so many times that they virtually become axiomatic. Except that they are not true axioms; they are myths. What separates these myths from a relatively benign myth such as thinking that Elvis is still alive somewhere eating his peanut butter and banana sandwiches, is that poker myths will usually end up costing you a great deal of money at the tables. With that in mind, let’s look at some of the most predominant poker myths out there:
˜To win at poker, you have to bluff a lot. No question that bluffing is a critical poker skill. But most new players tend to vastly overrate its importance, and will try to bluff at pots far too often. A successful bluff usually requires certain preconditions (heads-up action, the right type of opponent, the right table image) and works best when a player’s actions in the previous rounds support his bluff — in other words, when he has been representing a strong hand all along. Far too many players keep trying to bluff into opponents who call too much (most low-limit and even mid-limit players fall into this category), or into multiway pots (where the likelihood of a bluff succeeding will decrease very sharply).
Beyond that, many poker players are convinced that even if a bluff doesn’t work, they still must keep bluffing in order to “advertise,” so they can get paid off more on their good hands. In the vast majority of poker games, this simply isn’t true. Again, in virtually all low-limit games and even a great many mid-limit games, your call-happy opponents will pay off your good hands handsomely, without any help from a bluff-advertisement. By bluffing to advertise, you may win a few extra bets on your great hands (which don’t come around very often), but those few extra bets won’t make up for all the money you lost on those futile bluffs. The primary reason to bluff is to try and win the pot, and as stated above, you need certain circumstances for a bluff to work.
˜You can’t beat super-loose games full of bad players. This one has doubtless been fueled by plethora of “good” players who have suffered horrendous losing sessions at the hands of fish who kept calling them down again and again with crappy cards — only to win again and again with improbable suck-outs. Whether those beleaguered players are truly good, or whether their own poker skill is greatly exaggerated in their own minds, is open to question. But the bottom line is: Those fish who keep calling with trash are the source of our poker profits. Yes, uber-loose poker games have variance that’s through the roof, and in turn that means even the best player can drop a huge chunk of money in these games during the short run. But you always want to play against bad opponents in any poker game, and the worse they are, the better off you’ll be in the long run.
˜I’m due for a win. While it’s true that statistically, things even out in the long run, that long run can be excruciatingly long indeed. Just because you haven’t been dealt pocket aces all day, just because you’ve been dealt 20 pocket pairs this session and never once flopped a set, just because you’ve missed your last 11 flush draws in a row, is no reason to believe that you are “due” to have it happen anytime soon. Sure, if you keep playing it will happen eventually, but eventually might be next hand, next session, or next week. Don’t base your poker decisions on the idea that the cards are somehow obligated to start falling your way now after beating you for so long. Cards can be very capricious little things, and they may decide to keep going against for a good long while yet.
˜The main goal in poker is to win pots. No, the main goal is to win money. The only people for whom this is not the case are recreational players who are simply playing for fun and can afford to lose money at the game. Focusing too much on winning pots, as opposed to winning money, creates a calling-station mentality. Players who try to win as many pots as possible find it extremely difficult to ever let go of a hand. After all, maybe they’ll hit their four-outer on the river, or maybe the other guy is bluffing and second pair really is the best hand. In the meantime, these players keep calling off their money — a little bit on this hand, a little bit more on that hand — in their eternal quest to win the most pots. And at the end of the session these players will find that those little bits of lost money have added up to a net loss for the day. Skilled players focus on winning the most money — saving an extra bet by not making a bad call here, and gaining an extra bet by making a value raise there. And for them, at the end of the session, all those little extra bits of earned money usually adds up to a net win for the day.
