Anyway below is another poker lesson from the same trader discussing the beliefs of a successful poker player.  Remember the mental game of poker is just as important as the actual skills.

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A few nights ago, I had the wonderful experience of getting really upset. I can’t remember the last time I was that upset, so I’m very grateful. It means I’m getting to the core of something deep inside.

I was initially upset by a family issue (me projecting something… it had nothing to do with the other person). Then I continued those feelings over into a poker game. Again, I consider it to have been a rare gift; I cannot remember the last time I have been that angry. I was so angry that I had to wait until the next morning to process the issue. Thinking about it the next morning provided me with many insights into my poker behavior the prior evening (and into my trading behavior if I would have allowed it).

I play on a site that gives players $1,000 in free play money chips every hour. And when you accumulate over a million dollars, you start to respect your play money— it becomes pretty similar to playing with real money. I currently have about $20 million in play money, and I can make several million each night. I can also convert $500,000 in play money to $2 in real money by finishing in the top 18 of a daily tournament. So when I feel like playing poker, I play that tournament and also attempt to make a million in play money.

So here is what happened. First, I was upset, and I was going to sit down and play poker. I missed my normal half million tournament by about ten minutes, which added to my frustration. I then played in a 90 person tournament that cost $1—from my free winnings. I didn’t make any mistakes, but I still lost, which caused me to become even more upset. 

Everything about poker that evening seemed to add to my anger. First, I’d missed my usual tournament start time. Then, I lost in the $1 tournament. At this point, it seemed like this was not my night, so I decided just to make a few million in play chips. (By the way, if you haven’t realized it already, I never should play poker when I am upset.)

Then, I lost big. I lost about $2 million just by bad luck and probably some mistakes that I wasn’t aware of at all. In one hand, I had a 77 and with an AA7 flop. I had a full house. The other person had an AK. A king came up on the turn, and I lost all my chips. I was even angrier now but within my regular limits.

It was my very last hand, however, which really set me off. That last hand cost me $3 million. I can remember enough about it now to show you my mistakes and how they were all due to being angry.

Here were some of my thoughts, before and during this particular hand. (Remember, I wasn’t thinking about being upset before this hand).

• These idiots shouldn’t call my big bet with weak hands. They are just getting lucky and getting the right cards.
• Poker players should play wisely.
• Other poker players should respect me.
• That guy is a bully. He’s crazy and a lunatic.

Those were my thoughts. Of course, I believed those things about the other players, not about myself. I was a victim of those other players as far as I was concerned, and I probably could convince you of that, but that’s not my purpose. My purpose is to tell you about my projection.

So what happened in the hand? I was the big blind and my blind was $20,000 of play money. I had a 45 of clubs. I usually don’t play that sort of hand, but I was upset. 

About five people were in the hand and the person on the button (the dealer and the last to bet) raised the pot and doubled the big blind. I called as did everyone else. And there was now $200,000 in the pot. Looking back, my call wasn’t so bad. It cost me $20K to call, and I was getting 6:1 to call—10:1 after everyone called.

The flop (i.e., the first three cards) came up 2, 3, 5. Wow, I had a straight draw, and I had the top pair. I bet first, betting $200,000. No one was in better position unless they had a higher pair in their hand. I wanted to get everyone out who might get a higher pair later.

Everyone folded except the button. He had 72 of clubs (but the flop didn’t give him a flush draw). Thus, he had 22 and the remote possibility of a straight draw if the next two cards were a 4 and a 6, or three 2s if one of the remained two 2s came up. Not good odds. It’s what I call an idiot play—calling my pot bet with that hand.

There was now $600,000 in the pot. The turn card was a 7. I was feeling quite aggressive (remember I was angry). I couldn’t imagine anyone calling with a 7 in their hand, so I bet another $600,000. The 72 now had a pair of sevens and twos, and he went all in with his $5 million in chips.

I had put $840,000 in the pot. The pot now contained $6.2 million. I had about $2.2 million left. So let’s see, if I bet $2.2 million more, I had a chance at the 4 million that was in the pot. I didn’t count the extra chips he’d bet that I couldn’t match. I was angry so I called the bet. I didn’t get the straight, and I lost another $3 million having lost $5 million on the night. I was furious. “How could he call me with a 72? IDIOT‼‼‼”

By then, I was too mad to process anything about my thoughts. The next morning, however, I was able to see what I did the previous night and the results amazed me. 

All of my beliefs were projections and none of them were true. Believing those beliefs and being attached to them left me angry and nowhere near a state of objectivity. I was seeing all sorts of other things in the other players. They were just on-line avatars. Who knows, I could have been playing a robot. So let’s look at those beliefs that were making me angry one by one.  

First Belief: Idiots should not call my large bet with weak hand. The reality of it: Wow, I wish they did that all the time. Sometimes, they’d get lucky. Last night, my opponent had 3 chances to catch a 7 and two chances to catch a 2 in the next two cards; the odds were originally 3.5:1 in my favor. However, he could have flopped a straight, which I didn’t consider. In addition, I called his large raise after my bet when the odds were clearly in his favor. I was the idiot. Out of the 44 cards that were left, 8 cards would have given me the straight: I only had an 18% chance of winning. He also could have called me with a 46 on either the flop or the turn, giving him a higher straight, and I would have been drawing dead. With either no chance of winning or an 18% chance of winning, I risked $2.2 million to win $4 million. I was getting less than 2:1 odds. Who was the idiot? I was, and I was just projecting that on him.

Second Belief: Poker players should play wisely. Well, should they? No, they should all play like that guy and overall, I’d win big. I’m the one who should play wisely. I was the idiot, but I was blaming him and mad at him. It was all a projection.

Third Belief: Other poker players should respect me. I was feeling disrespected and, therefore, angry because I was attached to that belief. Again, let’s look at the reality. Is it true that they should respect me? Absolutely not! I want them to play like idiots or think I’m an idiot (but only when I’m not). But what was the reality? I wasn’t respecting the other player, especially when he went all in with two pair and possibly a nut flush (proper use of a poker term). I was getting 2:1 odds for less than a 20% chance of winning or perhaps no chance of a winner. So again, I was projecting onto the other person and feeling strong emotions. In reality, I was the one not showing respect.

Fourth Belief: The other person was a bully. I didn’t like that at all. But look at my behavior. I bet the pot twice, with either the high pair or the second high pair and just a flush draw. Again, I was projecting—actually, I was being the bully. You might be saying that you can see it here, but what if this person had physically beaten me up? Well, if I’d been afraid of him, thinking, “He’s a bully,” then it would still be projecting because in reality he beat me up once. The bully was really my thought that he was a bully. Believing your thoughts is the primary cause of all suffering.

Fifth Belief: He was crazy and a lunatic. Wow, look who was saying that. I was playing poker when I was angry and not at all objective. I had just lost 2 million, which is more than my limit for the evening. And now I was risking everything for a 2 to 1 payoff with at best an 18% chance of winning and at worst no chance of winning. Here was more projection on my part. I was the crazy lunatic.

Is what I was thinking and feeling last night beginning to make sense to you? Wrapped up perfectly here in my poker experience is the very core of my teachings:

• You are responsible for the results you get.
• The psychological impact of trading (poker) is enormous.
• Projection makes perception.
• You can only trade your beliefs.
• We make up the world we live in. As long as we do that, we might as well adopt useful beliefs and live in a manner that makes us effective traders (poker players).

This poker coaching article is aimed at the beginner poker player who is playing in the low stakes games, either live or online. The key in these games is to weigh  your re-raises to value hands (i.e. good hands), rather than using a re-raise to bluff. Remember, as we discussed in my poker bluffing article, people at low stakes don’t like to fold, therefore, we should be less inclined to bluff.

So what are the value hands we should be re-raising pre-flop. Well a good distribution is something like AA KK QQ JJ AK, versus looser players we could also throw in hands like TT AQ KQss. These hands represent about the top 5% of starting hands, So in reality, we are only raising about 1 in 20 times we get dealt a hand. Whilst this is a very tight re-raise range, at the low stakes this should serve you well, people at this level simply are not good enough to understand how tight, and therefore how strong your range is.

As an example, say an opponent raises to $1 in a $25 cash game. We have QQ and re-raise to $4. Lets say our opponent has AJ, he’ll call, because his hand looks pretty, he just wants to play poker, he’s not thinking about what we have. The flop comes J47, he bets $6, and we re-raise with our overpair (we will cover post flop re-raises in a later article), he sees he has top pair, and goes all in, ‘he must have AK’, we call and win a big pot. I see this happening all the time at low stakes.

To summarise, remember this simple rule, with big hands we want to play big pots. (n/b this means we don’t play trappy with our big hands, another common novice mistake!)   For more info on this, refer to my continuation betting video series where we discuss this concept and more. 

As always if you have any questions on this article, or any other areas you’d like discussed, add some comments below.

Good luck at the tables, Johnny.

Here is an extract from Van Tharp article.

——– Start of Article ——–
I’m currently reading Why You Lose at Poker by Russell Fox and Scott Harker. I’ve pretty much promised myself that I won’t play poker for real money again until I’ve read at least three poker books and come up with some major paradigm shifts. As I read this book, I’ve been struck by the amazing similarities between poker losses and trading losses. They are similar sorts of mistakes. As a result, I thought I’d write a series of articles covering various chapters in Why You Lose at Poker and relate them to trading mistakes that I’ve seen.

Part I: Playing Too Many Hands or Not Waiting for the Opportunities that Are Likely to Make Money

When I first started playing Texas Hold ‘em Poker, I had a friend run a computer simulation to determine the chance of winning for all 169 starting hands if you and every other player stayed in through all five up cards. We did ten million simulations with 2 players, 4 players, 6 players, 8 players, and 10 players. I’d seen someone list the probability of winning with each hand, but I didn’t believe that. It turns out I was right not to believe them after we looked at the results of our simulation.

Here were a few of our conclusions:

- The top starting hand was AA. It gave you an 87% chance of winning when there were only two players, but only a 33% chance of winning with ten players. This is why poker experts recommend betting big when you have a high pair to get as many people out as you can.

- When you got down to the 20th best starting hand, which is A9 of the same suit, you have a 62.6% chance of winning heads up (i.e., against one other person). But you only have a 15.74% chance of winning against ten players.

- At the 50th best hand (44), you only have a 57.4% chance of winning heads up and a 12.74% chance of winning with ten players staying. Notice that with the 50th best hand the odds are 5.7% in your favor with two players and 2.74% in your favor with ten. Those are not outstanding odds, but they are equivalent to some of the best odds that you might get with a good entry signal in trading.

- By the time you get to the 94th best hand, you have a 10.07% chance of winning with ten players (i.e., the odds are 0.07% in your favor) and only a 49.25% chance of winning heads up (i.e., the odds are 0.75% against you). However, the 94th best hand is different for ten players (i.e., A4 off-suit) versus two (i.e., T8 off-suit). Heads up A4 off-suit is the 49th best hand, so having an ace plus junk in your hand is useless with ten players and slightly advantageous with two players.

Clearly knowing the winning odds of the cards in your hand can help you play better. The same is true with the signals you from your trading systems. But have you taken the time to learn the odds?

In addition, as a poker game progresses, context becomes important. Let’s say you have KK, the second best starting hand. You bet 5 times the big blind and only one person calls. You now have odds you like, only two people playing, and you have the second best hand. The person who called you might have another high pair or perhaps a hand like AQ suited. Now comes the first three cards or the flop and those are AQJ. Now how does your KK look? Not so good. If you opponent has one A, you are in trouble. You are in even worse trouble if they called you with QQ or JJ. You bet half the pot and they re-raise you. Staying in the game under such circumstances is probably not wise and it’s another example of playing too many hands. But again, it is context dependent… perhaps you opponent is someone who calls most hands to see the flop and someone who bluffs a lot. If so, that might make your hand appear stronger.

———-End of Article ———–

A good starting point if you havent already done so is to grab my Poker Starting Hands Guide Book on the left of this blog.

Let me know your thoughts below by posting a comment.

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