A Poker Journey – The First Step Č Just like anything if you put your mind to something it takes a journey to take you to achieve your goal. I had to learn that if I was to make money at poker I had to put my mind to learning how to play better.
Learning is something I have never been good at. Learning how to play poker using my mind is something I am very good at.
I started out playing online Texas Holdem just for fun. I am one of those people that just seems to enjoy the game, however, I wasn’t making any money at it. I wasn’t sure what was wrong with me. At the time, I think I was between a rock and a hard place. I couldn’t imagine what was wrong with me. Then, one day while watching a poker tournament, something caught my attention. I saw a player quit playing for the day because he couldn’t figure out what he was doing wrong. That got me motivated to find out what was wrong.
That player was me. I had quit playing poker for the same reason. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Then, I started to do something about it. Once I started to fix the problem, I started to win. Now, I am learning how to play poker while continuously working on my own Texas Holdem Poker strategies and I amRecently on the road to recovery from alcohol, gambling, and taking bad beats.
Just like my other addiction, I have an addiction to poker which I refuse to quit no matter the price. I Ramirez the price of poker to my family over and over and I can’t stop gambling. I have quit gambling on several occasions but I always manage to sneak in the next fix. When I hit a bad beat, instead of stopping, I will vivisect and regroup. I don’t even wait for my computer to tell me I am busted. I just hit again in hopes of regrouping.
Sitting in front of my computer wishing that I could win so that I could stop gambling and start again in a different way is an insanity that can cause me to gamble every time I sit down to play poker. Recently, while playing poker, when I started to lose dramatically, instead of getting up and walking away, I would try to win my money back. I am sure you have experienced this yourself.
If the hand is just not going your way, you don’t have to chase it. Stop. Embrace the fact that you are going to lose. Take a deep breath and focus on your chances of winning that hand.
Acceptance of defeat is strength. If you don’t accept defeat and you carry on playing, you are going to lose. You might win one at random or you might win at random, but if you don’t stop and say sorry, you will lose big time.
So instead of losing I prefer to say “I am losing” and then I get up and try again tomorrow. You know the saying “The house always wins.” The house doesn’t always win, you know. I mean let’s say you’re winning one in ten times. Every time you lose ten dollars to the house, you lose money. The casino, the people dealing the cards, the stickman never wins. Everyone knows that. But no one says it out loud because it’s just a game. You know what I mean? It doesn’t matter how much you know about card counting or you’ve watched all the James Bond movies, if you can’t do it, don’t try it.
My favourite quote about poker is from the film Rounders. When the pro football player Mike Winfield tells his buddy Daniel something along the lines of “you’re not playing the NFL”, Daniel replies “I know I am, but Mike, I’m working”.
Winfield then says “I’ve fallen in love with the game”, and plays the Packers.
If you want to love the game of pokerace99, you have to love the crazy. You have to love the chance of a single hand or the rush of a huge pot. You have to love the fact that anything can happen. Don’t be afraid of the game. If you go into a poker game with the idea that you are going to win every hand, give it up. Don’t think that the more you play, the more you are going to win. Poker is a game of patience.
We are often told not to be afraid to bet big because it always pays off. Yet we see young guys that no matter what they have, they don’t have what it takes to win the big pots. Why not? Because they don’t bet big.
Try it. Pay attention to your opponents. Pick out your old enemies, especially the ones that you really want to get rid of.