Poker Psychology
Poker
Psychology:
Three (or More) Is a Crowd
By
Barbara Feiner
Here’s
an experiment you can perform in the comfort of your
home that is destined to
make you a much better poker player.
1.
First,
log onto one of your regular online poker sites, and
grab a chair
in one of the Play Money rooms. As each hand unfolds,
start keeping track of how many players bet after
their hole cards are dealt – and how many remain in
the hand after the flop. If your experience is
anything like mine, you’ll find that virtually every
player bets on every single hand, and the majority
will likely stay in the hand post-flop and beyond. If
someone decides to raise a significant amount (say,
$500 in a room with $5/$10 blinds), at least three or
four players in the crowd will stick around or even
re-raise.
2.
Next,
watch a televised match featuring the pros. I’m not
talking about a star-studded match on “Celebrity
Poker Showdown.” Grab some popcorn and sit through
an entire World Poker Tour or World Series of Poker
event. Carefully track how many players compete in
each hand – and watch how many muck their cards and
get out of the way quickly when someone raises and
another player re-raises a substantial amount or goes
all-in.
If
you do your homework, you’ll see a huge difference
between these two scenarios. Online players –
especially those competing with play money – will
call, raise or even re-raise on more than 90 percent
of hands. Because they’re playing with cyberspace
chips and there’s no actual bankroll involved, they
figure, “What the heck? Maybe I’ll get lucky.”
Simply
put, it’s a horrible strategy – and an excellent
way to develop bad habits that will come back to haunt
you when you enter an online tournament that requires
a cash buy-in. In the real world, a pro with K-Q will
often get out of the way when faced with two opponents’
raises, re-raises and/or all-in bets. He knows
something is going on, and it’s not worth risking
his chips unless he knows he has the nuts.
The
trick to improving your game when you’re in a Play
Money room is to compete as though the cash is coming
out of your own pocket. If you adopt this attitude,
you’ll find that your betting tactics change
dramatically. You’ll muck that 9-6 instead of hoping
for some insane twist of luck by the time the turn and
river cards are revealed. You’ll learn to appreciate
the value of a good starting hand and develop the
discipline required to succeed in real-world poker.
It
all boils down to biding your time and knowing when to
make your move – and if you’re making a move on
every hand, you’re undisciplined, out of control and
destined to lose. According to Arizona-based
organizational psychologist Marcia Reynolds, author of
“OutSmart
Your Brain!”, everyone
is susceptible to bouts of impatience – some more
than others.
“To
shift from impatience to being patient, no matter who
you are, is a learned behavior,” she tells The
Poker Source. “Shifting out of any strong emotion
– especially one where we are attached to having a
specific outcome and we can barely imagine any other
outcome to be right – is a difficult feat.”
As
a poker player, you must therefore learn to recognize any
impatience you feel, Reynolds says. This enables you
to play with “emotional intelligence.”
“Emotional
intelligence starts with acknowledging what we feel
and then telling the truth about why we are
feeling that way – declaring what is truly at stake,”
she says. “After releasing our anxiety, we can make
the best choices for how we want to feel,
instead of being impatient. This is a difficult
practice that takes discipline to learn, but life is
much brighter when you go with the flow.
To
break the impatience cycle, practice the following
simple relaxation exercise long before you hit the
poker room:
1.
Settle
comfortably into a chair.
2.
Close
your eyes and take some deep breaths. Concentrate on
your breathing – each act of inhaling and exhaling.
3.
Count
backwards from 100 to 1, while continuing to breathe
deeply. Be sure to take slow, even breaths.
4.
As
you fall into the rhythm of deep breathing, begin to
tighten and relax your muscles. Make a mental note of
what it feels like to be tense versus relaxed. This
will allow you to create a “body memory” that will
sound an inner alarm when you begin to tense up or
feel impatient.
In
poker, you can use these techniques to release tension
well before you sit down to play – and even when you
feel yourself becoming edgy or impatient at the table.
“When
your body is running on the adrenaline released by
impatience, it is difficult to think,” Reynolds
says. “You have to first relax your body before you
can attempt to relax your mind.”
Click
here to read a free excerpt on “outsmarting your
brain” from Reynolds’ book.
About
Barbara Feiner:
Barbara Feiner is a Los Angeles-based journalist who
covers the poker world.
