How To Be A Better Poker Player

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Fortunately, becoming a better poker player isn’t that difficult to do. It does take time and effort, but I would argue that nearly anyone willing to put in both can become a winning poker player. Not my favorite game by far, mostly because it tends to be boring, however if you're looking to drag out the play, the comps and get more chances at getting.

How To Be A Better Blackjack Player
How To Become A Better Poker Player
How To Become A Better Poker Tournament Player
How To Play Poker Well
Tips On How To Be A Better Poker Player
Poker Pro Tips

This article was written by blackrain79.com contributor Fran Ferlan.

When looking at a high-stakes professional poker player losing a half a million dollar pot, or busting out of a huge tournament “in the bubble” and taking it in stride, the word “stoic” might come to mind.

While colloquially referred to as someone who is calm and emotionless in the face of adversity, this kind of definition doesn’t quite do justice to the original philosophy of Stoicism and doesn’t really tell the full story.

Like most things, the original meaning and the ideas have changed and molded with the times, and what we’re left with today is a superficial understanding of what once was.

There is a lot more to being stoic than merely showing (or even feeling) no emotion and accepting your cruel fate. It’s not about suppressing emotions either, for doing so tends to backfire, sooner or later.

The surface-level understanding of Stoicism would indeed have us picture a totally cold and detached person, but it’s just a facade.

It’s not about the appearances, it’s about the underlying principles beneath the surface that guide our thinking and behaviour.

What is Stoicism and How it Can Make You a Better Poker Player

Stoicism is a holistic philosophy that encompasses physics, logic and ethics. It surmises that the path to a good life is to be found in pursuing virtue, using reason, and living in accordance with nature.

According to the Stoics, the four main virtues were wisdom, courage, justice and temperance (or self-discipline). Certainly great things to have at your side, especially when things don’t go your way.

And they won’t.

Anyone who has played poker for some period of time can attest to that.

Quite simply put, stoic philosophy emphasizes virtues as a means of achieving what they called Apatheia (Greek: ἀπάθεια; literally, 'without passion'). It’s not to be confused with apathy.

The most accurate translation would be equanimity, similar to the Buddhist concept of the enlightenment, (i.e. a state of stability and composure in the face of adversity).

In practical terms, it means reacting logically and reasonably to external events beyond our control, rather than our decision-making process being hijacked by emotions.

That is not to say to be emotionless or robotic, but clear-headed, objective and aware. Awareness being the key.

Poker and Stoicism - The Hidden Connection

The less aware you are, the more likely you are to react negatively to external events beyond your control. The poker fish are the best example of this.

They don’t make their decisions based on odds, probabilities, previous action, player types, ranges and so on. A lot of advanced technical poker knowledge is completely foreign to them.

Sure, they might be familiar with some concepts to a certain extent, but knowing that something exists and being able to apply it effectively are not the same thing.

I might have some theoretical knowledge about internal combustion engines. It doesn’t mean I have the slightest clue how to go about fixing my car.

Poker is deceptively simple, and fish are notorious for overestimating their skill level and playing in games they have no business being in.

You will often hear players say something along the lines of: I’m not a math person. I’m more of a feel player. This is mostly a BS excuse.

Sure, intuition and gut feelings are not to be underestimated, but they are usually the consequence of acquired knowledge and reasoning that isn’t quite articulated yet.

It can be useful at times, but it can also be dead wrong, because emotions can be unreliable at best, and highly destructive at worst.

Example of How a Poker Amateur Reasons Incorrectly

You may think someone who is overbet shoving on the river is bluffing because they’ve been overly aggressive and have been pushing you out of pots for more than an hour

So you decide to make a hero call, only to be shown the absolute stone cold nuts.

The problem is you only considered a piece of the puzzle, and built a narrative around it. You didn’t consider previous action, bet sizing, their probable range, the board runout and what have you.

You were probably more motivated to get even, or to make a sick call, or show you won’t be pushed around. Probably a combination of those actually.

Either way, you let emotions (anger or pride) guide your decision-making process, even if you weren’t quite aware of it at the time.

You did make a conscious decision, and there was certainly merit to your line of thinking (i.e. the villain WAS overly aggressive and could have been bluffing), but it’s not the whole story.

It’s a single piece of the variable that stood out to you because of previous events and your personal involvement.

And that’s the core problem:

We might think we are making rational decisions, and we aren’t even aware of the ways our decision-making process is compromised before it’s too late.

How to Mitigate the Negative Effects of Emotional Based Reasoning in Poker

If we could mitigate the negative effects of emotions and let the rational part of our brain take the wheel, poker would be a fundamentally different (and quite easier) game.

This is where a little bit of stoic wisdom can come in handy. This article will provide some insight into the mind of one of stoicism’s most stellar personalities, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Marcus Aurelius was quite an impressive person. He was dubbed the Philosopher king by his contemporaries and was known as the last of the five good emperors of Rome.

He ruled from 161 to 180, and his reign will mark the beginning of an end of a period which will later be called Pax Romana (lat. Roman peace), the golden age of the Roman empire.

As one of the most prominent Stoic philosophers, a lot of what we know about Stoicism today can be ascribed to Marcus Aurelius and his capital work, 'The Meditations,' a series of letters and notes he wrote to himself as a means of self-improvement.

The work was never written to be published, but his ideas survived to this day in one form or another long after the emperor’s passing almost two millennia ago.

All the quotes cited come from The Meditations, so with the history lesson aside, let’s get into the actual tips, starting with the cornerstone of Stoic philosophy…

1. Some Things Are Out of Your Control

“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” - Marcus Aurelius

As poker players, there is a lot we can do to improve our results, and how much we win or lose depends greatly on us. We choose the game to play, we choose a site, a table, a seat.

We choose the stakes, when to play, how long, what cards to play, how to play in a certain spot and so on.

We are just not entirely sure about the outcome in a lot of situations. And it certainly can be a deal-breaker to many people who want to be in control of their life’s outcomes, and playing dice just isn’t their particular cup of tea.

But for the rest of us degenerate gamblers, it’s a cruel reality that we need to make peace with in order to survive this brutal game.

You need to be aware that the prospect of loss is ever present, and disasters are just waiting to happen.

And there is absolutely no way around it, no matter how good you are. Sometimes you will do everything right and lose anyway. It’s beyond you. But the way you react when things don’t go your way is the true mark of character.

Everyone can play well when the deck keeps hitting them, but as soon as things go south, their game collapses along with their fortunes.

And this is what makes poker a lucrative endeavour for some, and a losing investment for most.

The key Stoic takeaway is this: True wisdom is identifying and separating what’s within our control and what isn’t, and focusing exclusively on the former. So how do we do that?

With another piece of advice from Marcus Aurelius…

2. Stay Present

“At every moment keep a sturdy mind on the task at hand, as a Roman and human being, doing it with strict and simple dignity, affection, freedom, and justice — giving yourself a break from all other considerations.

You can do this if you approach each task as if it is your last, giving up every distraction, emotional subversion of reason, and all drama, vanity, and complaint over your fair share.” - Marcus Aurelius

Making peace with things beyond our control and focusing only on what is within our control means letting go of past and future.

The past is fixed and impossible to change, the future is uncertain and impossible to predict. That is not to say that Stoics were just living in the moment, partying non-stop and to hell with the consequences.

Quite the contrary.

They did in fact think extensively about what their life would and could be like, and what was the best course of action to take in order to live a virtuous life.

They also meditated on what has transpired already, but not to dwell on past mistakes and misfortunes, but to learn from them.

But when they weren’t pondering life’s biggest questions and were engaged in a certain activity, they were all in on it, for they believed that anything that is worth doing is worth doing well.

Otherwise, why are you doing it in the first place?

So the next time you sit down to play poker, make sure you are focused on the task at hand. Remove all distractions like your phone, email, Netflix etc.

Make sure you are not to be disturbed, either by external forces or by your own internal turmoil of any kind. Leave the past, the future, and your ego at the door and play to the best of your abilities.

Focus on every hand individually, street by street, action by action. Pay attention even when you’re not directly involved in the hand.

It’s the best way to pick up on information or reads/tells about your opponents, because your mental space is free from all the considerations you usually take when involved in a hand.

Don’t let your mind wander off. You can’t expect to have great results if you keep missing key pieces of information. Information is power, and every little piece of it helps.

Stay inquisitive, stay present.

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3. Expect Adversity

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil.

But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind... And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness.

Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him... To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.” - Marcus Aurelius

People are here to take your money and you are there to take theirs. It is not a cooperative endeavour. Poker in its essence is closer to a Hobbesian nightmare than to a utopia.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world. It’s fair in so far that the rules regulate the behavior of the participants, and the participants adhere to those rules. It has evolved a lot from the lawless gunslinging days of the wild west, but at its core, it’s still you against everybody else and vice versa.

Sure, there is a sense of camaraderie and mutual respect between players, especially in live games, but at the end of the day, you are still there to take their money and prevent them from taking yours, and you are to use any means necessary to achieve that, as long as it is within the boundaries of rules and fair play.

The Stoic takeaway here is that other people will be out to get you in some way or the other, and sometimes they will get the better of you in some particularly nasty way.

They may keep 3-betting you light because you overfold to 3-bets out of position. They can get frustrated with your aggression and keep calling you down and hitting their miracle gutshot draw on the river.

Or they can go on an insane monkey tilt and shove 63 offsuit preflop you snap call with your pocket queens and the board runs out like this: Q♥2♠9♣4♠5♥

The universe won’t always cooperate with you. The cards won’t always fall your way, and the people will be out to get you. And they will get you sometimes.

It won’t be fair and it won’t be pretty, and you won’t see it coming. Just remember that the universe isn’t conspiring against you. Which brings us to the next point...

How To Become A Better Poker Player

4. Don’t Take Things Personally

“Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.” - Marcus Aurelius

Poker is random. People aren’t used to randomness, and they don’t interpret the world as such. We are pattern seeking creatures, and if we don’t find a pattern, we are more than happy to make one up.

Chance isn’t conspiring against you. Things don’t happen TO YOU. They just happen. This kind of thinking might sound fatalistic, but it’s actually quite a relief once you actually internalize it.

The law of large numbers pretty much guarantees that a series of highly unlikely and highly unfortunate events will happen. And sometimes they’ll happen in a quick succession. And they will happen to you.

How To Become A Better Poker Tournament Player

People aren’t equipped to deal with large sample sizes and long term probabilities. This is something that only professional poker players typically learn how to deal with.

Most amateurs instead are overly focused on the present moment, this particular situation, this particular hand, this particular bad beat.

Or a series of them. And since we are also incredibly gifted in pattern recognition and narrative building, we don’t analyze cold hard data on a graph.

We are reacting to what’s happening to us in the moment, and what’s happening is we’ve lost a huge pot in a particularly vicious way. And it keeps happening. And it’s happening to ME.

We are all protagonists in our own stories, and it’s quite apt to jump to the victim narrative. It’s a way of ego protection, and it’s a normal instinctive reaction.

It takes some serious brain power to overcome it, and it’s anything but easy.

It might be worth remembering that bad things happen to everyone. One of the great things about poker is it doesn’t discriminate.

Play it long enough, and you’re bound to run extremely hot at times, and extremely cold at others. Sure, some people will run worse than others, but on a long enough time line, the survival rate of everyone drops to zero anyway.

So it’s more about the journey, and how we deal with the inevitable obstacles. Some do it better than others, because they...

5. View Obstacles as Opportunities

“Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not 'This is misfortune,' but 'To bear this worthily is good fortune.” - Marcus Aurelius

You will get unlucky sometimes. You will do everything right and still fail miserably. But so will everyone else. What separates the winners is the way they approach failure. They don’t fear it.

Because if you don’t risk failure, you can’t succeed. And if you never fail, then you probably don’t ever try anything new or challenge yourself in any way.

If everything is coming easy to you, you might want to watch out, cause you might just be going downhill at a slight slope.

The winners are those that take the best out of disaster, and use it as a way to better themselves. They use it as fuel to improve, to see their shortcomings and work on them consciously and deliberately.

Where some people see disaster, some see an opportunity. It’s a matter of perspective. Remember that everyone will get their fair share of fortune and disaster respectively.

The ones that deal with it the best will be the ones that will rise on top. Eventually.

The next time you get your aces cracked by a whale with HUD stats of 78/5/1 and lose your whole stack, think how much better you could react than a vast majority of the player pool you’re competing against.

Because bad beats and coolers happen to everyone, fish included. And the fish are the ones that are more likely to start tilting like crazy and spewing their chips. Because they see a disaster.

And a shark sees an opportunity. It’s nature. And the Stoics were all for living in accordance with nature.

6. Be Grateful

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” - Marcus Aurelius

Ending on a more positive note, be grateful for the fact that we’re able to play this great game in the first place.

When you lose, remember that it is a privilege of the few to be able to afford losing money playing cards. And the fact that some people are able to actually make money in the long run is a miracle in and of itself.

It pays to count your blessings every once in a while. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but it’s the reality of life.

There is nothing to do but to ride it out as best we can, and rejoice in the fact that we can play a silly little card game every once in a while.

Summary

Being calm and composed in the face of adversity is something we should all strive for on the felt, as well as away from it.

And you don't need to study a bunch of advanced poker strategies in order to realize this.

But we humans are tragically ill-equipped to deal with poker, with our insane monkey brains running amok with all sorts of complex emotions and sensations.

The idea that we can sit down at a table with a bunch of complete strangers and take each other’s money back and forth for hours on end without tearing each other to pieces is nothing short of a miracle.

However, in order to not just be able to do so, but to make sure we are the ones who leave with said money, it might be prudent to keep our insane monkey brain in check.

Fortunately for us, the great minds of antiquity have a few tips on how to go about it.

Firstly, we need to accept and recognize that things are either in our control or beyond it, and it is up to us to differentiate between the two, and focus exclusively on what we can control.

And what we control is our mind, in this particular moment.

This moment is all we have, for the past and future don’t really exist but in our mind. So we should get the best out of today, this hour, this minute, and leave our regrets and anxieties behind.

Expect things to go bad, because they will.

When you plan for the worst, nothing can surprise you. It’s not about being pessimistic, it’s about being aware of potential adversity and challenges. It’s harder to fall in a hole if you see it up ahead.

Don’t take things personally. Things are things. The universe isn’t out to get you. You aren’t cursed.

When you face an obstacle, embrace it. Instead of saying, this is a disaster, say: this is an opportunity. Ask yourself: how can I make the best of the situation? What can I learn from this?

Finally, be grateful, even for the difficulties, for they are there to make you grow.

Lastly, if you want to learn the complete strategy to crush small stakes poker games, make sure you grab a copy of the free BlackRain79 poker 'cheat sheet.'

So you wanna be a poker pro? Many envy the life a professional poker player. Who wouldn't want to set their own hours, play a game they love for a living, and travel around the world to various tournaments? Add a nice income to boot, and you have yourself a dream job. So how does a professional become a professional?

Professional poker players do not graduate from Poker Pro School, and there is also no guild that bestows the 'pro' status on players. It is entirely a label that one adopts for himself. Even some people who lose money at poker consider themselves professionals. Generally, one decides to make poker-playing his occupation for at least one of two reasons:

On the one hand, they may feel that they can make more money at poker than they could at any other occupation they could acquire. Generally, these players have logged in over 500 hours of poker and have measured their hourly rate to be significantly higher than any other job they could get.

On the other hand, they may simply enjoy the poker lifestyle so much that they will sacrifice income for freedom. Also, the extent of a professional's career varies. Most poker professionals view their poker-playing as a temporary job. They may be between jobs or expect to enter a higher-paying occupation in the future. Only a relative few view poker-playing as a career for life.

A solid professional is fundamentally a businessman. He or she understands how to play poker to maximize his or her income. The incomes of pros are entirely diverse and depend on the skill, bankroll, guts, and luck of the player. The amount of hours that pros play also vary. The only thing they have in common is that poker is their primary source of income. Raw poker skills are only a fraction of what is necessary to make significant money playing poker. One must know what game he or she excels at most in terms of hourly rate. A true, solid poker professional plays the poker game that gives him the highest hourly rate. Generally, the factors that affects one's hourly rate include:

1. One's skill compared to others' skill

2. Number of hands per hour and tables the person can play

3. The rake or time charge

4. The variance involved

Taken together, a person with less cardplaying skill can easily make more money than a very skilled player if the less skilled person is smarter about all of the other factors. Since pros are interested in making money, they must play against people who essentially are interested in losing money. This means playing in soft, loose games. Also, because a poker player wants to exert his or her edge as much as possible, the number of hands one plays is a critical factor. Of course, it depends on the type of game the pro chooses.

If a pro is a Limit Hold'em player, then his or her medium of playing is of great importance. Playing on the internet at 3 tables at once will easily yield five times as many hands per hour compared to a person playing in a brick-and-mortar casino. If the two are playing the same limit against comparable competition, the internet pro can easily make five times as much as the brick-and-mortar player. While the B&M player can focus more on his one game, the internet pro has the advantage of a lower rake and the ability to play many more hands per hour. At Limit Poker, hand volume is much more important than player reads.

For No-Limit Poker, reads are more important. Thus, a player might not be able to play two or three games at once. Again, it depends on the player, but his or her choice of medium will greatly affect his or her hourly rate.

Tournament professionals exist, too. However, they are rare compared to the number of cash game pros. This is because tournaments have a high level of variance and tend to have stronger competition than cash games. It is also much harder to calculate one's hourly rate at a tournament because tournament income is so volatile. While there are certainly famous, successful tournament players, many who choose this route end up failing. Compared to cash game players, tournament players are notorious for being in debt and dependent on others' staking them.

How To Play Poker Well

There are four major turnoffs to being a professional poker player. First, it is not a very social activity. If you are an internet pro, you are essentially playing at home, with little human interaction. You do not enjoy the chat by the water cooler and other social perks associated with a regular job. Secondly, poker becomes very monotonous very quickly. Sure, a pro can play a variety of games. But since a poker professional is primarily interested in making money, he will probably want to mainly play the one game that provides his highest hourly rate. Needless to say, this can become very boring, very fast. Thirdly, many take issue that the poker player does not really contribute anything to society. This has become less and less of an issue, as professional poker players are often considered 'entertainers.'

Finally, and most importantly to many, poker can have a highly variable income. Based on my own data, my standard deviation per hour is 6 times my hourly rate. This basically means that if I made $100 an hour, there is about a 68% chance that in any one hour I'd make between -$500 and $700. The rest of the time I would have an even larger swing. This is not appealing to many, who couldn't handle the stress of such fluctations of income. The poker professional must not be phased by these fluctuations at all. Generally, poker players with large bankrolls tend to fare better and play with less fear. While their poker winnings are what puts food on the table, any single day, week, or month means relatively little to their overall bankroll.

Tips On How To Be A Better Poker Player

What a true professional worries about is not the luck of the cards but the changes in the poker market. Professionals need to play against poor players. One makes money because one has better relative skill than others. If a pro is playing against a bunch of pros, then he or she will make little to no money. A poker professional's income is much more dependent on the skill of others than himself. After all, he has probably perfected his skills as much as he possibly can. The only thing that can affect his relative skill is the skill level of the opposition. If no new, poor players enter the poker world, the professional will probably have to look for a new job.

For the above reasons, most solid poker players do not become professionals. Many of those with the skills and bankroll necessary to play poker can make just as much (if not more) money at another job. They also may simply love another job so much that they would rather do that line of work than poker, even if they made more money at poker. It is probably a good thing for poker professionals that being a full-time poker player is not too appealing of a job. If many people became pros, then the competition would be too tough to make much money at poker!

Poker Pro Tips

Poker is often better as a secondary job. 'Semi-professionals' enjoy poker as a side income and hobby without relying on it as a stable source of income. They also avoid the anti-social, monotonous nature of professional poker playing. Some semi-pros make a very significant income from playing cards, even more than many professionals! After all, none of the last three winners of the World Series of Poker were professionals at the time. Poker as a lucrative hobby instead of a profession is the route that most winning players take.