What is the Single Best Piece of Poker Wisdom?
8 years ago
04 Mar
There is an old - and rather cruel - joke about footballer David Beckham being interviewed, which goes something like⌠âThey are important because they taste good and keep your breath fresh,â to which the interviewer responds, âFor f*** sake David, I was asking about TACTICS, not TicTacs!â
Wisdom in poker is similarly susceptible to people imparting advice way above their knowledge level, but occasionally a âgolden nuggetâ comes your way which will prove to be very useful when youâre playing.
The Professional Approach
Sometimes itâs a full-on âeurekaâ moment which makes sense of everything youâve learned â sometimes it's just a little rock of cleverness which helps you to calculate your next move. Whatever it is, it pays to listen to those who have decades of experience, so who better than the pros to start us off.
Mike Caro, he of âPoker Tellsâ fame and much more besides, took on the task of explaining how to beat a âbullyâ at the table â courtesy of PokerGrump Robert Woolley on PokerNews.
Donât try to be more aggressive than the bully in retaliation. Heâs making the mistake of wagering too much and too often. The last thing you want to do is get in a war with him to see who can make that same mistake most often. Check and call.â
Caroâs advice makes perfect sense, and is well-worth recalling when faced with such a player; we all meet them, more often than we are comfortable with as well. As Caro explains:
This is one way in which poker differs from life. In real-world conflict, you might need to fight back. But there is no known strategy in the poker universe that can allow a bully to take advantage of you if you simply check more often, call more often, and allow him to self-destruct.â
If we are looking for one-liners rather than paragraphs, we can also add Caroâs version of âpokerâs most important secretâ, which runs âPlay your best game all the time!â Easily-spoken, almost never followed at amateur level, with tilt, lack of concentration, fancy-plays, and a host of other things tempting the average player away from this nugget of wisdom.
Daniel Negreanu, one of the âwinningestâ tournament players of all time, has written two books on âHoldâem Wisdomâ, and although neither were truly great reads, there were enough little ideas in them to make them worthwhile. He offered up the interesting adage:
Poker is a lot like sex, everybody thinks theyâre great at it, but most people donât really know what they are doing!â
Not that this will be of much use to you at the tables, but it might just make you reconsider whether your partnerâs wails and moans are for real or not!
Anonymous Amateurs
The excellent though anonymous quote, âPoker is a hard way to make an easy livingâ, belongs up there with the best of them â as anyone who has taken the game seriously can testify to. Sometimes itâs the amateur aficionado of the game who makes the most sense â even if they donât always follow their own advice!
A recent reddit.com question along the lines of this article threw up some real gems. âSkeetRagsâ produced the following lovely-worded piece of wisdom:
Start tight as shit and only widen as you get better, recreationals often do the inverse.â
Very true and very useful to remember, as JPZA88 confessed in reply: âDefinitely this. Boy oh boy were my first few months loose!â Only very good players can play the kind of hands that Gus Hansen or Daniel Negreanu seem to like!
Another poster, BradsWilson, reminded us all of a useful question to ask ourselves: "Before I do anything, I ask myself: would an idiot do that? And if the answer is yes, I do not do that thing." Although every piece of advice needs to be taken with a grain of common-sense, as ImaDunkonYou replied: "Would an idiot call this shove when I have the nuts?" reminding us that it works both ways!
Sticking with the Reddit thread, Wilfra reminded us of another anonymous and general quote:
To be good, you must learn to play tight. To be great, you must learn to play loose."
So, read Dan Harringtonthen watch Ole Schemion for example!
One which most people will have to admit to at some point in their âpoker career is â Don't let ego influence your decisionsâ, as MickMurrr19 points out. Of course we all think we are better than we actually are, but when we start to think we are better than everybody else at a table and start to take liberties, we soon come a cropper.
We have to reign in the ego and make decisions based on what we actually know and understand, rather than what we would like to have happen based on our poker âsuperpowersâ!
Negreanu's version of this and similar quotes is:
You could be the 5th best player in the world, but if youâre seated at a table with the four best players in the world, well, youâre the sucker!â
The Hollywood Effect
âDkootâ throws in the classic âRoundersâ movie line, fancied up a bit with a timely swear-word:
The cardinal fucking rule, of course. always leave yourself outs!â
In fact, the intro to Rounders, the movie which sparked a generation of new poker players, is a nugget-filled wisdom-fest all on its ownâŚ
Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker. Guys around here'll tell ya... you play for a living. It's like any other job. You don't gamble. You grind it out. Your goal is to win one big bet an hour, that's it. Get your money in when you have the best of it, and protect it when you don't. Don't give anything away.â
They even cover the ego problem referred to above, when delusions of grandeur get in the way of correct play!
See, I had this picture in my head. Me sitting at the big table, Doyle to my left, Amarillo Slim to my right, playing in the World Series of Poker. And I let that vision blind me at the table against KGB.â
The Ultimate in Poker Wisdom
So, words of wisdom can come in many shapes and sizes, and from many different sources, but you have to sift through the useful ones and take the other with a grain of salt. If all else fails, you can always turn to Kenny Rogers for the ultimate poker (and, of course, relationship) advice:
You've got to know when to hold 'em. Know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away. And know when to run!
Comments
You need to be logged in to post a new comment