One of the most fascinating poker questions is: Why do so many
people play so badly? Most of them know better, but they keep making the same
mistakes. Even well-read people don’t play as well as they can. For example,
Mason Malmuth told me, “We’ve
sold more than 63,000 copies of Hold’em Poker for Advanced Players and almost
as many copies of The Theory of Poker, but only a small number of people apply
the lessons well.” I’ve studied both books many times and talked repeatedly to
the authors, but I don’t play as well as I should, and you probably don’t,
either. We aren’t stupid; we can understand the books we read. So, why don’t we
play as well as we know how to play?
The answer is surprisingly simple: It’s more fun to play badly
than well. Of course, winning is more fun than losing, but trying to maximize
our profits would force us to do lots of unpleasant things. In fact, profit
maximization makes such extreme demands that only a few, extraordinarily
disciplined people play their best game most of the time, and nobody always
plays it.
A Classic Misunderstanding
Most poker writers and economists claim that people are driven
primarily by the profit motive, but the evidence is overwhelming that other
desires affect most actions. We may claim to want to maximize our profits in
poker (as well as in business, the stock market, and so on), but our actions
contradict that claim. In my last column (“Freud and Poker”), I discussed the
effects of unconscious factors, but many of the reasons for bad play are right
out in the open. Let’s look at a few extremely common mistakes. If we were
really trying to maximize our profits, these mistakes could not possibly occur
so frequently. There must be other factors at work.
Playing Too Many Hands
The very first lesson we learned was to play tightly, but nearly
all of us play too many hands. We have read countless warnings against it, but
we still do it. Why? Because it’s boring to fold hand after hand. So, we “take
a shot,” playing a hand we know we should fold. Sometimes it pays off, and we
kid ourselves that we don’t have to follow those silly rules; we can profitably
play hands that less talented players should muck. We may even congratulate
ourselves for our “courage”
or “flexibility.” When playing a weak hand costs us serious money, we may vow,
“Never again,” but we soon find an excuse to break that vow.
Chasing
We chase with weak hands for the same reason, plus the
self-defeating desire to “protect our investment.” We’ve gone this far, so we throw good DreamGaming money after bad.
Sometimes we catch a miracle card to win a large pot, and we remember it long
after we have forgotten all the bets we wasted. We know that chasing is
foolish, but it pays off frequently enough to let us pretend we can get away
with it.
Playing Too Aggressively
It’s easy to justify betting and raising with weak or marginal
hands. We know that all the top players are aggressive, and an extremely
aggressive style works well in many situations, such as very tight games,
especially shorthanded ones, and heads-up pots. I am not talking about those
situations. I’m referring to ones in which we know we should be less
aggressive, but play aggressively anyway. Instead of recognizing our mistake,
we may remember the times that everyone folded, letting us win a small pot, or
we sucked out to win a large one. We may ignore all the bets we wasted or treat
them as “just a cost of doing business,” or “advertising so we get action when
we’ve got a monster.”
Social links:
https://www.imgpaste.net/image/KVZEf8
https://ext-4356121.livejournal.com/156517.html
https://txt.fyi/-/21194/d6cc0927/
Comments
Post a Comment