betshah The correct betting mentality when playing Texas Hold’em

Texas Hold’em Poker is a game that is easy to learn but difficult to master. It requires rigorous and fast calculations under pressure, persistent patience, the ability to get into the opponent’s mind, the decision-making ability to pull the trigger at the right time, and “even if there are thousands of people, I will go” (even if there are thousands of people, I will go) I have the courage to move forward even though thousands of people are trying to stop me.

When you have the above mentioned, you have the potential to become a winner. However, there is one thing that if you don’t have it, all your hard work, confidence, and of course, hard-earned capital may quickly go up in smoke, and that’s the right mindset. betshah tried to explain from two perspectives what the correct mentality is, and what serious consequences the wrong mentality will bring.

1. One of the correct mentality: The long term is king, ignore the short term
Poker is a game that involves both skill and luck. In a relatively short period of time, even a veteran and successful player can do nothing about luck. In any hand when the cards are revealed, only luck can determine who loses and who wins. The top three percent of good cards, AK, only have an advantage of 2:1 against the worst hand, 7-2. This sounds like a big deal. , but it’s still far from guaranteed to win.

Even if we take a longer period of time, in any tournament, any week, or even any month, a flawless play style is very likely to see a losing result. A good player may lose due to a series of reasons such as a bad starting hand, too many enemy cards, or his opponent draws too many cards and he draws too few. Immature players often have wrong expectations about short-term results. betshah For example, we have AA, and the opponent is all in before the flop, and the opponent is JJ. Unfortunately, my opponent hit a set and won the big pot.

However, once you play for a long time, skill is king and the element of luck gradually fades away. If you play for long enough, the element of luck in your results will almost disappear. People who know more about probability distributions will instinctively think of this, but ordinary people often find it difficult to believe it.

Unfortunately, it takes a really long time, say 100,000 hands, to separate the vast majority of winners from losers. However, among these 100,000 hands, in any 100, 1,000, or even 10,000 hands, it is entirely possible for a winner to lose money. If your purpose in playing poker is to make money, then your view should be long-term and any short-term results should be ignored. Paying too much attention to short-term results will cause you to have an unbalanced mentality and make decisions that deviate from maximizing EV.

2. Correct mentality 2: Decision comes first, results are irrelevant
If we were to define a “correct” decision, betshah thinks it should be: a decision that maximizes our EV given the known information. After seeing the opponent’s cards, our correct decision often looks very wrong. For example, in a game with a short stack and all hands folded in front, we see AK in the small blind position. At this time, we must go all-in. But the big blind happened to have AA and killed us. If we know in advance that he has AA, the “correct” decision is to fold, but there is no such thing as knowing in advance. Based on the existing information, we judge that going all-in with AK can maximize EV, which is the correct decision.

When we play poker, we should always focus on making the right decision. It doesn’t matter whether the correct decision results in a win or a loss. This may sound like a contradiction: isn’t the purpose of playing poker to win? It doesn’t matter whether you win or not. In fact, from this point of view, the qualities required to play poker coincide with the qualities of a successful business leader. I have never heard that you can become a good leader by keeping an eye on your company’s stock price. On the contrary, a good boss must look beyond the stock price and do things in a down-to-earth manner. About a year after New Oriental went public, Yu Minhong said that he had only seen New Oriental’s stock price four times in total.

When a correct decision costs us chips, it’s time to put the players to the test. An immature player may start to complain at this time, especially after he has been patiently “waiting for his opportunity” for two hours. betshah told the players that any decision, as long as it is correct in terms of EV, is what we insist on doing, and victory will follow, so there is no need to worry.