~ P O K E R A R T I C L E S ~
What do you Bring to the Table?
No matter how good of a poker player you are, you're bound to have a few leaks in your game. Maybe you get "lucky" feelings telling you to chase inside straight draws. Maybe you can't escape from premium pairs even when the board looks unfavorable. Then again, maybe it's just you.
Take me for example. I'm a fairly nice guy. I'm honest and unselfish. I enjoy the occasional candlelit dinner and long walk on the beach. Certainly I feel these are fine traits to have in life, but take them to the table with you and KAZAAM, as Shaq would say, all of a sudden you're an ATM with legs.
Think about it. Poker is a game that rewards certain traits and characteristics over others. Aggressiveness over passiveness. Deceitfulness over honesty. Fearlessness over fright. Calm confidence over cocksure recklessness. The truth is that all players, and all people really, have the capacity for both good and bad poker dispositions, but it is often our individual inclinations that push or pull us towards either end of the spectrum. Failing to recognize when your personality is negatively affecting your game can thus potentially become one of the biggest leaks of your game.
In my past experiences as a poker beginner, I've found out the hard way how being a nice guy at the table can inadvertently turn one into an overly-generous weak, passive player. Heck, I might as well have been a rich philanthropist at a table full of cookie-pandering girl scouts. Often times I found myself deciding to fold strong hands preflop rather than coming in for a raise, checking through in late positions instead of attempting to steal pots, and giving my opponents far too much credit for their mediocre hands. As many of the more experienced players at the table probably could have sensed, I was "scared money," and was easy to push around.
Of course being a naturally passive person is only one of many character traits that can become a flaw when you've got cards and chips in front of you. If you happen to be an arrogant hothead for instance, you may find yourself getting far too deep in hands you shouldn't be involved in, being unable to patiently fold. Young males in particular seem to succumb to this egotistical style of play, constantly raising and reraising one another like a bunch of feces-slinging apes. Sadly for them, but fortunately for others, the apparent shock of constantly losing showdowns with sub-par hands only aggravates their raging hormonal temperaments and pushes them even further over the line of tilt. Players like these eventually taught me that there is a profitable middle ground between shy and reckless play that incorporates both confident patience and timely aggression, though always within a calm and composed mentality. It was a lesson I learned not by following other players' examples, but by adapting to their mistakes and loosening or tightening my play accordingly.
It is not always easy to step outside of our lives and consciously analyze our behavior, be it moves we make at the table, on the job, or in interpersonal relationships. But without doing so we can often find ourselves losing out in some way or another, and this can certainly become the obvious truth when you see your bankroll dwindling down to nothing. Whether you're having problems buying in for the full amount because you're scared you'll lose it all, or you're having problems folding to a reraise because you think it's not the manly thing to do, I challenge you to reevaluate how you play and why you play that way. Maybe the problem isn't with your knowledge of pot odds, preflop strategies, or any mechanical issues of the game. Maybe you just need a little brushing up on yourself.
Best of luck at the tables.
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