Trusting Your Reads

Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 08 July 2009 / Leave a comment

Although poker is a game with a large portion of mathematics in it, at its base it is a game of people. Human beings are creatures of habit, who develop specific styles and views based on how they see the world.

Good poker players not only understand this, but are constantly trying to adapt their style to the one that has the best chance of beating the other player's style, and to a large part this relies on confidence and reads.

Many poker players start to lose their trust in themselves after prolonged sessions of bad beats and harsh variance.

In poker you frequently have to make quite marginal judgments about a situation, judgments which will frequently turn out be wrong.

This does not mean that it was a bad play, as often in poker you are presented with situations where most of the time you will lose a small amount making a certain play, but occasionally will get paid off enormously when you are correct (calling river bets with marginal hands in limit hold'em when getting ten to one odds etc).

Losing ten dollars 90% of the time in a certain situation is not a bad thing if 10% of the time you win one hundred and fifty - trusting your knowledge of the game is crucial to long term success.

Many poker players start to lose their trust in themselves after prolonged sessions of bad beats and harsh variance. If you cannot feel comfortable in yourself and your decision making ability at the table, you need to take an extended break until you feel your trust in yourself returning. Poker is a game where you frequently have to be brave and confident in your decision making, often in the face of massive and prolonged adversity.

If you take anything to the table, take confidence in yourself and your reads. Weak players often understand the technical side of poker quite well, but their lack of faith and bravery costs them night after night as they make mistakes at the crucial moments.

To be able to deal with the pressures of poker, you have to at least trust your own ability and decision making - feeling insecure or worried about your game is a recipe for total disaster in the long run, and this one factor has probably bust more poker players than any other...Don't let one of them be you.

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