No, it's not that sharper, more experienced player in seat #4. Although it's likely that most of the time when you sit down to play poker, there will be at least one player who's better than you in the game, that's OK, as long as there are also some players who are worse than you. And no, it's not your accursed bad luck. Although luck very definitely plays a BIG role in who wins or loses on any one given night, over the long run, the cards tend to even out. You might not perceive or remember it that way, but it really is true.
And no, it's not someone who is cheating you. Cheaters do exist, and it's important to keep your eye out for them. Sometimes they hold out or mark cards, sometimes they don't put enough chips in the pot. But even cheaters aren't your worst poker enemy.
You are. Or, more specifically, your boredom is.
Let's face it. Most of us play poker because we want to have fun. Sure, we want to win money, but that's not enough of a reason, because we sure all have nights when we don't win money, and we still come back for more.
"Having fun," to most players, means ACTION: participating in the pot. For most players, folding their hand means several boring, annoying minutes waiting until they can get back into the action.
To avoid these annoying, boring moments, most players play WAY too many hands, and stay in those hands far too long. This leads to losing more money, or at least to winning less money, than a more conservative approach would have yielded.
Why? Because of one of the most fundamental rules of poker: he who starts ahead tends to stay ahead. Think about it. If I start out with a hand that's a little better than yours, four things can happen:
1) I improve, and you don't. I win.
2) I improve, and you improve. I win.
3) I don't improve, but you don't improve either. I win.
4) I don't improve, and you do improve. You win.
So of the four possibilities, the person trailing at the start of the hand wins only one of them. That's why starting off trailing is such a bad idea. Most people focus only on their own cards and their chances of improving. They forget (conveniently) about those all-too-frequent situations when they improve and still lose—and those hands tend to be the most expensive ones, because nothing will cost you more money than a good hand that loses to a better hand.
So how do you avoid the boredom that causes you—and most of the other players in the world—to play too many starting hands? You do it by recognizing that you're playing one of the most important poker games when you're NOT in a hand.
What game is that? The study of your opponents. Covertly. Not staring at them so openly and obviously that they think you might have a crush on them. You do it quietly, subtly, out of the corner of your eye, while you're munching on your sandwich or conspicuously watching the football game. If your information collecting is obvious, your opponents will start acting, and you'll be collecting a different kind of information—still useful, perhaps, but not as useful as material you pick up covertly.
While you're seemingly eating your dinner, you're actually spending you time collecting information that will let you eat the other guy's lunch, the next time you square off against him.
Think about it. When you have cards in your hand, there's a lot going on, and it's hard to spend much time observing subtle (or even not so subtle) trends in your opponents' games.
But when it looks like you're reading the sports section, you have plenty of time to focus entirely on one opponent, and see everything he does throughout a hand. How did he throw his chips in the pot? What kind of comments did he make, or did he get quiet? How carefully did he guard his cards? Did he lean forward or back? Did he act strong when he was strong, or weak when he was strong? When he breathed deeply, did that mean he was bluffing, or held a big hand?
And then, when the hand is over, and you see what cards your informational target held the whole time, you can put THAT information together with everything you observed while you were studying him.
Pretty soon, you'll have a dossier on every player in your game, a dossier full of information you could not possibly have collected while in the middle of playing one of your own hands. Want to make it even more of a game, even more fun? You're Bond, James Bond, covertly studying the evil Dr. Oddjob for the moment when you win the rights to his secret island hideaway.
OK, maybe I'm getting a bit carried away. But there are all kinds of games you can be playing at the poker table while you're not actually flinging chips around, and these games will have a profound impact on how much money you make when you do find yourself holding cards worth playing.
Once you've collected some information, it's important—for several reasons—to constantly re-evaluate it, and not to treat it like it was carried down from Mt. Sinai on carved stone tablets. People's games change, from month to month, week to week, and even minute to minute. I've seen hundreds of players' games change after a bad beat, a phone call from their wife, or a lost football bet. Just because a piece of information was accurate last week doesn't necessarily mean it will be accurate now.
The second reason for maintaining your surveillance operation, Mr. Bond, is that selfsame boredom we fear so much. If you collect your dossier on the other players, and assume the information is now permanently accurate, you'll once again be tempted to play too many hands. That's two mistakes at once: boredom causing you to play too many hands, and relying on old information when new information is available.
By the way, don't write this information down while at the table: it makes what you're doing too obvious and makes the others uncomfortable. But you can certainly jot down notes when you get home.
While all this observing and analyzing might not be quite as much fun as betting, raising, bluffing, and raking in big pots, it can be a very entertaining game in its own right, and it's certainly not boring. Even more importantly, this little side game will save you from playing lots of losing hands, and will eventually give you an immense advantage in the hands you do play, meaning you'll be a much more consistent winner.
Being a consistent winner isn't just profitable. It's one heck of a lot of fun, and not so bad for the old ego, either. With your single greatest enemy out of the way, you might just find yourself to be the most feared player at your table… and find yourself loving every minute of it.
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Very few people make their fortunes playing poker. A lot more lose theirs. We don't mean to get preachy here, but we don't want you to pawn your high school ring to pay the phone bill. We've seen it happen, and it isn’t pretty.
