Essay - Winning Poker

"Poker takes a day to learn and a lifetime to master."

I've taken a serious approach to winning at poker for the last few months, and did fairly well. Yet during this time I've come to a few realizations about the game and what it takes to win, both from books and much personal experience.
I would like to describe my insight about what a personal emotional evaluation will tell you about the style of poker you can play and whether to play at all as well as some other gambling points. I'm talking here about whether to treat poker as a money making venture, not a recreational activity.
As you begin to understand the game you progress in levels of understanding and improve in more aspects of skills. There is a vertical progress as you integrate more skills into your decision making process, but there is also an emotional aspect which I believe runs parallel to technical skills and will make or break any progress along the way.

What is Poker really about:
This is a basic definition of the game, see Wikipedia - Texas Hold'em Poker
There are many variants of Poker with Texas Hold'em currently being the most popular. This is due to the fact that it's easy to learn, is more exciting because of its structure, and because even poor players can do well sometimes especially short term. It has a potential for good players to exploit weak players more easily without poor players really knowing this in the long term.

The purpose of poker as I see it, is To sell false hopes, while buying disappointment.
To win money someone has to pay you, thinking or hoping that they have the best hand. You want to offer a false hope, using your knowledge of odds, pot to hand odds, reading opponents, including presenting weakness, as some of the tools. The flip side is to buy disappointment because when you win by showing cards or by bluffing, there is someone there to be disappointed by it. A winning player will maximize big pots, by buying the big disappointments, repeatedly buy small ones, and minimize his purchases of false hopes. In this light we can see that the game is all about emotions. Technical skills and their quality are only the tools and their efficiency in the hands of an emotional craftsman.

General progression of skills (technical aspects):
Most poker learning is based on technical skills, akin to someone learning to use tools. The following are these tools, in increasing order of sophistication. I'm not trying to layout detailed strategies, but just illustrating the progression. They must be mastered in order, although they overlap and their definitions are provided as convenient divisions.
1. Rules
First you have to learn the structure of the game and then the hand rankings. You need to be aware of what hand you have and which hands beat which. You bet when you have good hands and fold when you don't.
2. Anticipate possibilities for your own hands
As cards come out you need to think about what possible hands you can make with what you have and cards that haven't come out yet. Before focusing on other skills you need to master knowing where you stand at the moment with your own cards. Up to this level you are focusing on your own hands and the knowledge of rankings.
3. Anticipate possibilities for other players hands.
At this point, you need to learn to read the board to tell you what other players might have. At this level you're now playing and thinking about your opponents and what they might have by reading the board. This requires some analysis and more thoughtful play. Lot's of people play at this level, but you can't be a winning player without more evaluation. Knowledge to this point doesn't tell you anything about how much to bet and when. You tend to bet on the strength of your own hand instead of expected returns, or nebulous feelings about opponents or odds. Most home games or with people that play for fun will not progress beyond this level.
4. Odds and Pot Odds
This level of play requires a bit of study and here the emotional aspects begin to be noticed. You are now calculating probabilities for improving your hand, and figuring out probabilities of opponents holding different hands. This is combined with a calculation of Pot Odds, which is the ratio of the money you are putting in vs the possible money you can win. This leads to a basic formula for any gambling evaluation. The ratio of money put up vs money to win should always be less than the chances of winning. For example, betting $1 to win $4 is 1 to 4 pot odds. If your chances to win is less then 1 to 4, this is a losing bet, if your chances are better, it's a good bet. This is often an unintuitive way to play, but is necessary and you can't play with your gut. You now make decisions and bets not based on what you have but based on the probabilities of the situation. Most casino gambling games obfuscate your ability to evaluate this, and promise big wins, or keep these two ratios very close but never in your favor. That is how the house always wins.
5. Reading opponents
If you always play by calculated probabilities without including predictions about opponents, you're not being accurate enough with predicting overall chances and miss out on many opportunities to maximize winnings as well as being open to exploitation by opponents. This is what makes poker unique among other gambling, and allows better players to win. You need to at this point learn to interpret the betting patterns of opponents. The biggest tells are betting patterns. You need to constantly track what every opponent does in different situations and use that history to add on another factor in narrowing down your probability assessment of the situation.
6. Awareness of your own play patterns
As you get more sophisticated you need to be aware with how you're perceived, and what your actions say about your play, to prevent your patterns from being used to exploit you. You need to know when to vary your play, how to craft an image of yourself to others, when to bluff and fold. At these levels of play as more people are aware of image and play patterns the game is more about playing the opponents rather then the cards, because everyone is trying to trick everyone. Most good poker games in casinos will have players that can play at this level, and these will tend to win.
7. Multiple levels of deception, and behavioral reads.
At high levels of play you need to be aware of how you're perceived and how what you want to be perceived is perceived, and it gets very psychological. You also include reads of behavioral tells and become aware of your own behaviors. This is where intuition can be used, but only after all the basics are mastered. High level players will play at this level and exploit every weakness.

Emotions as a parallel factor in all poker skills:
A great artist without creative inspiration cannot be successful as well as a great poker player without emotional control cannot.
Rarely mentioned in poker theory books, is the emotional factor. One reason being that there is no formula to address this, it doesn't sell well, and also I think the insiders want as many suckers in the game as possible. Learning theory and strategy is a way to lure people into thinking they can win.
All contribute to what is called tilt. Tilt is any harmful state of mind that prevents an otherwise good player from playing correctly.
1. Greed or Desire
Everyone is greedy to a certain extent. You desire for yourself, and always want more. We are taught that if we try hard enough or learn enough we can get what we want. This a good feeling to have, because it empowers us to act to get what we want in life. We need to get into the game and take our chances if we are to succeed. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. This kind of thinking has no place in poker. You can't make things happen, just because you want to, and your success will be determined only by reliance on cold probabilities and calculated strategies. You are dependent solely on the environment and you can't change your chances at any one point. Greed often affects someone that has been on a winning streak, by thinking that they can do no wrong and plays more loosely and aggressively, without following the original strategy, only to start losing.
2. Impatience
People generally don't stick around long in a losing situation. Nobody likes to waste time doing something unproductive. This is a proper emotional response, that stimulates you not to waste your life. Sometimes in poker you need to sit and fold for hours, watching everyone else take down pots, making crazy plays without good cards. People that need excitement, change and stimulation, might actually not make good players long term. You need to accept boredom and have the ability to get out of plays when your mental evaluation tells you so. If you stop following your strategy because the cards aren't coming and everyone else is playing, it doesn't matter how good the strategy is.
3. Anger and depression
When you do your best and lose, you often feel angry or depressed about it. When probability indicates that you should win but repeatedly lose or get outplayed, these feeling naturally arise. When you've been playing all night, and have already lost hundreds, your emotions tell you you're in a bad situation. This is also generally an appropriate emotional response in life, that indicates to you that you should change something. In poker again, this has no place. It usually leads players to try to win back what was lost, and change their game in an attempt to not repeat what just happened. This feeling, again, stops people from following their rational strategy.
4. Fear
Fear prevents people from doing risky or dangerous things, and isn't something to be banished. It's to be evaluated rationally. Courage is acting despite fear, not by lack of fear. Sometimes in poker you need to take chances because your calculations and strategy tells you so, and that it's correct to make a big bet or call. You can surely lose it, but it's still correct. You can't be afraid of doing the right thing, despite the risks in poker.

Emotional Personality and Poker playing style:
I've outlined the technical skills progression and the important emotional aspects that need to be managed to become successful at poker. This lead to the implications and the insight I want to present.

Hands Played
Impatient --------------------------------- Sensitive
Loose --------------------------------- Tight
Betting
Fearless---------------------------Fearful
Aggressive--------------------Passive

1. Ideal State of Mind
All emotions must be taken out of the equation if you want to be a great poker player. This allows you to vary your tight/loose, aggressive/passive play to take advantage of your image, as well as respond to table tendencies and opponent styles. This is much easier said then done, and few can achieve this consistently. That's why most players lose at poker consistently. Everyone at certain times is affected by it. Of course having good technical skills will often override the temporary bad state of mind, in terms of overall win rate. The key is to isolate these and get back to correct play as soon as possible. The problem is that in a game with already such narrow win margins, and requirement for constant focus these shortcoming can amplify mistakes.
2. An impatient person
If you're an impatient person that has trouble playing a tight game where you need to wait for good opportunities, you can develop a more loose style of play where you can play more hands and see more action. This will give you a looser image, with people more likely to call you, when you make a great hand. The downside is that you'll need to handle bigger swings, and will need extra emotional stability with that aspect, and be less sensitive to swings. You need to be fine with being down a larger amount, and taking more losses. You need to trust your ability to take down bigger pots sometimes, and not let greed take your winnings. Top pros are unpredictable and see alot of action.
3. Sensitive person prone to anger
If you're someone who gets angry or greedy with big swings, you need to have the patience to play tight and probably take down smaller pots, but also fewer losses. This is generally the safest most recommended way to play, but you'll see less action. A tight, aggressive disciplined player is a winning player. You need to deal with boredom and this can be difficult.
4. Impatient, greedy, angry, ambitious emotions
If you can't handle at least some or most of the emotional aspects in a poker game, you shouldn't play since you will not be a long term winning player. This is the case with most people, especially when coupled with lack of technical skills. This is the reason poker can be profitable for good players, and the reason that Hold'em keeps bad players coming for more.

Conclusion:
A person without the right personality, cannot be successful even with the best tools. Someone trying to paint must have an artistic intelligence to be successful and not simply knowing how to apply paint to a canvas. This is the same with poker, except here, lack of emotion is most important. You need to train yourself to act coldly and rationally.
To play good poker you need to sideline your emotional, human aspect and then poker becomes a miserable fight with your own human nature. You must train the ability to be cold and calculating.
It's a very interesting challenge, an exercise in an exploration of yourself, and overcoming. It's something that's worth attempting to give yourself better emotion control and get to know yourself better. Being successful at it, means you've learned to control your emotions and they don't factor in your decision making. To some people this might not be something they want to excel at. While it's good to learn to not be controlled by them, in poker they must be totally sidelined, and it's a very tiring and miserable state of mind. If there is one thing I learned from Poker, is how irrational people are by nature.

This brings me to the idea of Risk/Time/Effort VS Reward. For me, learning to excel at poker doesn't provide a favorable ratio. I will explore this idea in general, in a future post.