Mistakes, Not Pots

To my knowledge, it was David Sklansky’s Theory of Poker that popularized the idea that winning in poker is about mistakes rather than about winning pots. In other words, your goal should be to induce mistakes from your opponents while avoiding mistakes of your own, not to win as many pots as possible or to maximize your chances of winning when you have the best hand.

Now, nearly twenty years later, most poker players accept that this is true in theory and can parrot it as a slogan. In practice, however, many continue to play and act in a way that suggests they do not truly understand what it means to focus on mistakes rather than pots. The result is a lot of misinformed play and misplaced frustration. Not only can a focus on winning pots lead to mistakes and missed opportunities, but it also contributes to tilt when a player loses a pot that he could have won had he played differently, even if the way he actually played the hand would yield a higher expected return.

Correcting these errors of thought requires both a better, more concrete understanding of what it means to focus on avoiding and inducing mistakes and also mental exercises to help break old habits and deeply ingrained patterns of thinking. This article seeks to provide both.

Protecting Your Hand

There is a time and place for protecting a vulnerable hand from draws and overcards, but many players focus entirely too much on this concept. In deep-stacked no-limit hold‘em, letting an opponent draw for free is generally a small mistake. Though not trivial, it must be weighed against potentially larger mistakes such as building a big pot with an insufficiently strong hand, failing to induce bluffs, missing out on possible value bets on future streets, or setting yourself up to get bluffed.

Suppose that you raise preflop with a pair of jacks and get called by a loose-aggressive player in the big blind. He checks to you on a Q 3 2 flop. Should you bet it?

If you’re thinking, “Of course! There are straight draws and a flush draw to worry about, not to mention that he could have an ace or king in his hand. Those jacks are too vulnerable to check,” then you may be guilty of worrying too much about winning the pot.
Betting now will often win you a small pot, but is unlikely to induce a mistake. Your opponent certainly won’t fold a hand better than yours, and few worse hands will call.

Even a loose opponent probably doesn’t call preflop with many 3-x or 2-x holdings, and pocket pairs are dealt rarely relative to all the other hands a loose player would call with, so it’s unlikely that he holds a pair worse than yours. There are a few draws he could call with, but even most loose players will fold very often on this flop.

Importantly, if he does call, there’s a good chance you are not just beat but buried. He could easily have paired the queen, and if he did, then you have just two outs – or one if he holds Q-J! Putting money into the pot with such poor equity is a big mistake. While betting this flop will increase your odds of winning the pot, it will also result in you putting a bet into the pot from way behind. Weighed against this risk, betting no longer seems so desirable.

You must also consider other potential upsides to checking. Perhaps your aggressive opponent will bluff the turn. You might have to fold on a really bad card like an ace, but for the most part you should be happy to call a turn bet. Even though he will bet his queens, he’d have called with them if you’d bet the flop, too, so you aren’t losing anything additional to those hands. You are, however, gaining a bet from many weak hands that would have folded the flop.

There is also the possibility that the turn improves your opponent to a second-best hand. He could hold something like 9-8 and turn a pair that would pay off a bet or two. Or, a diamond on the turn might improve a hand like A 10x, which would have folded the flop, to the point where it will now put a bet into the pot. Sure, there’s some chance your opponent ends up winning on the river with such a hand, but if he puts a bet in on the turn, then he almost surely paid too high a price to see the river. In other words, you induced a mistake, and that’s what poker is all about. Never mind if it occasionally costs you the pot.

In the end, what you must realize is that betting and taking it down on the flop doesn’t exactly “lock up the pot,” because if your opponent folds, much of the pot already belonged to you. In other words, there was a good chance you were going to win no matter what happened. Your bet locked up only the small bit of equity your opponent’s weak hand had in the pot. Squeezing an extra bet from those hands is generally worth much more than the small risk that comes from letting them see the turn and/or river.

Value Betting the River

Another common mistake is failing to value bet marginal but likely best hands on the river. Many players choose to check and call, or if in position, check and showdown, relatively good hands on the river for fear of being raised. This again demonstrates an excessive concern with winning the pot at the expense of maximizing value and inducing mistakes from your opponents.

Admittedly, folding the best hand in what might well be a large pot on the river is a big mistake worthy of being avoided. Realize, though, that you cost yourself the pot only if you are raised by and fold to a hand worse than yours. If you fold to a raise from a better hand, then you cost yourself that final bet, but not the pot, which you weren’t going to win anyway.

Thus, you don’t need to fear river raises nearly as much as you need to fear river bluff-raises. Thankfully, these are rare, and most of your opponents will be virtually incapable of this play. In other words, you don’t have much to fear after all.

Suppose that you hold A-K on an A 8 2 T 5 board. Your opponent, after check-calling the flop and turn, checks to you again on the river. Checking behind here is a disaster, but I see it all the time. When my students do something like this, they generally tell me it’s because they feared a raise.

I say what’s to fear? If you’re raised, it’s an easy fold against almost anyone, simply because this would be a very odd spot to bluff. There were no draws to speak of on the flop, so it’s hard to put your opponent on a hand that needs to bluff. In all likelihood he has a pair of aces, and most people won’t turn a hand that strong into a bluff. They’ll call if they don’t believe you or fold if they do, but they won’t bluff with it.

My best guess is that if your opponent doesn’t fold to your bet, then he’ll call and lose about 79 percent of the time, call and win 10 percent, raise with a better hand 10 percent, and raise with a worse hand 1 percent or less. Hopefully, you can see how favorable those numbers are for you. If there is $500 in the pot and you bet $300, then compared to checking you win $300 79 percent of the time, lose $300 20 percent of the time, and lose $800 (your bet plus the pot you would have won if you’d checked) 1 percent of the time. That gives your bet an overall expected value of $169, which is a lot of money to leave on the table for fear of very occasionally losing a pot that you would have won.

Cultivating a Better Mindset

It can be difficult to perform such calculations at the table in real-time. Even if this all makes sense from the comfort of your armchair, you may resort to bad habits and ingrained patterns of thought in the heat of the moment. This is why, if you want to change the way you play, you must change the way you think.

Making such a change is easier said than done. Reading about and understanding the problem at an intellectual level doesn’t automatically translate into changes in behavior. You must practice this way of thinking and train your mind to adopt it to the point where it becomes second-nature, something you do without conscious effort.

Start by changing the way you evaluate what it means to win. Instead of congratulating yourself on raking a pot or having a winning session, pat yourself on the back whenever you play well, regardless of the outcome. Getting upset that the flush card came after you checked the turn makes no more sense than getting upset when you get your money in good and lose to a bad beat. In both cases, you played well and ended up with a bad outcome due to factors beyond your control. That’s poker.

Instead of bragging to your friends or your spouse about how much you won, brag about well you played. Explain to them your mindset goals and discourage questions like, “how much did you win?”

The results of a given pot or session simply don’t matter in the long run, and focusing on them can lead to poor play and tilt. Of the seven forms of tilt that Jared Tendler and Barry Carter identify in The Mental Game of Poker, at least three are related to an excessive focus on winning rather than playing well: Injustice Tilt (focusing on short term bad luck, in this case ending in bad situations despite playing correctly), Hate-Losing Tilt (getting frustrated by losses and downswings that are an inevitable part of the game), and Entitlement Tilt (feeling that you deserve to win the pot every time you hold the best hand and getting upset when a winner turns into a loser).

Set specific mindset goals for yourself before you play. Resolve not to keep track of whether you are up or down on the session, and quit or take a break if you find this thinking seeping into your decision-making. Pat yourself on the back if you do this successfully.

Visualize your desired mindset before you start playing. Take a few minutes to sit quietly and think about how you want to think at the table. Use this article as a guide. What does it mean to think in terms of mistakes made rather than pots won and lost? How will it change your behavior?

Remember, it will require both understanding and deliberate practice to change the way you think and act. Ultimately, though, learning to think in these terms should decrease your tilt and improve your ability to squeeze value from your vulnerable hands. ♠

Andrew Brokos is a professional poker player, writer and coach. He’s a member of Poker Stars Team Online and blogs about poker strategy on ThinkingPoker.net. Andrew is also interested in education reform and founded an after-school debate program for urban youth.