The Poker Mindset – Attitude # 4

The Poker Mindset is a set of seven attitudes that every poker player should try to master, regardless of their game, limits, or technical skill. They are realities to be aware of and attitudes to adopt to succeed at poker over the long term.

Just like technical skills, the Poker Mindset will help you make better decisions at the table. In fact, in some situations it could be argued that defects in your Poker Mindset could lose you more money than defects in your technical game.

This is the fourth article of a series where we will examine each of the seven attitudes of the Poker Mindset. It includes excerpts from my book, coauthored with Ian Taylor, The Poker Mindset.

Attitude #4: Desensitize Yourself to Money

“Scared money can’t win.”

It’s a much-used poker cliché, but an extremely important concept. The point it is trying to make is that if you are playing poker with money that you are afraid to lose, then you are less likely to win because you will be prone to making sub-optimal decisions.

Remember, making the correct decision is making the choice that will earn you the most money in the long run. If you focus on trying not to lose money, you are no longer trying to make the correct decision. Your decisions will now be made within the confines of damage control and decreased variance. You are costing yourself money as soon as you start giving up hands with positive expectation in order to decrease your variance. Poker is a game of small edges, and giving up situations with positive expectation can be enough to turn a winning player into a losing player.

Hopefully, you are smart enough not to sit down at the table with your entire bankroll or next month’s rent money. However, you can be playing scared even when you are not risking it all. Two factors tend to contribute to how likely you are to play scared:
First, how strong is your bankroll? Do you have insufficient money in reserve to absorb any downswings you might have? Have you been losing recently and are now past (or dangerously close to) the mark where your bankroll is no longer sufficient for the limit you are playing? Have you recently moved up a limit and so your bankroll is now much smaller in terms of big bets? If any of these are true, then you will be more prone than usual to play scared.

Second, what is your attitude to money? Are you generally risk averse? Does your fear of losing money override your desire to win it? Are you willing to accept lower value for lower variance? Do you fear losing money despite being adequately bankrolled? If so, then you have a problem, as these are not good attributes in a poker player.

Potentially, you could fall into a number of traps by playing scared:

Not protecting your hand properly

If you are scared of losing, you often will not bet your weak made hands enough, leaving yourself vulnerable to being outdrawn. You will try to lose less when you are outdrawn but with the penalty that you will get outdrawn more often.

Not value betting your good hands enough

Value betting is one of the most important skills in poker. Not value betting properly, because you are content to win a small pot rather than committing more money for a favorable return, is a huge leak. It is especially common on the river, where you no longer have the incentive to protect your hand.

Playing too tight

If you are scared of losing money, then you may be reluctant to enter the pot without a very good hand, even when the hand figures to make a small profit. You effectively miss out on small profitable opportunities, which add up over time.

Not calling enough in big bet poker

If you’re playing scared, you will be unlikely to call a large bet in big bet (pot-limit or no-limit) poker without a very strong hand because of the possibility of losing a lot of money or even your entire stack in one go. If your opponents catch onto this, then they will start stealing pots from you at every opportunity.

Not bluffing enough

Bluffing is, for the most part, an overrated skill. Beginners tend to believe that bluffing is what poker is all about, when in fact playing solid poker and bluffing very little, if at all, is generally a far more prudent strategy at the lower limits. However, if you never or at least very rarely bluff, then you will become very predictable to observant players at the middle-to-high limits. If you are playing scared, then you will tend to avoid trying bluffs, as they tend to be low-percentage plays in limit games or high-risk plays in big bet games.

In general, you should prefer to be in a position where you are able to handle a large loss with merely a shrug of the shoulders. Some players are able to do this, but most can’t. The best most of us can hope for is that we keep our losses in perspective, remembering that moderate losses are inevitable in the short term. The important thing is that you don’t let fear of losing adversely affect your play.

Obviously, as you move through the limits, it gets harder and harder to take some of the cash amounts you can lose in stride. Most people can accept losing $80 in a $1-$2 game, but for most people, losing $1,600 at $20-$40 is a lot of money.

It is difficult to teach someone how to not be insensitive to money. As previously stated, some people are just too risk averse to ever be able to achieve this. Regardless, there are three things that will help you desensitize yourself to money.

Experience – The more you play, the more you will get used to the cash amounts involved and the less they will affect you.

Bankroll – That $1,600 loss looks smaller when your bankroll is $20,000.

Separation – If your poker bankroll is completely separate from the money you use for day-to-day living, then the money you win and lose seems less “real.”

In reality, you will probably need to adopt a combination of all three. This is something you will have to do to consistently make the right play and avoid “playing scared.”

It is not easy to desensitize yourself to money, and for the most part, it is a process that requires time. Always be sure to play within your risk-tolerance limit and bankroll. As you build a bankroll to try and move up limits, work on your risk-tolerance also. Remember, you are never required to move up limits if it is too uncomfortable for you to do so.

Next month we’ll look at the fifth attitude of the Poker Mindset – Leave Your Ego at the Door. ♠

Matthew is the owner of Dimat Enterprises, “Publishing Today’s Best Poker Books” and is a coauthor with Ian Taylor of The Poker Mindset, available at Kindle, Amazon, and pokerbooks.InternetTexasHoldem.com in both print and PDF format.