Self Delusion Rules
I play poker every single week in a local £15 tournament and I love it. The standard of play varies from outstanding to ridiculous as I’m sure it does up and down the country but there is one aspect of our little game that I simply cannot believe is as bad everywhere else. I might be wrong, but at times I feel that I am playing poker with 30 people from a different planet
As far as I can see, literally 98.73% of the players playing in our game have such an insular view of the way that poker should be played that I can’t believe that they continue to derive enjoyment from the game. They cannot see when they were lucky. They cannot see when they were wrong. All they ever see is how unlucky they were and how everyone else is an idiot and they are Northwich’s answer to Phil Ivey.
Last week, I won the tournament. I shoved with pocket 8’s, ran them into Kings and spiked an eight on the turn. I made a shove with 9-3 off suit three handed, got called by Q9 and hit a three. These are the only two major hands that I remember because I got my chips in behind and got lucky. The situational detail behind these two hands might mean that I was doing the right thing at the time irrespective of the result but let’s not worry about that for now. I must have been doing something right the rest of the time but I forget every single C-bet, every float, every laydown that could have stacked me, every value bet on the river that got called and all the other things that went towards the victory. When congratulated on my victory, all I said was “I was lucky”.
You see to me, you cannot improve at poker unless you are completely objective about your play and seek to criticize yourself rather than congratulate. Everyone else who I meet through poker appears to have the complete opposite view of this and it completely baffles me. All I ever hear are stories of how well people played a hand, or how unlucky they were. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single player say “I played that hand like a twat and got lucky”. They usually come out with “I had the odds to call” or “I just knew it was coming”.
The reason that we love poker is because we tell ourselves time and time again that it is a game of skill and not gambling. Every person who plays the game with the mindset that they are right and everyone else is wrong, is depriving themselves of the opportunity to improve, you cannot improve without total self awareness and if you cannot improve at something then you cannot deem it to be a game of skill.
Think about it.
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This article is almost exactly what comes out of my mouth when talking to myself on the way back from Nottingham after busting out at DTD.