Move up to where they respect your raises
This little phrase used to ridicule lower limit players is actually a huge mindset learning moment for all poker players.
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There is a “kidding, not kidding” saying that poker players have: move up to where they respect your raises. For those not familiar with this phrase, it generally means lower limit players don’t respect your raises, which means they’ll play random hands regardless of what action is happening around them, and then the games just become chaotic multi-way luckfests. While this is generally true, and I personally find these games quite painful to play, I can guarantee you your win rate will be higher in these games than in higher limit ones.
So why do poker players say this? Why would they not want to play in games where they have a higher win rate?
It really comes down to mentality. And this little phrase is a huge learning moment for all poker players to maintain the right mindset.
Ever get bad beat by someone playing a hand really poorly, and then just getting lucky and rivering the pot away from you? And ever lose a simple flip to a good player? You lost both pots, but why was the former one so much more painful?
Because you felt you deserved to win the pot. You’re the better player. You prepared more. They never should have been in the pot. You fucking trapped them!
But you sit with that same player for 10k more hands, and they keep doing the things they are doing, you will eventually have a mountain of their chips in front of you instead. Players playing in this way is, to put it bluntly, where most of the money from poker comes from. And if these bad players never won, they would go broke, and wouldn’t return to the game. And all you would have left are the players you really don’t want to be playing against.
And how well do you play after tilting your face off to a player like that? I’m pretty sure you are down to your C or even D game. So what’s the point of being the “better player” if you’re just going to sit there playing worse than everyone else?
And lastly, In higher limits, you still have bad players, but finding people who will just punt their stacks to you will be much harder to find.
All of this shouldn’t be news to anyone, but then why do players still get so upset at losing to players who are playing badly?
It’s a sense of entitlement. By working hard, by being better, you are somehow entitled to every pot against players who are not as good as you. If someone plays badly, just like you used to do 😉, they don’t deserve to wiggle their way out of your elegant trap. Well, that’s not how cards work. And that’s not how the universe works. Your sense of entitlement, your bad reaction to getting bad beat, and being on tilt afterwards won’t change the outcome, and it certainly won’t change the outcome of the next thousand times it happens either, unfortunately. But your bad reaction will change your win rate for the worse. And all the time you spent preparing and getting better will have been for nothing, or at least not until you get your head back straight.
So brush that dirt off your shoulder.
Smile and say “nice hand”, and mean it. When other players see there isn’t any apparent way to get you out of your zone, do you know how motherfucking intimidating that is? Not to mention what that will do to help you maintain your long term discipline. All the skill in the world doesn’t matter without discipline, because if you can’t stick to your A game, then very simply you won’t be a good player.
And who knows, that insufferable fish might be doing backflips on the inside for beating someone they look up to, and is probably texting their loved ones about how they won the hand. Nice hand buddy, enjoy it!
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