Improving My Perception of Poker

When I was young I was a big chess fan - almost obsessively so at times. But I hated losing, and always set myself the unrealistic goal of winning every game. One handicap chess has given me since I've moved over to poker is that when I play tournaments and in particular heads up matches I am overly concerned with whether we win or lose these matches. This is the wrong way to think about poker. The very best HUSNG players don't tend to win more than 60% of their games, even against much weaker opposition. So they actually lose quite often. You'll notice that in previous posts I have talked about game results regularly. Well, husng profit is entirely based on how many chips you win compared to how many you lose. The best players know how to use all the possible stack sizes and situations to make sure they win more chips than they lose. It's this simple. The bigger the difference, the more husngs they win. So we should stop thinking about winning and losing games altogether - it is irrelevant. We just need to think about making the best possible decision at the time; the one that makes the most chips. We could lose twenty games in a row but as long as our decision making is correct it shouldn't bloody matter. So the challenge for me is to set aside this obsession with winning games; it's simpler than that. Win more chips than we lose.