| Whether
you are playing $1-limit poker at the kitchen
table or pot-limit poker at the Stardust in
Las Vegas, whether you are playing poker for
fun or for a living, once a week or every
day, you have to understand that the object
of the game is to make money. That's where
the profits are. That's where the fun is.
That's the way the game is scored. Jack Straus,
1982 poker champion, has said he'd bust his
own grandmother if she was in a pot with him,
which is pretty much the only attitude a serious
poker player can have when he or she sits
down behind a stack of chips. Whatever the
environment and whoever your opponents happen
to be, you must play the game tough; you must
play the game to win money. That does not
mean you cannot joke or socialize, whether
at the kitchen table or in a Las Vegas card
room. Quite to the contrary. In a public card
room people seem to mind losing their money
to a sociable person less than losing it to
a mole. However, when the cards are dealt,
you are no longer a grandson, a friend, or
a nice guy; you are a player.
To say a poker player is out to make money
does not necessarily mean he is out to win
pots. Of course, you can't win money without
winning pots, but attempting to win every
pot or too many pots is a losing proposition.
If you win $100 in one pot but lose $120 trying
to win four others, you have a net loss of
$20. You may occasionally be in a game where
the best strategy is to win as many pots as
possible, but such games are exceptions. In
most games the bets you save are as important
as the bets you win, because your real goal
is to maximize your wins and minimize your
losses. Ideally you want the pots you win
to be as big as possible and the pots you
lose to contain nothing more than your ante.
You must remember that reducing losses - by
not making the calls, for example, that a
weaker player would make - adds that much
more to your win when the game is over.
Many players don't follow this precept, however
obvious it may seem. They play as though they
want to win the pot, an individual pot, at
all costs. The worst of them, to put it bluntly,
are the suckers in the game. On the other
hand, a good player develops the patience
to wait for the right situations to play a
pot and develops the discipline to release
a hand he judges to be second-best.
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