Champion of Poker

You will have no doubt read in some poker book that poker is a “people game” and that poker is a “people game played with cards”. Both these statements are of course very true, it is the people element to poker and online poker that makes the game incredibly complicated and fascinating. If the game was just about the cards then it would be terribly easy to master the game in a relatively short space of time.

But the most important person that you need to keep an eye on is yourself. To succeed in poker means that you are going to have to eliminate most of your weaknesses. If you aspire to reach the top then you are going to have to get rid of nearly all if not all of them.

But many of those weaknesses are very subtle in nature and even many top poker players are unaware that they have weaknesses in certain areas. Once a player reaches a certain level of knowledge then they will play poker to a certain extent in a way that reflects their personality. I have often heard musicians say the very same thing about playing a musical instrument in a way that reflects their personality and I can full understand what they mean.

Many people who play Texas Hold’em poker may wonder what personality has to do with it, they play a solid mechanical game that they never deviate from. But if you think that you never deviate from this supposed “automatic” game then you are deluding yourself. In poker many situations basically play themselves. The good hands play themselves as well as the bad hands. But it is all of the in between hands that require the most skill and judgment.

But it is in this area where your judgment can be directed down a certain path by certain personality characteristics that are present in all of us. Let us say for instance that you were a naturally aggressive and impulsive individual in everyday life. These traits WILL show themselves on the poker table, sometimes it can be a good thing but many times it is bad.

It is in the area of marginal decisions where a person’s individual personality can take over. If you get dealt AA or any other premium hand for that matter before the flop then you are going to raise with it irrespective of what type of personality you have and likewise fold with junk. But in a marginal situation, the naturally aggressive person will lean towards doing the aggressive action while the more passive individual will lean towards passivity in the poker hand.

There are certain personality characteristics that can be very damaging at poker and I know from personal experience. A few years ago, a thought occurred to me that a certain part of my make up was losing me an awful lot of money over the space of a year.

I am very cynical of human nature and extremely mistrusting of people and especially ones that I do not know well. Couple this with the fact that whenever I play poker then I am always looking to rob some ones high teeth. More on this interesting subject in part two!

Carl “The Dean” Sampson