We should ask ourselves, “Why do we play poker?” That might be an odd question but your success in poker depends on what you answer with that question. It is as important as the way you play poker as to know your reason of playing it in the first place. Somehow we can categorize the reason why we play and analyze those reasons so that we can improve our game play.
If you could ask several poker players this question, majority of them would answer that they play poker for the money. But if we were given a chance to look at their past statistics, it is a fact that some of them have more loses than wins. Others didn't even win money before. Some might not want to answer those questions of yours and won't admit to certain things. So why do they keep playing poker? The reason is that there are many motivations for why they still play; some have the desire to beat other players, while others have a greater motivation than that.
When you come to think about it, there are actually a lot of reasons: love for the game, just for fun or the money, but the list can be as long as you can image. If we could just understand all these, we can change our viewpoint about winning and losing in poker. It might help us choose the right game for us, the ones that will bring us to greatness and success.
According to Alan N. Shoonmaker, in his book entitled “Psychology of Poker”; it explains the answer to our question about the impulses of why people play poker. If you were given these reasons like money, making friends, relaxing, pleasure, just passing time and competition. How would you rate each of them in percentage? You should take this time to rate this reasons and you must have a total of 100%.
After rating, if you answer money 20%, relaxation 10%, pleasure 50% while the remaining is competition 20%. If we were to analyze these ratings according to the book, you would be called a loose player. This is because you will just be playing the game for thrill of being there. Relaxation is the most important thing for you and it affects the way on how you play poker. If you want to become a good poker player you should by now already know your weakness.
In several kinds of competition, your first battle is against yourself and only after that you can beat your opponent head on. This is because of the bad mistakes that you make in poker making you less confident and doubt yourself. Thus, you make bad decisions and lose in the game. You should conquer all your mistakes and learn from them if you want to be successful.
If you just play for your friends, you make low bets just to make the game last long. If you do it for relaxation, stay away from the poker pros and play with the ones less involved. There are a lot of answers to our questions and it certainly depends on each one of us. If you want yourself to improve in playing poker you must know your reasons why you played it in the first place.