Confession 010 — From Distraction to Addition
I confess. I’m easily distracted by chat.
I’m not the kind of player who tilts, I’m the kind of player who gets too easily distracted. I try to keep up with the chat window while I play at SwC Poker, but sometimes I have to close it to be able to keep my focus. Even if you are the type of person who works well with multiple streams vying for your attention, online poker is typically best served with minimal distractions so that maximum focus can be given to your gameplay and that of your opponents.
If you want to listen to music while you play, find music that stays well in the background. Only listen to commercial-free streams so that jarring adverts don’t distract you at inopportune moments. Choose music without lyrics if possible and listen at as low a volume as you can tolerate. Anything to keep the music as far into the background as possible. You really don’t want to be paying any attention to it whatsoever.
It should seem obvious, but don’t play other computer games, don’t play videos, and don’t web surf while you are playing online poker. These are unnecessary distractions. If you are doing any of these things, you are not paying enough attention to your poker game. Take scheduled breaks for goodness sake! If you don’t manually relax your mental focus once every hour, you lose your ability to hold it. Loss of mental focus leads to impulsive, unreasoned behavior and that can get expensive very quickly!
Another factor that bites all kinds of normally careful and considered players in the ass is alcohol. Really good players can make really poor decisions the longer they’ve been drinking. You should not drink and play online poker unless you set really strict limits on yourself before-hand while you are still sober. That means not playing with your whole stack, rather only risking a small portion (perhaps 10% of your entire bankroll). If you find yourself losing 10% of your bankroll every time you drink and play poker, then maybe you learn not to do it all that often.
Poker is a game of instinct, but it’s also a game of probabilities. Understanding some basic poker math is essential even for beginners. One of the most basic calculations is knowing how powerful your hand currently is and knowing what the odds are of improving your hand. Knowing these approximate odds is critical to informed betting.
Adding the Ins and Outs — once you have seen the flop, you should always count the number of cards that will improve your hand. These hand-improving cards are called your “outs”. If you count up your outs, you can get a rough calculation of how likely it is you will get a hand better than the one you are holding. An easy rule of thumb is that you multiply your outs times 4 on the flop and times 2 on the turn to calculate your general odds of catching the cards you want.
The Flush Draw Example — If you have two suited cards toward a flush and you get two more of the same suit on the flop, you are only one card away from your flush. How many cards will improve your hand? In this case, you are simply counting how many cards will give you a flush. There’s a total of 13 cards in each suit, minus the two in your hand and the two on the board, leaves you nine possible outs to complete your flush. So for our incomplete flush example with 9 outs on the flop, that translates to 36% chance (9×4) of completing the flush at the point you are betting the flop and only an 18% chance (9×2) of completing the flush at the point you are betting the turn. And that is just for completing the flush (there’s still no guarantee that you will win the hand, even if you hit it).
Adding your outs and calculating the odds of hitting one of the cards you want is an important first step in your Poker Math education. This metric is an easy one to calculate on the fly and it should really help you make more informed bets. Make it part of your regular routine and watch your betting get tighter and your returns get larger.
Be sure and tune into the Fish Fry Radio Show and look for me at the following tournament as there’ll be a 5 chip bounty on my head. See you there!
THE KING OF HEARTS
This weekly column serves as a guide for those who are interested in online bitcoin poker but haven’t yet taken the plunge and for those who are just dipping their toes in the water.
I talk about online bitcoin poker from a beginner’s perspective with the goal of demystifying the various poker game forms as well as all aspects of online play, table and lobby etiquette, and anything else related to this space. I’m enjoying spending time with you.
Poker Vocabulary and Abbreviations
Gutshot — a straight completed from “inside” by one possible card
Penny Ante — frivolous play for low stakes
Position bet — a bet made on the strength of the player’s position rather than the player’s cards
Please send all questions, comments and suggestions to confessionsofapokerhusband@gmail.com.
My opinions and observations are my own do not reflect the opinions of SwC management. I will respond to all messages and I welcome your feedback.
Originally published at swcpoker.eu.
