Whether you’re a casual player or a professional, there is always some element of pressure to succeed in poker. Poker is a competitive game and as with anything in life, you want to do your best. But this desire to win can sometimes be an obstacle to achieving success. In this article I’m going to talk about the tendencies you may not realize you have, their impact and how you can improve your game as a result.

There are many ways you might be creating stress in your game that you may not realize. The following are few common ones:

Overly High Expectations

If you set a goal to have a certain bankroll or make a certain amount of money in a fixed period of time, and you are not where you want to be, this can add extra pressure to your poker game. You may also have expectations to achieve these goals faster than what is realistic. If you’re running good and on the path upward, these pressures are not an issue. But if you start running bad and are overly focused on your results, impatience can set in and affect your play.

False Perception of Your Skill

You might think you are a stud because you’re on a hot streak or you’ve just won a poker tournament, but it doesn’t mean you’re ready to take on Phil Ivey. Be realistic with yourself. If you think you are better than youreally are, you can trick yourself into believing you should win every time you sit down to play. When things stop going your way you must be prepared to stay emotionally neutral or this extra pressure to win can lead to chasing former glory and blowing all the money you recently won.

Setting Goals For a Session

You can also put unnecessary pressure on yourself by setting goals for an individual poker session. This could be to win a certain amount in a cash game or win a particular tournament. If you are down for the session, you get short-stacked or have busted from a few tournaments, this extra pressure can lead to forcing pots or chasing losses which creates a vicious cycle of spewing money.

Hoping For Good Things to Happen

It’s easy to fall into the trap of waiting for hands to play and hoping for good situations. When you are card dead, it can get frustrating. This hoping and waiting can start taking it’s toll on you and blind you from observing table dynamics and profitable situations. You might wait too late to shove all-in or check/fold in frustration when your AQ missed the flop, missing an opportunity to take down the pot.

Competitiveness & Ego

For some, the pressure to succeed simply comes from hating to lose. It’s a control thing. When you lose a pot, even a small one, it eats at you. You may even start getting mad about people stealing “your” blinds or assume everyone is bluffing you every hand.

Perfectionism

For some, the pressure to play poker perfectly and not make a mistake is enough anxiety to send them off the edge. The first time they make a decision that they deem is “bad”, it causes them to second guess every future decision and paralyzes their decision making. They play so afraid of making a mistake that the biggest mistake is not playing poker at all.

The common thread behind all of these pressure factors is that they can lead to making bad decisions or even full blown tilt. The emotions of each situation can cloud your judgment and cause you to play either too impatient or too timid. In a given session you may start speculating with too many marginal hands, bluffing too much or putting people on hands that you want them to have in order to justify a tilty decision. Over longer periods of time these pressures to succeed can also lead to prematurely jumping up in limits because you are chasing results or forcing yourself to play poker because you’ve been losing lately and are trying to make up ground. All of which are a disaster for your bankroll.

Pressure & Tilt

One major point of this article is to communicate that the feeling of tilt that you experience after taking a bad beat isn’t a result of the beat itself, but the internal pressures you are putting on yourself. According to sports & poker psychologist Jared Tendler, tilt is essentially the moment when something happens that you didn’t want to happen. You get mad when a play doesn’t work or you get sucked out on and then blame yourself for making a mistake or worse, blame the poker gods for coming down on you. When it happens one time it doesn’t seem to affect you, but most of the time tilt creeps up. It starts with a small mistake or a little suck-out and then maybe you miss the flop with AK and you get check-raised; then your Aces get cracked. Next thing you know, your heart is racing, your neck is tense and you are pursing your lips. All judgment is clouded and the next hand you get dealt is JJ…a disaster waiting to happen.

So How Can You Alleviate This Pressure?

While many of these internal pressures are part of the fabric that makes you who you are, any skill can be improved over time. The key to preventing tilt from manifesting is to recognize the subtle signs when they first happen. There are a few techniques that you can use to diffuse it early and keep yourself focused on playing your “A” game.

The Three Rs

One technique for dealing with pressure situations is called The Three R’s. By following these simple steps you can alleviate the pressures and focus on playing solid poker.

1. Recognize – Take note at how tense your neck or stomach muscles are. Are your legs wrapped tightly around your chair? Are you pursing your lips and banging your chips down? If so, this is a good sign to calm down and not take things so seriously. You have to first consciously realize that your play is being compromised.
2. Relax – This can be taking a slow/deep breath or having a routine that calms your nerves like riffling chips. You may also just want to step away from the poker table for a bit.
3. Refocus – Once you have calmed down, it’s time to focus on the task at hand. Forget the results of the past and ask yourself “What is my job right now?” What is my stack size and how does this change my poker strategy? How are others viewing my play? How are others playing? What are my opponents’ hand ranges? The key to re-focusing is to stay proactive with logical thoughts about the present and not emotional ones.

And remember that just like in an individual hand, you cannot be results oriented in poker. You must focus on making long-term profitable decisions and the results will show over time. Remain emotionally detached from each situation and trust your gut to make the right decisions.

Mental skills are just like any other poker skill. In order to master them they must be practiced over time in order to make them part of your subconscious. You must continuously work on your mental game each time you play poker. And even when you think you have it mastered, pressures can still reveal themselves in new situations. This could be moving up in limits, entering a big poker tournament or anything else that may cause you to have added pressure to succeed. But knowing this ahead of time and not thinking you are immune to these tendencies will help you recognize them and rise to the occasion, no matter how big.

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Perspectives on Volume & Variance

Do you get frustrated playing poker tournaments? You play all the time and it seems like you never cash. And even when you do, you cash the minimum. Every once in a while you get teased with a deep run only to run Kings into Aces – resulting in another broken mouse.

Well as you gain experience, you learn that in order to be successful as a poker player you need to get comfortable with running bad. This is even more prevalent if you are a poker tournament specialist. But no matter how experienced you are, these bad runs can test you and make you question your skill level. This is especially true if you are an amateur poker player who only plays a handful of tournaments a week. You can actually go months without cashing and this duration of time in between cashes can skew your view of reality and affect your play.

Now if you read enough poker forums & websites you will hear about all the online tournament pros who are regularly taking down five and six-figure cashes. They paint this picture of guys constantly making final tables and raking in mounds of cash. You may even be a bit jealous and wonder, “what do those guys have that I don’t?” Well, I’m hoping this article will help answer that question and provide some much needed perspective on the topics of volume & variance.

Amateur Poker Players vs. Pros

Amateurs – For the purpose of this article, an amateur player is someone who plays about 1-3 times per week, usually at night. They have a “real job” and may have a family or are in college full time, so they can only put in part-time hours. But make no mistake, this player is serious about the game and spends time on poker forums, watching training videos, etc. Since we’re talking about tournament poker, the amateur in this article plays mostly large field no-limit hold’em tournaments. They may be a winning player, break even or maybe a slight loser in the game thus far in their career.

Pros – A professional is someone who plays online poker for their sole source of income. For this article, we are using those who specialize in large field online poker tournaments.

The Stats

Before reading too deep into these numbers, keep in mind that the purpose of this article is to provide perspective into your own results by comparing them to the results of other players. It is not meant to be a scientific study.

The numbers below represent an average of 10 players from each category and use results from both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars from 2010.  The pro stats were taken from 1/1/10 until 8/22/10 and the amateur stats were taken from 1/1/10 until 9/20/10.  They only include tournaments with over 180 players.

* Pro stats were taken from a ranking of the top 10 online tournament players. Amateur stats were taken from a sample of 10 amateur players who volunteered their screen name for use in this study.

**Avg. Played/Day is based on a 5 day week, but also only includes playing 2 sites. Actual volume per day may be larger for those who play more than 2 sites and less than 5 days a week.

What Do These Stats Mean?

As you can see, the pros are not these mythical beasts who cash all the time and final table every tournament. Media attention can sometimes give off a false reality as it only highlights their wins and never mentions how many losses it took to get there.

The realities are:

• Even the top pros only win tournaments less than 1% of the time. For some it was as low as 0.60%. So this means they are winning only 1 out of every 100 times. Of course variance doesn’t always come on schedule and they can go 200-300 tournaments without a win.
• Top pros only final table around 3% of the time. Some are as low as 2%.
• Top pros are only cashing about 13% of the time. This means they lose money 87% of the time they play! In fact, amateurs cash more often than pros. The difference is that when pros do cash, they cash deep more often.
• Pros have massive downswings like everyone else. In fact, becasue of the volume they play, they have had longer non-cash streaks.

So why have the pros averaged a $400,000 profit this year before September? It is in their ability to close tournaments. There is a reason why their ROI is 58% higher. Let’s look at the stats:

• Pros make 1/3 more final tables than amateur poker players.
• At a 9 person final table, the average of hitting top 3 should be 33%. Pros are hitting this 43.61% of the time.
• Of the times they cash, pros are final tabling almost twice as often as amateurs (23.9% compared to 12.8%).
• Pros finish in the top 3 almost 3x as often as amateurs.
• Volume, volume, volume. Let’s not forget that pros play all day, every day. This is their job. They have a distinct advantage of overcoming bad variance much quicker and also seeing “the long run” of making profitable decisions quicker.

Also keep in mind that the group of amateurs used were volunteers from various poker forums. While not all were winning players, the fact that they study the game says they likely have better results than an average amateur. Also, because of their volume size an individual amateur’s skills may be better or worse than their results show.

Improving Your Game

How can you use these stats to improve your game?

Add More Tables

Get outside of your 1-3 tabling comfort zone and simply add a couple more tables. I know the argument is that it’s harder to make reads, but the volume you put in will make up for that. In addition, this extra volume means you are playing more hands and will result in improving your game even faster. This extra experience will more than make up for the short-term loss of a perfect read.

Play More Days

Just try to add 1 more day per week. Don’t be lazy. If you currently play 7 tournaments a day, adding 1 more day x 52 weeks = 364 more tournaments/year. Even at the amateur ROI average above of 20% and average buy-in of $30, that means an extra $2,184 in profit.

Stop Caring About Individual Tournaments

It’s easy to expend emotional energy in any single poker tournament. You’re trying to win of course. But the odds are that you’re not going to. In fact, you’re only going to cash about 15% of the time. All you can do is focus on making good decisions and the variance will work itself out in the end.

Play for the Win

There’s a reason why amateurs cash more than pros. They care more about it and tighten up near the bubble. But you will miss out on valuable opportunities to accumulate chips if you are playing just to cash. In addition, you can’t fear busting or making a mistake when you get deep. In order to make real money playing poker tournaments, you have to trust your instincts and play to win.

So if you’ve ever grown frustrated playing poker tournaments, don’t sweat it. Keep in perspective that even the best players in the world don’t win that often. The only way to balance out negative variance is to put in enough volume where your skill can prevail.

Good luck at the tables.

Related posts:

1. Winning the Big One
2. Finding a Good Cash Table Online
3. The Risks of Winning at Poker

Situation: Head’s up at the Monte Carlo millions vs. Paul Jackson
Blinds: 12K/24K + 4K ante
Stacks: Phil has about a 4-1 chip lead.  Jackson has roughly $1 million in chips.

In this hand, we will play as if we are Phil Ivey. The big disclaimer here is that a hand like this does not come around very often. Analyzing it after the fact really doesn’t do it justice since it is based very heavily on Phil’s read on his opponent. But it is still a great example of putting your opponent on a hand, sensing weakness and trusting your instincts. It should also be noted that prior to this hand, Phil overheard Paul telling a friend that he was not going to let Phil push him around.

Pre-Flop:

Jackson limps in with 56, Ivey raises $60K more with Q8 and Jackson calls.

Analysis: Since this is head’s up play it’s a little harder to put each opponent on a hand without having been there to see the history between the players.  However, we can make some generalizations based on optimum head’s up strategy and what we know about our reads so far. As Ivey, we are raising about 3.5x the big blind.  Based on our 4-1 chip lead, we want to continue to put pressure on our opponent and since our opponent just limped in we could do this with a wide range of hands. Jackson calls after a brief pause so now we can assign his range to hands that weren’t strong enough to raise, but those he wanted to see a flop with. It is certainly possible that Jackson could be varying his betting pattenrs by limping with an Ace or some other big hand, but based on the chip counts it is more likely that he wanted to see the flop for cheap. Let’s put Jackson’s range as low-to-mid suited and unsuited connectors, one and two gapers 56-JT, Q2-Q8s, K2-K8 suited and off-suit (though he more than likely raises with a King). Based on hand strength and the need to build his stack, he probably raises all pairs Q9-QJ, K9-KQ and Ax.

The Flop:

The pot is now $176K. Phil makes a continuation bet of $80K and after contemplating for a while, Jackson raises to $170K. Ivey now re-raises to $320K and Jackson comes back over the top for $150K more. Ivey goes all-in and leaves Jackson no other choice but to fold.

Analysis: After Ivey’s continuation bet, Jackson is making a little over the minimum raise. On other flops this might be the sign of a strong hand because it’s deceiving, but in this case the board is showing a pair of Jacks making trips non-concealed. If he did have a Jack, he wouldn’t want Ivey to know it so he could maximize his winnings. He would he have more likely just called since he knows Ivey is capable of firing a second bullet on the turn. It’s certainly possible Jackson could have a Jack and is protecting against the flush draw, but if that was the case he would raise more so that Ivey didn’t have the odds to call. Also, there are only a couple of hands that would have not raised pre-flop and also called the raise pre-flop (J8, J9 and JT).

So what hands can we put him on? He could have a 7 and he’s trying to see where he’s at. Maybe he limped with a big pair like QQ-AA and he’s afraid of the Jack? He could also be on a pure bluff. But, you can’t completely discount the possibility of some 4th level thinking going on and him actually having a Jack and raising to make Ivey think he didn’t have one.

So after Jackson’s first raise to $170K, Ivey re-raises to $320K for two purposes: One is because he doesn’t believe Jackson and he wants him to fold and the other is to gain more information about the strength of Jackson’s hand.

Jackson now raises the minimum again, only $150K more. While the concept of Jackson raising back here is scary, the size of his raise actually makes it less believable that he has a Jack. Also, his raise size is curious. If he really had a Jack here, why is he raising the minimum now that Ivey is showing strength? He only has $530K behind before the raise. If he had a Jack, wouldn’t he just call the raise and hope Ivey puts him all in on the turn? OR, he should think at this point that Ivey has a hand that can call an all-in with and could shove all-in. So basically, he’s raising an amount that leaves him chips if Ivey should come back over the top. 

Let’s also look at physical tells. Ivey asks Jackson how much he has left. While he answers, he swallows big and keeps his hand over his mouth. He’s definitely nervous here. We’ve gotta remember also, Phil overheard Paul Jackson on the break say he wasn’t going to let Phil push him around. Not that this is a cut & dry hand, but once you factor everything together, Ivey makes a great read and comes to the logical conclusion that Jackson can’t call off his remaining chips without a Jack in his hand.

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1. Phil Hellmuth – I Can Dodge Bullets Baby
2. WSOP November Nine 2009: Ivey vs Moon
3. Trust Your Reads

Situation: 3 handed at the WSOP Tournament of Champions final table
Blinds: 10k/20k + 3k antes
Stacks: Unknown, but no one seems too short

Let’s play this hand as if we are Mike Sexton. What reads do you have on the action for each street? What hand ranges do you start with for your opponents and how do those narrow down as the hand plays on?

Pre-Flop:

Matusow limps in on the button with K2, Negreanu completes the SB with 87 and Sexton checks his option with 73.

Hand Ranges: Since Matusow didn’t raise pre-flop, he is likely limping in with a hand that he wants to see a flop with but is too weak to raise with. While it’s possible he’s looking to trap with a monster, he also knows that Negreanu will complete the SB with a wide range of hands and he probably doesn’t want to play a big hand against 3 people. Based on this, we can most likely put Matusow on suited connectors, one/two gappers from 56+ and unsuited connectors 78+, as well as low suited Kx and possibly very small pairs (although he is still more likely to raise these).

Negreanu is likely to complete the small blind with almost any two cards, so if he had a big hand, he would have most likely raised here so as not to be three handed.

The Flop:

Everyone checks.

Hand Ranges: With both a straight and flush draw on the board, Matusow would have bet a pair on the flop 3 handed in position in order to not give a free card. Because of that, we can most likely eliminate Qx. Connectors with a 9 are possible, but since he has position and would likely have the best hand, he probably would have bet here to end the hand. Negreanu’s hand range is still wide open since he was first to act and may have checked to see what the others did before acting.

The Turn:

Negreanu checks, Sexton checks and Matusow bets 20K into a 42K pot. Negreanu folds and Sexton makes the call.

Hand Range: Matusow would have likely raised an Ace pre-flop. In addition, his bet is less than ½ the pot, so if he had an Ace he would probably bet more with all of the draws present. Also, Matusow is likely to position bet with any two cards here based on the weakness shown on the flop and turn thus far by the other two players. At this point, we can narrow his range to suited and unsuited connectors that missed, a heart draw and possibly a pair of 9s. A pair of 9s are still unlikely because he would be turning his hand into a bluff by betting here, although he could be betting for information to determine the strength of everyone’s hand.

The River:

Sexton checks, Matusow fires 60K into the pot and Sexton makes the call with bottom pair.

Hand Range: With 82K in the pot, Matusow bets about 75% of the pot on the river. What does this say about his hand? The Jack on the river should be a possible scare card, so Matusow probably thinks that Sexton will fold to a river bet. However, Sexton knows this and also knows that Matusow probably would have raised KT pre-flop. In addition, if this was a value bet he would bet less since Sexton hasn’t shown that he has a strong hand.

What about a pair of Jacks or pair of 9s? Matusow could hold a hand like JT, but with the Ace on board and Sexton’s turn call, he would have more than likely checked it down since his hand would have showdown value vs. other hands Sexton might call with.

Matusow knows the only way he can win the pot is to bluff and doesn’t think that Sexton can call a pot-sized bet with the hand range he puts him on. Sexton also knows this and is willing to take a shot that his read is right. The other benefit of calling here is the meta-game implications that send a message not to bluff him. This can prevent bluffs on future hands (since much of three handed play will be without made hands).

In conclusion, this was a great read and a great example of how sometimes you have to make a gutsy call on the river in order to win a big pot. This hand was also a pivotal moment that catapulted Sexton onto victory.

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Situation: WSOP Main Event
Blinds: Unknown, but around 250/500
Stacks: Unknown, but no one seems too short

For this hand, we will play as if we are Phil Hellmuth. We don’t have the luxury of the reads that Phil has picked up at the table. However, in poker we can start with generalizations and stereotypes and then confirm or deny those as we observe players. In this hand, Phil is playing against an older gentleman. In general, older men tend to play very tight and sometimes tricky. When they enter a pot, especially raising or re-raising, they often have a very strong hand.

Pre-Flop:

Hellmuth makes it 1,500 from the 5th seat in middle position with AK and Frank Pasintino, who is in the cut-off position says in his best mafia tone “You make it 1,500? Make it 3,000”.

Hand Range: This hand is as much about reading betting patterns as it is physical tells. When a player is jovial and conversational, it is a usually sign of strength. When someone is bluffing, they often do not talk because they don’t want to sound nervous. In this case, Pasintino is calm and almost joking with Hellmuth. As far as betting patterns go, he is re-raising only the minimum. This can sometimes be the sign of an inexperienced player who is afraid to raise too much or a sign of a monster such as QQ, KK or AA (leaning mostly toward KK and AA). In this case we have an older gentleman who is a tight player re-raising a middle position player from the cut-off. It’s not likely Hellmuth is on a pure steal, so it this combined with his relaxed table talk is the sign of a big hand. However, Hellmuth is getting a great price on his money and can easily afford to make the call and decide what to do based on the flop.

The Flop:

Hellmuth checks in the dark before the flop. By doing this, he is controlling the size of the pot but also can disguise his hand and make a read purely of the actions of the other player. Pasintino now says “you check to me? I check too.”

Hand Range: Pasintio checking behind unfortunately doesn’t necessarily narrow his hand range too much. He may check behind with QQ and KK fearing that Hellmuth has an Ace and he may also check AA with the full house in hopes to trap Hellmuth. The fact that Hellmuth holds an Ace does mean that the Ace on the flop would be the case Ace and does make it less likely that Pasintino has the other two. The only other clue we have at this point it Pasintino’s continued relaxed and conversational tone.

The Turn:

Hellmuth checks. The pot contains approximately $7,000 and Pasintino casually throws out $10,000.

Hand Range: This is a bad card for Hellmuth. Two of the three hands he can put Pasintino on now have made a full house. On top of that, he now overbets the pot. If he had KK, would he really bet $10K here with the Ace on the board? Simply by process of elimination, he has to put Pasintino on either AA or QQ. What about a bluff? I guess anything is possible, but he would have to be bluffing a large percentage of the time to make a call profitable. Based on the factors previously mentioned, a bluff simply isn’t likely. In addition to the bet sizing, Pasintino continues to casually joke around. Betting this much into the pot would make almost anyone clam up with nerves if they were worried about their hand.

The Result:

Hellmuth proudly folds his AK face up and gets Pasintino to show his AA. While you certainly don’t want to play fearing monsters under the bed, sometimes you have to trust your instincts and make big laydowns to win tournaments. This is a great example of such a laydown.

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