Whenever a site does online poker reviews of poker rooms such as Juicy Stakes, we get an enthusiastic thumbs up every time. Juicy Stakes is a great online poker room for a number of reasons including low rake, great graphics, many excellent promotions, and a wide range of stakes levels.
A new player can play at very low stakes without feeling out of place. There is always a seat at the table for the low-stakes player.
One of the unsung reasons why Juicy Stakes is such a good poker room is that we also write a blog. Our blog is different than most blogs at online casinos which usually just talk about the casino’s latest slots. At Juicy Stakes, we look for different angles on which to think and write that we feel will help our players become better poker players.
So, here we will talk about the psychological side of poker.
Less Obvious Than You Might Think
The obvious response to the question of 'what is the psychological side of poker' would be to reference bluffing. That is certainly one of the psychological aspects of poker but it goes a lot deeper than that. Let’s see how.
Poker is as Much about the Mind as it is about the Cards
This might also seem obvious until we understand that authors and other thinkers have tried to fathom the human side of things for millennia and people are still looking for answers.
The very existence of hundreds of novels that are considered among the best novels ever written is proof that the human condition is a lot more complex than pulling off a good bluff in poker.
Poker Psychology is Reciprocal
Of course, psychology is reciprocal in all walks of life. What goes around comes around is a cliché that describes very well what happens when stuff happens.
In poker terms, whatever insight we may discern in an opponent can also possibly be discerned in us. So, for every poker player, the psychological side of the game is a kind of dance between figuring our opponents out before they figure us out.
A poker player has to know at least as much about himself or herself as they know about an opponent.
It is Not So Easy to Know Oneself
Shakespeare dealt with this problem especially in Hamlet when he said “To thine own self be true”. The implication at first is that knowing one’s own self is easy but a deeper understanding is that Shakespeare knew that knowing oneself is plenty difficult.
And if it is hard to know ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, how much harder is it to know another’s strengths and weaknesses?
Knowing Yourself Well Will Help You Avoid Tilt
Tilt is the poker equivalent, in psychological terms, of rage. We know about road rage, airplane rage, lawn signs rage, and many other rages. We have even given human names to people in the process of raging.
In poker, the ability to avoid rage is the same as the ability to avoid tilt. A player who can accept a bad beat for what it is can much more easily see when an opponent is on the verge of tilt. When an opponent is tilting or about to tilt, they are at their most vulnerable.
Rationalization is the Precursor to Tilt
We all rationalize to some extent. Every Saturday or Sunday perhaps a few million people say that they will start a diet “tomorrow”. They could let that piece of cake pass them by today but they rationalize eating the piece of cake by “committing” to starting a diet on Monday.
In poker, rationalizing improper bets can be rationalized. Players stay in when they should fold “just to see the flop”. For every flop that hits the nuts after a poor starting hand, there may be thousands of hands where the flop is a flop.
A lot of players never count their outs nor an opponent’s possible outs. This, too, is a rationalization.
Watch What an Opponent Does on Every Hand
In sports such as football (American) or baseball, a person who can find patterns has an advantage over players who can’t see patterns. In poker, a lot of players have patterns. This is also part of the psychological side of poker.
There is a great temptation to “take hands off” when you have folded before the flop. After all, our brains can do only so much and it needs a time out once in a while.
The small nuance in a player’s actions or behavior and betting pattern might be revealed in the hand you don’t pay attention to because you are taking that hand off.
This means that you should pay attention to every hand. It does take time to learn how to concentrate on every hand. It requires making a psychological turn of mind. Your mind wants to play mind games with you but in order to get the upper hand psychologically in any game, you need to turn the tables and you play mind games with your mind.
You will find that when you do “take over” your mind, you will find yourself able to do many other things that you weren’t able to do before. Poker is far from being the only area where psychology plays a role.
You Will Learn a Lot by Paying Attention
They say that there are four basic poker playing types:
- Passive.
- Aggressive.
- Tight.
- Loose.
The somewhat hidden truth is that there is enormous overlap between these basic poker types. Only by getting into the psychological side of your opponents will you be able to understand why a player played a particular hand in a particular way.
What does a generally passive player have to suddenly wax aggressive from early position? Or is it a crass bluff?
Your Opponents are Also Watching You
The psychology of poker works both ways. Just as you will be watching your opponents on every hand, so will some opponents watch you.
When you feel that you see something telling in an opponent, you might decide that now is the time to strike, especially if you feel the opponent is about to tilt. An opponent who is about to tilt will often stay in a hand that he or she has very little chance to win. That is when you push a lot of chips into the pot and hope they call in a desperate attempt to win something after a few bad losses.
Psychology Can be Very Dry
This is just so obvious. It’s the main reason most poker players do not delve into the psychological side of poker. That means that they bluff when they feel like it without any reference to how an opponent plays. It means that they think a player is bluffing even when they are clearly sitting on the nuts.
While psychology is dull for the most part, there are great books that deal with psychology that are anything but dull. We will recommend just one so you have some idea of the direction we are going here. That book is “The Road Less Travelled” by M. Scott Peck. It is not the only great book that deals with psychology but the others are also in the same vein.
Juicy Stakes Offers Great Poker
We are an excellent online poker room. We offer games in Texas Holdem and Omaha at every imaginable stakes level. We run many tournaments and offer promotions to every player’s satisfaction.
