Through playing several thousand hands of poker over the last few weeks, I have started to really zero in on some key things. Poker is not about what most people think it is about.
On the surface it appears to be an innocent game of cards. It gets just a little bit less innocent when you learn that real money can be gambled as you play it. A lot of people will read book after book on how to play 7-2 optimally or how to bluff right in or out of position.
That is not what poker is. Think of the cards and the chips as the "thumbs" of poker. You wouldn't be able to do it with those thumbs. There is no real way to teach someone what poker is about. It just has to click one day when you are playing it.
One of the hardest things for me to realize as I started to get better at poker was dealing with uncertainty. As I was playing one day and mucking hand after hand into the center of the table, I realized that the only weapon you can fight uncertainty with, is more uncertainty. The feeling you get when you see shitty hole cards or miss a flop, your opponents feel those feelings too. You can miss a flop and bet like you nailed it.
The thing that no one will teach you is that there is no "standard" bet size. You have to understand the person you are playing against to know what is not enough, too much, or just right, depending on your desired outcome.
The only difference between a bluff and an honest bet with the nuts is intention. You have to wear that intention in just he right way to convince someone to do what you want. We are back to bet size and knowing your opponent. There is no quick and dirty way to be good at poker. You just have to know what you are doing and know what to look for.
Here is the real kicker in the situation. We all get cards from the same deck. Some of us are minnows, and some of us are sharks.
That is where this next piece comes in. There is a certain way I feel that lets me know that it is time to play poker. I have to cross a certain threshold and I know exactly what it feels like when I do. When this occurs I become the Badman. I didn't pick the name, it just came to me when I asked myself what the feeling was.
"That's the Badman".
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