Copyright 2006 Full
Tilt Poker
August 7, 2006
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Poker Lessons)
Poker Lesson: Acknowledging Mistakes
Author: Team Full Tilt
At this year's World Series of Poker, there are
thousands of players walking the halls of the Rio. Moving through
the corridors, you're bound to hear players telling tales of the
hands that bounced them from tournaments.
Often, the players are upset as they tell the stories of bad beats
and lousy luck. The Full
Tilt Poker pros also share stories of their more interesting
hands. However, among the pros, you're far more likely to hear
someone say something like, "I played that really badly."
The best players have the ability to acknowledge
and learn
from their mistakes - it's one of the qualities that make them
so good. John D'Agostino noted, "When you listen to the general
public you hear, ‘I got so unlucky.' Generally, all you
hear the pros talk about is how they played a hand poorly. We
understand we make mistakes and we try to get better from them."
Chris Ferguson noted that humility is vital to winning
poker. "To improve, you have to know you're making mistakes,"
Ferguson said. "There are a lot of hands I don't know how
to play. There are a lot of situations I don't know how to handle.
If I thought I knew everything, I'd never improve."
How often do the pros make mistakes? D'Agostino
says, "[We] make mistakes almost every single hand. They're
small mistakes, but maybe I could have gotten paid off a little
more on a given hand or avoided a bluff."
Howard Lederer says, "To become a pro or a
really good player, you have to become brutally objective about
your game. If you aren't, you won't make the changes and improvements
you need."
While Lederer believes in the need for tough self-assessment,
he notes that there's no need to dwell on past errors. "You
have to be honest with yourself and you can't gloss over mistakes,"
he says, "but there's no need to beat yourself up. You need
to learn from the mistakes and move on.""
Many of the pros refuse to discuss hard-luck hands
in detail, knowing that there's little to learn form a stab of
bad luck. Recently, after Chris Ferguson busted from a tournament
early on, he was asked about the hand that put him on the rail.
"Bad beat," was all he said. He didn't feel the need
to offer any more detail.
If you avoid talking about luck and concentrate
on the hands where there is something to be learned, your game
is bound to improve. Emulate the pros by finding the will to say,
"Boy, did I mess that one up."
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