4 wrong things amateur players say

Elite professional players are much better than amateur players. Everyone knows that. But what many amateurs don't know is that elite players use an almost completely different vocabulary of strategies than beginners. In other words, amateurs and professional players think about the game in completely different ways, and obviously the way amateur players think is usually not the right one.

Amateur Players' Thoughts

Here are four bad things amateurs say when talking about hands that you'll never hear from a professional player.

1. "I think he has an ace and a king."

Amateur players say this all the time, and they're almost always wrong.

The hand, in AK's case, is not specifically the problem. You could change it for any other hand and it would still be something bad to talk about.

Amateurs tend to oversimplify poker, and this is one of the ways they do it. When they're trying to read their opponent's hand, they focus on just one possible hand to the exclusion of all others. Then they play the way they think is best against that specific hand.

The problem is that it's almost never possible to restrict your opponent's range to just one hand and be correct.

Elite players would probably say something like: "He has a weak hand range". This statement recognizes that an opponent may have a different number of possible hands.

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2. "I gave up/paid up just to try to control the variance."

I've been listening to this one for the last 13 years, and it's just as bad today as it was back then. The idea is that nobody likes the ups and downs of No-Limit Hold'em. Actually, the highs aren't the problem, but the lows.

A bad player then starts to think: "Well, I can't lose what I didn't put in the pot!". Little by little, he starts to play passively. Instead of re-raising with QQ before the flop, he just calls. Instead of calling with a busted hand, he folds. Instead of playing the draw, he folds. Whenever there is a choice to be made, this player chooses the option that puts the least money in the pot.

If you ask this player what he's doing, he'll probably say that he's trying to reduce the evils of variance. "Sure, I know I'm giving up a bigger profit, but I can play so much better without all those variance swings."

That doesn't work. A winning game needs a lot of aggression and risk-taking. You can't systematically reduce the risk and still play strongly. That's impossible. If you're limiting all your decisions to calling or folding, all I need to do is bet every time you check and eventually I'll beat you.

Elite players don't talk like this. They play a style with high variance because that style is the best and most profitable to play. If you intentionally try to reduce variance, you have to accept that you will never really play well.

3. "I stepped up to try and take the pot now."

Amateur players usually say this when they have a strong hand on a dynamic board with draws. For example, they might have QQ on a J96 flop with a flush draw. When someone bets, they raise to "take the pot soon".

The idea behind this, if you stop to think about it, is ridiculous. Good hands only have value at showdown. If you raise on the flop and take the hand right away, you could even have 72 and still win. In fact, the only difference between QQ and 72 is that you win more showdowns with QQ. So it makes absolutely no sense to avoid showdowns when you have good hands.

That doesn't mean it's wrong to raise with QQ on this type of board. But raising just to "take the pot now" is weak and amateurish logic.

Elite players talk about raising ranges. These players would look at the J96 flush draw flop and think of all the possible hands they could have. Then they would mentally divide these hands into fold range, call range and raise range (sometimes they might even divide the raise range into two, one for small raises and one for big raises).

Typically, they do this mental exercise during their studies, away from the tables, so that approximate ranges come to mind almost automatically as they play. So, an elite player could raise with QQ because that's a hand that could be in their raising range in that situation. At this point, any intention behind the raise is irrelevant, and the pro certainly wouldn't want his opponent to fold the hand.

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4. "I'll play that guy with any hand next time. I know he's stealing."

People easily remember things that have happened recently, so they tend to give these events more weight when making decisions about future events.

If the New Orleans Saints have just won 3 games in a row by high scores, the average person will tend to overestimate the Saints' chances of winning the next game. Sure, they might actually be good, but they're not as good as they might look on their best winning streak. A single stroke of bad luck could see them lose any game.

It's the same in poker. One hundred poker hands mean absolutely nothing in the game as a whole. Most online players say they need at least 1000 times more hands than that to be able to start drawing meaningful conclusions.

Even so, many amateur players draw conclusions all the time based on just a hundred hands, or even less. It's common to hear things like: he's always bluffing; she always plays only nuts; he's the tightest player I've ever seen; she always pays with bad hands.

Most of the time, you can't draw legitimate conclusions from just one day's play. Yet many amateurs do it all the time.

Elite players have a more analytical point of view. Of course they take readings of their opponents and adjust their strategies accordingly. However, these adjustments are underpinned by a strategy base that is strong and balanced.

For example, it's unlikely that an elite player is going to look at his hand before the flop and decide that he's going to play it "as if they were Aces" just to take the hand on a bluff. As I said before, elite players think in terms of hand range. If they think someone is bluffing too often, they will simply put more hands in the calling and raising range.

They can even play 72, T3 or any hand that comes their way. They'll add the best and worst hands. If your next 5 hands are horrible, they'll just wait for one that isn't.

Final considerations

If you're an amateur player who wants to improve, the first step is to forget the wrong thoughts, like the ones I've listed, that are part of your game. If you notice that you're thinking and saying the things I've listed, it's time to work on your game.

Article translated and adapted from the original: Ed Miller: Four Bad Things Amateur Poker Players Say