Poker Notes

Off late I've been playing a more Poker and thought of sharing some observations I've had over the past few months -

• You can make good decisions but still loose due to bad luck (variance)
• Reading others is important and can help improve your game but is often not done much at low-stakes game. Observing others through their actions and behaviours to help understand the cards they hold. Player image gets important as the stakes rise and matters more in-person.
• In my experience so far most players don't bluff. They usually believe they hold better cards. Only in certain spots and against certain players do I notice bluffs and where I myself bluff. If they’be bet a lot, they may bet more with junk.
• You get better at making decisions via odds, probability and thinking in terms of equity. You get better at understanding these concepts as well.
• Being moderately aggressive has a higher ROI than being passive. You need to be a risk taker to have huge gains as being passive can be outplayed. Most of the time you won't have the best hand, a passive player may fold a good hand assuming the other player has the better hand but an aggressive player fights even if not the best which works out many times.
• Position of where you sit and play matter a lot. Something I did not think of Intuitively.
• Decision making process is much more important than the decisions itself. You could get lucky for 3-4 games but over 300-400, it's usually the quality of your decisions that matter.
• Emotions and Energy can get to you over a longer duration game. There is a certain kind of energy required to just sit and play for hours. Tournaments can be exhausting due to this. Tournaments also require more emotional management than cash games as there's no re-buy-in.
• Tournaments have more of a luck factor than Cash games because there is a lot of shoving (going all-in) pre-flop when BB start to drop.
• Players in low stakes games call a lot and play a wider range of hands. Expensive tournaments have very tight ranges and players and play poker more by the book.
• Having an Ace improves the odds of winning. Card numbers below 8 are generally not that great to have.
• There are a lot of parallels one can draw between Poker and other areas of life (including life itself)

I'm still learning and this side project shall continue