Poker & Confidence

I do believe that success in poker is irretrievably linked to the confidence which you carry into each game which you play. Confidence is absolutely crucial in correct decision making at the poker table, if you are lacking confidence the parts which are most affected to my mind is your play of marginal hands and ability to let the big ones go.

Let me explain what I am driving at. The confident player makes his decisions based upon maths or feel and worries not about the result but about making the correct decision in any given situation. For this reason he is able to push the narrow margins, make the extra value bet on the river or reraise with nothing as he senses weakness.

By contrast the player who has suffered numerous bad beats or is just in the wrong state of mind and has low confidence will not make the extra bet on the river "because I might be beat", will not reraise the weak player as "he's bound to realise I'm at it" In this way although it is not necessarily 'bad' play but it is sub-optimum and will massively affect the bottom line at the end of the month.

The area which really hurts the low confidence player however is getting attached to hands as "surely this one has to win" for instance having KK reraising pre-flop and then getting raised all in by the tight player opposite - what do you think he has, if you have been paying attention you may be 95% certain he has AA and correctly fold, however if you are low on confidence and have been awaiting a hand to hang your hat on then you call and act like it is impossible to get away from that hand.

Obviously a lot of this will come down to your judgement of the players you face, it is hard but by no means impossible to fold KK pre flop especially if all signs indicate that you are beat. However if you are on a bad run that hand suddenly is too good to lay down.

This is not a typical example of this situation where confidence prevents you laying a hand down. Convincing yourself that the player is trying to bluff you off your straight on the river when the flush card hits is so easy to do if you lack confidence. Rather than analysing the situation and working out how likely it is you are still ahead you decide to go with the hand without much thought because you "deserve to win" after all you held the best hand throughout, right until that river card screwed you.

I am certainly a confidence player and my main failing when I lack confidence is failing to value bet the river as I'm scared of being reraised. When this happens it does majorly affect my earnings as when you think about it that is where most of the value comes from a hand as the pot is already large and any bet you make will have to be moer significant in value purely due to this fact.

Although I don't believe my current deep dark lack of confidence has affected my actual play in omaha I am scared that it will in hold'em. I won't know this until I have played for a few days and it is possible that my confidence shall return but it is a bit of a worry for the moment.

I am currently sat in front of the TV and my mind is sidetracked by thoughts of the next few days. How are things going to go?, am I going to cope? what happens if I start losing or worse start taking a few bad beats early on?

I don't know the answer to these but my predicament terrifies me as although at heart I still know I am a soid winning player in both holdem and omaha, I kinda don't KNOW that any more, maybe it's all going to unravel in front of me, maybe I've just been lucky for the last few years.

Sigh, I just need to focus on long term goals, remember how lucky I am that I am successful in this game and accept the losses and just move on. Now if only it were quite that easy

Steve