Limit HE

Let go of my Eggo…. wait Ego.

The past week or so I’ve been thinking of how a persons ego can affect their game. The thought crossed my mind as I played a Limit 2/4 Hold Em table. I watched two players who are normally fairly timid and selectively aggressive players suddenly become hyper-aggressive monkeys. However, they were only hyper-aggressive against each other. Then the trash talk started to occur in the chat box, “come get me buddy”, “good luck”, “you’re momma is …” You get the point.

It occurred to me that neither of these players was really gaining anything, money or brains wise. They were basically swapping money while creating rake for the site. And I’m sure we’ve all seen this occur numerous times AND I’ll admit (and I’m sure you do too) that I‘ve been affected by this same brain-dead syndrome. So, why do we decided to pull these sorts of antics?

Is it tilt? yes, for sure.

Is it ego? Yes, no doubt

Is it that we’ve watched too much poker on TV and thought that if we bluffed the other player were the better player? Yeah, probably.

Well people, this is how you lose money, quickly! It’s basically an extended form of tilt that will cause you to lose money. As an example, if you know you’re Car is faster then a bike but about the same speed or a bit slower (or faster) then another car. Why would you race the other car if you could race the bike? Dumb analogy I know but it gets the point across.

We’re not trying to race the other car/player to make it ‘interesting’ or ’show we’re better’. We’re playing poker to win money. Yes, money.

Why try to play someone at a silly ‘raise-em’ war? You can simple just wait and feed on the players who are truly bad playing your normal game. Eventually if you are the better player, you’ll take that persons money and then you can laugh all the way to the bank. But for now, throw the ego into the syrup and let it drown.