Martin Jacobson – Main Event WSOP 2014 Champion and a very successful poker who won more than $ 17 million for a career. Recently, Swede began to lead a YouTube channel, where, in particular, he told about three major differences between professional players and lovers.
Difference 1: A lover guesses an opponent’s hands
Unlike a professional who operates with Range, a lover thinks only of specific hands (his own and opponent) in every situation. However, poker is incomplete information, and it is almost impossible to narrow the range of opponent to one particular hand or combination.
For many recreational players, the concept of playing Range is too complicated – they play a hand against a hand or even a board, so they often get frustrated when opponents show not at all what they expected. Therefore, such players are not successful in the poison.
Difference 2: A lover is looking for confirmation of guesses
This is a consequence of the first difference: if for a professional poterist the main thing is rational thinking and he disassembles distribution, trying to better understand the style and ranges of the opponent, then the recreational player relies on guessing and guessing and "Chui", Seeking confirmation of your own conclusions. He is not embarrassed that these conclusions appear from sample memory and attempts to betray desired for a valid. In particular, he justifies his mistakes with lack of luck or vice versa by luck an opponent, although in fact he does not quite understand what happened at all in the distribution at all.
The player also takes into account the advantage of Range – the presence in a particular situation of more strong hands in someone’s range. Understanding whose Range has the advantage, helps you choose the best rates – calculate how much you can put and what frequency of bets will be perfect in this particular situation. A lover of all these things does not take into account.
Difference 3: The lover repeats his mistakes
False actions and wrong judgments that are constantly repeated never bring good results in distance. Simplifying the game by reducing it to only a few parameters, a lover plays a minus while keeping the confidence that he just doesn’t lucky. Often he tries to achieve something based only on his assumptions, ignoring the facts.
Professionals, instead, always remember that they may be mistaken. So they try to constantly find and remove mistakes from their game. The starting point for this is to work on understanding the opponent’s strategy on preflop in different positions.