Re: People Who Quit
People lose for FIVE major reasons, and you have considered only the first one.
First and most important is LACK OF KNOWLEDGE. Obviously, if you don't know how to play, you can't play well. However, knowledge alone will NOT make you a winner. You and the poker literature focus almost exclusively on knowledge, but many people don’t play remotely as well as they know how to play.
Second is LACK OF MOTIVATION. Most losers don’t have a strong enough desire to win. They let other motives such as the desire to gamble or to take tough challenges cause them to make negative EV decisions, even if they know that they will cost them money.
Third is LACK OF DISCIPLINE. You don’t have to be a genius or even extremely knowledgeable to beat poker. You just need the discipline to do all the unnatural, unpleasant things that it takes to win. The two most important are:
1. Be ruthlessly honest about yourself and your opposition. Otherwise, you will select the wrong games and make foolish plays.
2. Do all sorts of boring things like fold, fold, fold. You want to play, but have to wait, and wait, and wait.
You must do many other things, but you have NO chance to win without these two.
Fourth is UNRELIABLE FEEDBACK. As SSH clearly explains, poker feedback is extremely unreliable. Unlike many activities, “the immediate results in poker are often divorced from your actions.” (p. 17) You can play well and lose, or play poorly and win for the short term. To be a long-term winner you must see beyond the immediate results, learn the right lessons, then apply them in a disciplined way.
Fifth is that CARDROOM POKER IS A NEGATIVE-SUM GAME. The players collectively ALWAYS lose. The house takes so much money out of the game that you must be significantly above average just to break even.
Because of all five factors, MOST players will ALWAYS BE LOSERS. Those people who quit because they are losers are MUCH more intelligent than the ones who refuse to accept reality, keep playing badly, and keep losing.
Regards,
Al
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