The 14 Virtues of a Winning Poker Player: Self-Critical

What it means: Being self-critical in poker means that you take responsibility for your own play and the results they produce. Far too many poker players like to blame all of their losses on bad luck, when the truth is that while many short-term losses can be attributed to luck, long-term losses are a surefire sign that there are major problems with your poker game.

The Flip-Side: Players who are not self-critical, and instead play the blame game -blaming everything from their opponents, to the dealer, to an unlucky affiliation with a particular hand or seat at the table-will never be able to become proficient poker players until they are able to look at their own shortcomings and flaws. After all, a mistake is only a mistake if you continue to make it: If you learn from a mistake it becomes a valuable life lesson.

How it relates to poker: One of the most common themes of all my writings is the fact that poker offers a very small advantage, and while this small edge is what makes the game profitable, it’s also the reason many players are delusional about their abilities, and unrealistic in their expectations. Self Critical players are able to get past lucky plays, and determine if they made any mistakes throughout the hand, or if there is possibly another way to approach a similar scenario in the future.

The point is this; it doesn’t take much of a shift to go from being a winning poker player to a losing poker player. So it also stands to reason that it doesn’t take much for a player to overestimate their ability just enough to make a losing player think they have the skills of a winning poker player.

It’s this ability of some poker players, to turn their high-powered perceptions on themselves and make sure they are truly playing their best, and not deceiving themselves about their abilities, that makes them winners.

It’s imperative that as a poker player you capitalize on every advantage presented to you, no matter how miniscule it may appear. The way you capitalize on all of these small advantages is by examining your own play with a fine-toothed comb.

How to cope: If you’re the type of player who doesn’t like to look in the mirror, and be self-critical of your own abilities and strategies, poker shouldn’t be in the cards for you. No matter how good you are -or more precisely, think you are-you are still making mistakes: The imprecise decisions that are made in poker mean that no player is ever playing perfectly.

How to improve: The best way to make sure you are accurately assessing your own play is to set aside time after each session and look at the questionable situations, and big hands that came up during the session.

Another method is to post these same hands on poker forums, or discuss them with friends/acquaintances whose poker ability you respect. By doing this you are forcing yourself to listen to differing ideas, and judgements of what took place: After all, it’s quite easy to use hindsight and justify the actions you took.