Increasing Your Poker Luck!

Regardless of how many books you read, probability charts you memorize, and online poker strategy websites you visit, there will always be a percentage of correct decisions that you make that will end up losing. Why do such injustices occur around the poker table? Depending upon where you are sitting, it can be your best friend or a four-letter word: luck. While losing a hand after making correct decisions is typical (unfortunately), it is extremely frustrating to have luck interfere with your mental analysis of how you are playing. Losing hands due purely to bad luck can often cause players to believe that they are making poor decisions. Consequently, players consciously make an effort to make the opposite decision in future hands, and suddenly they are consistently losing hands. The trick to avoiding this trap is to follow a few guidelines that lead to increased luck. By increasing your luck, you are decreasing the chance that luck will swing in favor of one of your opponents. Here are a few guidelines that will affect your luck, depending upon how prevalent they are in your game: 1) Chasing cards. Holding onto mediocre hands in hopes of catching a card on the turn or river is perhaps the most dangerous way to play, in terms of increasing your luck. While chasing cards is sometimes acceptable, the odds of the right card dropping almost never justify holding onto losing cards throughout the entire hand. Simply put, chasing cards is extremely unlucky and will do considerable damage to your chip stack if you feel like you might catch the right card. 2) Going on tilt. Playing hands while you are on tilt is very dangerous, as well. Most of the time, players do not even realize that the way that they are betting is still in reaction to a bad beat that they just took. Players begin to rationalize risky moves and make bets that they would normally see as too dangerous. It is almost impossible to expect luck to pull through when you are making decisions like these. By reacting poorly to a pot that you lost due to bad luck, you are simply ensuring that more bad luck will follow shortly. The best counterattack to going on tilt is to realize that losing one hand is not going to determine anything in the long run. Keep the poker game in the perspective of long run and you will be able to relax and avoid going on tilt. 3) Betting/Calling extremely loosely. Regardless of whether or not they are on tilt, some players have a bad habit of ignoring all mathematical odds. While being a loose bettor is not bad in itself (it can be an extremely effective playing style), it often leads a player down the path of playing too many hands. Eventually, playing a lot of hands leads to a lot of bad luck. You cannot expect to win money in the long run if you find yourself playing a majority of hands and betting loosely every single time. Not only will players wise up to the fact that you dont have the best hand every single time, but sooner or later, you will be stuck in a drought of bad cards. While following these three guidelines can lead to increased luck, the overall message is that playing poker intelligently and well leads to better luck at the table. Constantly assessing your game for changes that can be made to better your chances of winning is an absolute must, and will lead to much greater winnings in the end.