In Poker even when you play right you can lose and even if you make a huge mistake you can still win in the short run. By playing right you will win in the long run, unfortunately the moment you are in is never the short run. And in the beginning for most players that is difficult to deal with. Some get better at it over time, but a lot of players don’t get much better at it.

Poker is a game of decisions, meaning you make your money by making the right decisions… in the long run. Most people however are used to judging the quality of the decision, by the result it produces. This is not the correct way to do this. If for example you decide to drive a truck blindfolded down a highway, and don’t work for jackass. If somehow nothing serious happened to you, the truck or the other traffic, this would still be a bad decision. What I am trying to say is that in any decision you have to take your odds into account to decide if it is/was a good one.

If for example you and I were to play a game of heads and tails, and I was to give you $200 for every time heads came up and you just pay me $100 for every times it is tails.
To play against me would be a good decision even if you lost $500 because heads came 5 times in a row. Or more if we were to roll a die, and I would give you $1 if 1 till 5 came up and you pay me $1 if a 6 was rolled. To play this game would be a good decision from a money standpoint, no matter what the result is.

Since you will never get paid your exact expectation, you will in any specific event either get lucky or unlucky. Even if you are a 3:1 favorite to win the pot and you get the whole pot you are lucky since you got more than you deserve. Most people in poker we call someone lucky that was behind and still won. But unless your opponent was drawing death you are always lucky when you win. The hard part in poker is to deal with the bad beats, one of the ways to do this is to recognize that you won in the long run and somehow reward yourself for it. But this will be discussed in a future essay: “dealing with bad beats”

Superstition is said to be a belief or a notion not based on reason or knowledge. For example black cats crossing your path is bad luck. Or objects or people supposedly bring you luck (lucky charms). A lot of poker players have superstitions and or lucky charms. I think if you believe in bad luck, it will not influence your luck, but it will definitely influence your state and your decisions. You don’t raise with pocket aces preflop because with your luck one of those donks will outdraw you for sure. This will make it cheaper for people to call and so more players will call and you have a bigger chance of being outdrawn. This is a perfect example of a self fulfilling prophecy.  So even though it is not based on reason, logic or knowledge it can still do your real harm. Believing too much in good luck or lucky charms can make you too convinced of your “powers”. This can result in you making losing decisions expecting your luck will bail you out. So this can also cost you a lot of money. In our opinion the best way combination is to feel lucky and powerful, but still let your decision be based reason logic and knowledge. This way you will be playing winning and confident an dangerous combination (for your opposition that is).