7 Easy Steps to No-Limit Hold’em Success — Step 7: Keep Your Head in the Game
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The Mission: Get you winning in your local $1-$2 no-limit game with 7 easy steps.
Welcome to the final step, Step 7: Keep Your Head in the Game. If you haven’t done so already, make sure to check out the previous articles in the series:
- Step 1: Play Tight
- Step 2: Don’t Play Out of Position
- Step 3: Don’t Overcommit in Small Pots
- Step 4: Big Pots for Big Hands
- Step 5: Pull the Trigger
- Step 6: Adjust To Your Opponents
Keep Your Head in the Game
Most good poker players fail. Or, at the very least, they fall well short of their potential. These are good poker players, people who have mastered the small games and can easily play profitably at the medium levels. They ride high for a while, but they tend to end up back at the bottom time and again, looking for a stake or rebuilding their roll at the $1-$2 game.
There’s no shame in it. Full-time poker is a grueling endeavor, even for the talented and experienced. But the problem most of these players have is they don’t keep their heads in the game. It’s not that they’re playing in games that are too tough for them. It’s that they consistently make mental errors and errors in judgement that keep them from getting where they want to go.
It’s impossible to have no-limit hold’em success without tackling the mental side of the game. I can’t cover all the bases in this article, but I’d like to share a few tips with you.
You’re Going to Get Stacked Sometimes
My first mental roadblock when I switched from limit to no-limit was getting stacked. Frankly, I was afraid of it. It didn’t matter how much money was involved. I played in limit games where $300 was a run-of-the-mill loss on a hand that went to showdown. These losses didn’t phase me a bit. I’d lost over $5,000 in a session and went back in and played the next day.
But it was a whole different story in no-limit. I protected my $100 stack like it was my baby. I wasn’t afraid of losing the money; I was afraid of getting stacked. To me, getting stacked in no-limit meant getting outplayed. It meant getting tricked. It meant being had. I had visions of some Doyle Brunson-like Texas rounder from the 50′s stacking my chips assuring me, “Son, you win some and you lose some.”
It’s all nonsense. Getting stacked doesn’t mean any of that. It’s a normal part of the game. In fact, if you play no-limit regularly and you don’t get stacked, you’re either buying in for a million dollars or you’re playing like crap.
Good no-limit means putting your stack on the line when you have the edge. And having the edge is nothing like having a sure thing. You may have the edge with a big all-in bluff, but sometimes you’ll get unlucky and get called. You may have the edge by getting all-in on the flop with the nuts, but sometimes you’ll get drawn out on by the river.
If you have top pair against a really loose player, you often play to get all-in. It’s a winning play because they’ll call with even worse hands. But naturally they’ll call with better ones too. If you’re playing right and taking the right risks, sometimes you’re going to end up all-in with top pair against a bad player with a set. And you’ll get stacked.
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Tags: 1-2-no-limit, bad-beats, david-sklansky, doyle-brunson, getting-stacked, getting-started-in-holdem, gsih, nlhtap, no-limit-holdem, no-limit-holdem-theory-and-practice, poker, poker-psychology, tilt, top-pair
Wow. Good series. It’s already helped me, by the way.