How can you not tilt when playing against a recreational player who plays 80% of their hands... and you've got a monster—pocket Kings (KK)—on a draw-heavy flop, and they shove anyway? You have 80% equity, but they still hit their magic card. 😅🤣 and knocks you out of the tournament, even though you played your A-game lol
This is exactly why poker is profitable - because they win this, lets say 20% of the time and it keeps them playing. If players who play badly always loose, they would stop playing. Just think about it when you are about to tilt.
Last edited:
That’s the hardest part of poker. When you get the money in with 80% equity and still bust, it feels terrible. I try to remind myself that the bad beat is actually a good sign — I want recreational players to make those calls. If I start getting angry about the result, I just take a short break and move on.tigre666 said:
This will keep happening as long as you play poker. If it throws you off balance, that is a problem you have to solve yourself.tigre666 said:
You can view such situations as part of the game's routine—because, in reality, that is exactly what they are.
Without a proper hand history its very difficult to say. But making the right call in one instance where you were actually ahead, is very different to making the long term correct decision. So I'm not saying you should have, it may just have been one of those spots that plays itself, but equally without more info, there's a chance it could have been avoided.tigre666 said:
In my experience - expect to be beaten by these maniacs (recreational players) at least 70 percent of the time especially on the freerolls - if you want to play quality games - you have to pay for them - so build a bank roll and you can buy in for better games - and you will have better players as well.... this is just my view from my experience...
You need to learn to make peace with bad beats as much as possible. One mindtrick is to look at the situation, when the last chips went in. And if you were ahead then, you won! Runouts will take care of themselfes in the long run, so try as much as possible to not even worry about them. If you paid someone off, after they got there, you need to evaluate the hand. Was it a good call or bet on the river, where you just happened to run into the top of their range, or could you perhaps have gotten away more cheaply? If you are not sure, then share the hands here.
It's easier to not tilt when you remember that you want them to get it in bad. Sometimes they get there but more often than not the better hand holds.tigre666 said:
Its a long-term game, don't let the suckouts get to you.
It seems someone doesn't know that most the money and the easiest money they'll ever make in poker mostly comes from fish and terrible players. never understood why anyone would complain about having them types of players at their table or why they would wanna berate them and then tell them how to play better. You really don't want them playing better or leaving because you or someone else berated them.
The correct play is nod your head say nice play/nice hand and move on too the nice once. Be kind to the fish we need them at the table and in the game.
On the bright side you know what part of your game, character and personality that needs to be worked on......your mental game and mental state so you don't tilt and chase the easy money away. Best of luck.
Oh and btw not all rec players are fish or terrible so you might wanna start using another world to define bad players other then recs. Some of us recs are actually long term winning players who can beat most regs in their player pool. I believe there's a couple such recs in this thread already.
Cheers!!!
The correct play is nod your head say nice play/nice hand and move on too the nice once. Be kind to the fish we need them at the table and in the game.
On the bright side you know what part of your game, character and personality that needs to be worked on......your mental game and mental state so you don't tilt and chase the easy money away. Best of luck.
Oh and btw not all rec players are fish or terrible so you might wanna start using another world to define bad players other then recs. Some of us recs are actually long term winning players who can beat most regs in their player pool. I believe there's a couple such recs in this thread already.
Cheers!!!
The term "recreational" is often used in a form, which is far to general and dont cover the spectrum on players, you actually find in poker. There are people, who play mainly for fun (recreationally) but are pretty good at poker. Maybe they are rich and think, its fun to play high stakes against really good players, not because they expect to beat them, but for the challenge of it. Not everyone playing for fun (recreationally) are crazy gamblers or drunks playing 80% of hands and splashing chips randomly around.hardongear said:
On the other side there are many people, who are long term winning players but dont have poker as their main source of income. These people (like myself) are neither professional nor recreational. I use the term "for profit", but another reasonable term is "reg". And then there are people, who try to win, but fail. And they are clearly not recreational either. Maybe we can call them "bad regs". People who learned some strategy, but they have not (yet) quite put all the pieces of the puzzle together. Or they are bad at game selection and/or suffer from tilt issues causing them to go through repeated boom/bust cycles.
Pretty much agree with all that Fundiver. The term rec is a pretty broad term when it comes to defining poker players it just shouldn't used to define terrible, bad players or fish. Take our shelves for example I consider myself a rec while you consider yourself a reg. Yet we both think poker about near the same, we're both winning players in our format/player pool, among the better players in or player pool.....about the only differences is you play a lot more and are more knowledgeable or recently more studied then I am.fundiver199 said:
Maybe I shouldn't consider myself a rec idk....I use played a shit of poker(6-8+ hours a day) way back in the day, I can think poker on a pretty good level despite not being more recently studied I'm not outta place or the worst player at the table in $55+ MTT's when I play them. I just think now days I play near enough volume to fall under the reg term. Some weeks I only play 4 MTT's total, others I don't even open a poker site and some weeks I play cash 4-6 hours daily during the week and load up on MTT's during the weekend. Yearly thou I simply don't play as much volume as a reg would as I can 2-4 months sometimes without playing anything. So yeah all in all I play pretty casually but I'm never one of the worst players at any table......I'm also not the best.
Cheers!!!
Obviously the terms are not well defined, and I can also not say, how much someone need to play to be a "reg". The most important point is, that we should avoid using the term "recreational player" in a derogatory way. We want people to come into poker and play for fun, so we need to make it a fun experience. And quite obviously nobody think, its fun to get berated or told, that they are terrible at poker. So we dont want to act like Phil Helmuth on tilt. Not on the tables and frankly not even away from the tables either, when we discuss poker in a forum.hardongear said:
Exactly the majority of players are just playing for fun knowing they'll never be winning long term players they're just hoping to final table and hit a win. While I do win some money I play mainly for the challenge, as a hobby and for entertainment. Yeah I'm Helmuth he has one of the greatest MTT poker minds in poker history(specially at wsop). His cash game is trash yeah 🤣. Hlemuth should just stop playing cash altogether at this point. But yeah that's one of the things I won't defend and honestly truly hate about him. I mean I get poker get be emotional......I've been that guy in my younger years but man at Helmuth's level you'd think he'd have better emotional control of himself. The first poker book I ever read was Phil Helmuth's "Play Poker Like the Pros" it was a gift.fundiver199 said:
Kinda off topic but players should emulate and try to act and be more like another Phil on and off the table.......Phil Galfond.
Cheers!!!
