Wrong attitude:
Entering a poker game hoping to get lucky and win your opponents’ money.
Right attitude:
Entering a poker game and realizing that your opponents are holding your money, and they will need to be very lucky to keep it. If you’re a skillful poker player, then you should enter a game expecting to win. All those chips and all that cash, all the money hidden in purses and wallets is yours. You want it. You deserve it. It is a crime against nature that those people are fondling your money. They have no right to it. It is yours, and you intend to play the best poker possible in an effort to bring justice to your bankroll.
Wrong image:
Making sure that opponents respect you as a player and that they know you’re an analytical, winning competitor whose strategy they should fear.
Right image:
Making sure your opponents think you are error-prone, often on tilt, and unstable. One thing’s for sure – people are going to give you their money a lot more willingly if they think you’re incompetent than they will if they think you’re trying to hustle them. My main goal image wise when I’m in a poker game is to convince opponents that I’m playing much, much worse than I really am. I can’t always do this, because too many players know me. So, sometimes I’ll try an opposite approach, using good-natured conversation to impress them, explaining what cards they’re holding and what options they have. While doing this, I’ll play a few hands in a bewildering and seemingly weak way. This is a compromise game plan. The image comes off (when done correctly) as that of a player who has incredible knowledge but who is having too much fun to use it.
If I were coming into a game as a stranger, I would try to act as clueless as possible. I would never try to impress anyone with what I know. I would want to be known as “that idiot who keeps winning.” In poker, your hand is your secret. One of the worst things you can do is to inadvertently expose your hand. Well, another one of the worst things you can do is to inadvertently expose your skills.
