R
Rational Madman
Legend
Platinum Level
If you find that you are playing like a chicken and that people are walking circles around you with their big bluffs forcing you to fold, then the one time you want to prove that you "got balls" they got four of a kind to your full-house which results in you playing even tighter then I need to explain a vital skill in poker to you which is not present in a game like Chess or Connect-4; the willingness to be wrong.
The reason why you don't want to fold that fullhouse to the huge bet but find you keep folding to constant bluffs is that the real sharks on the table have sensed an unwillingness to be wrong in both your personality and your playstyle (it needs to be present in both for them to really get under your skin). Your unwillingness to be wrong is why you won't lay down a good hand regardless of bet size of the opponent and why you refuse to reraise with bad hands no matter how loose they've been playing thus far.
Is there a solution? There is but it's not as simple as just being willing to be wrong because you will end up playing too loose if you go to that extreme. You need to learn to play a mixed style that fundamentally tight-aggressive but not entirely so. You need to make people realize that you will engage their big bets but also randomly fold to even small bets if you read them as having an actual strong hand, meaning they cannot predict you and constantly are going to be leaking reads to you since they are trying to 'tame you' into one playstyle where they then can take advantage.
You should stop 'needing to know' and start to care about 'half-knowing' and making 'educated guesses'. This is the key to going from amateur to pro but this is not how you go from raw beginner to mediocre, that's just knowing card odds and playstyles.
The reason why you don't want to fold that fullhouse to the huge bet but find you keep folding to constant bluffs is that the real sharks on the table have sensed an unwillingness to be wrong in both your personality and your playstyle (it needs to be present in both for them to really get under your skin). Your unwillingness to be wrong is why you won't lay down a good hand regardless of bet size of the opponent and why you refuse to reraise with bad hands no matter how loose they've been playing thus far.
Is there a solution? There is but it's not as simple as just being willing to be wrong because you will end up playing too loose if you go to that extreme. You need to learn to play a mixed style that fundamentally tight-aggressive but not entirely so. You need to make people realize that you will engage their big bets but also randomly fold to even small bets if you read them as having an actual strong hand, meaning they cannot predict you and constantly are going to be leaking reads to you since they are trying to 'tame you' into one playstyle where they then can take advantage.
You should stop 'needing to know' and start to care about 'half-knowing' and making 'educated guesses'. This is the key to going from amateur to pro but this is not how you go from raw beginner to mediocre, that's just knowing card odds and playstyles.