The Best Poker Advice I've Ever Received
This newsletter is now a little over a year old. In the past 53 volumes, I’ve given you my poker advice from fixing your tournament leaks to developing reads and from utilizing blockers to goal-setting.
This week, I’ll share lessons from my coaches.
Without further ado, the five best pieces of poker advice I’ve ever received:
You're Not Playing Poker to Try to Get Lucky
The first piece of advice comes from Tommy Angelo, who mentored me early in my career. He explained to me that poker isn’t about trying to get lucky; it’s about earning steadily over time.
Let’s say you’re playing $5/$10 at a casino, and you’re a 20BB/100 hands winner. If you’re playing around 33 hands an hour, you might be making about $67 per hour on average.
Now, imagine you’ve been playing all day and you’re down $5,000. It’s unfortunate, but not an unusual loss for those stakes. You’re not having fun, and you feel like you should quit, but you’re tempted to play just one more hour to hopefully make up for some of the losses.
Tommy taught me to think about my hourly rate in situations like this. If you’re down $5,000, do you really want to stay in that game, tired and unhappy, for another hour, just to make $67 back?
This framing helps remind us that poker is about long-term results, not short-term swings. When you start saying to yourself, “just one more hour,” you might actually only be there to gamble.
When you know that you're in the game to consistently earn over time, not to get lucky, it becomes easy to make good quitting decisions.
You Will Eventually Run Worse Than You Ever Thought Possible
This isn’t exactly advice, but more of a warning that has stuck with me.
About 19 years ago, when I was 20, a friend named Craig, who I looked up to online, said something that really resonated with me: “You will eventually run worse than you ever thought possible.”
This idea stuck with me because we all know that downswings and bad runs can happen. We often don’t fully grasp just how bad it can get. Even when we acknowledge the possibility of a downswing, we don’t actually believe the really extreme ones are going to happen to us.
Yes, a bottom 1% run over the course of three months is very unlikely to happen to you beginning today. But guess what: You’re not only beginning today.
Every time you start a new hand, you’re beginning a new sample where an extended downswing could begin.
You’re constantly creating new opportunities for improbable events to occur.
This understanding prepared me for the reality that if you play long enough, a terrible run is not just possible; it’s inevitable.
Don’t Limit Your Bluffs to Hands That Have Missed
This lesson came from Tom Dwan. When I was 22, I shared a house with Tom and some other guys for the WSOP. One evening, I was showing Tom a hand that I’d played and asked whether I should have called or folded the river.
Tom thought it over and said, “I would raise.”
I hadn’t even thought of hands that were decent bluff-catchers as raising candidates. But through our conversation, I realized that he was right: When it’s clear that you have something based on how the hand has played out and you raise, players will usually overfold.
Tom’s advice opened up a whole new way of thinking about bluffing for me. If you never turn made hands into a bluff… today is a good day to start!
Things Happen – Don’t Let It Affect You
This advice also comes from Tommy Angelo, who could probably fill this list all by himself.
A key lesson he taught me was that some things in life and poker are just supposed to happen, and you shouldn’t let them bother you.
For example, let’s say that you go to the airport and find out your flight is delayed. Many people would get upset, but not Tommy. As he put it to me, “getting delayed is one of the most common things that flights do!”
He approaches life and poker with this mindset: If nothing surprises you, then nothing needs to bother you.
At the poker table, this translates to situations like getting your aces cracked by ace-ten offsuit all-in preflop. How shocked can you really be? Aces losing to ATo is the second most likely outcome!
Every Hand Is a Chance to Make the Right Play
In poker, we often fear certain turn cards, hope our opponent checks, or regret a recent action.
These thoughts aren’t useful.
Don’t hope for a turn card, don’t fear your opponent’s action, and don’t dwell on the play you just made.
Every time the action is on you is an opportunity to make the right play.
It doesn’t matter what turn card hits or what your opponent does — your job is to make the best decision in that situation. Focus on that, and let the cards fall where they may.
Bonus: Whatever They Ask, Just Say "Yes"
As a bonus, I’ll share a funny tactic from Tommy that I’ve never used, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to try: When you’re playing live poker, after you bet the river and your opponent folds, they might ask if you had a flush or if you were bluffing. Engaging can be annoying, and giving information can cost you an edge.
Tommy’s approach is to just say "yes" to whatever they ask. If they ask if you had a flush, say "yes." If they ask if you were bluffing, say "yes".
Sometimes, Tommy’s opponents might ask questions that aren’t consistent with each other, and he still says "yes," which confuses them. Eventually, they might realize that he’s just been saying "yes" to everything.
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I hope you found these pieces of advice as helpful as I did throughout my career.
I’ll see you next time!
