A lot of people will think that they can afford to splash the chips around a little bit more because of this.
But this is a dangerous game to play because many of your opponents will be waiting for a good hand and therefore you will often need to get lucky in order to win. In other words, the odds are against you.
This is going to make it very difficult for you to win over the long run when you are trying to fight the basic math so often.
It is a much better idea to have strong starting hand requirements especially in small stakes poker games and let all the recreational players play bad hands and lose with them.
So in this article I am going to give you 3 strategies that you can start using next time you play in order to help you stop playing so many hands at the poker tables.
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1. Play More Poker Tables
The first tip that I always suggest in order to stop playing too many hands in poker is to simply play more tables. If you are playing online poker then you can literally play almost as many tables as you want.
The reason why adding more tables will help you play less hands is because it will keep you busy. You will be more likely to have a decent hand somewhere. This helps prevent you from getting bored and playing trashy hands out of sheer boredom.
Another advantage to playing more poker tables is that you get to the long run and achieve your true results and true win-rate in poker much faster.
Most people severely under-estimate just how long the long run actually is in poker. It will often take at least 100k hands for you to get a solid idea of where your real abilities stand in this game.
To put that into perspective, this could represent months of play for somebody who plays regularly online. And this could represent a year or more of play for somebody who plays regularly at the casino.
The short term luck element in poker (which is also called "variance") is very real and takes a long time to overcome. So not only will adding more poker tables help prevent you from playing so many bad hands, it will also help you get to your real results faster.
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2. Use Starting Hand Selection Charts
Another way to stop playing too many hands in poker is to use starting hand selection charts. These are basically visual aids that tell you exactly what hands to play from each position at the table.
I actually include "The Starting Hand Cheat Sheets" as a free bonus for anyone who purchases one of my poker strategy books.
These charts tell you exactly which hands to play from every position at the poker table for both 6max and full ring.
6max button range from "The Starting Hand Cheat Sheets"
If you are brand new to poker then I would suggest just printing these out and having them handy while you are playing. You can even just post them on your wall if that will help!
As you gain more and more experience playing poker though you will quickly memorize these basic hand ranges and not have to think about them so much anymore.
It's kind of like learning how to drive a car. It was probably difficult and slightly stressful for you to remember everything in the beginning, but it is probably totally automatic for you now.
The bottom line is that using some starting hand selection charts can help keep you in line at the poker tables and prevent you from playing too many bad hands.
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3. Know the Math
Another way to help yourself stop playing so many hands in poker is to understand the math. This is really the entire reason why we want to have good standards when choosing which hands to play in the first place.
For instance, if you choose to play every single trashy off-suit Ace for instance like:
A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7 and so on,
Then this can be a real problem if you run into a player who only plays AJ or better for example. And you can see why when I bring up the PokerTracker hand equity calculator.
If you play a hand like A6 and run into somebody playing only good ace hands like AQ you have only slightly more than a 1 in 4 chance of winning the hand.
I am sure I don't need to tell that is not good!
Now of course there are some caveats to this point. If you are in a steal position for instance (i.e. button, cutoff or it is folded to you in the small blind), then it is totally fine to play all of these ace hands.
This is because you have so few players left to beat and the value of stealing the blinds is very important in both cash games and tournaments.
And in tournaments you also want to be applying pressure on the mid and short stacks around pay bubbles in particular because they will often be too afraid to stick their stack in the middle without a really strong hand.
But in more typical situations, you want to make sure that you understand that the math is against you most of the time when playing crappy hands. It is usually going to be much more profitable to have higher standards and dominate them instead.
Don't Be the Fish!
And the real reason why you want to stop playing too many hands in poker is because this is what the recreational poker players do (i.e. the fish).
Now I am pretty sure that the last thing you want to do is end up being the fish yourself!
Playing too many hands is the number one reason why the fish consistently lose so much and it is because of the mathematical reasons that we just discussed above.
I gotta be honest here though.
A huge part of learning how to play tighter just boils down purely to discipline. Discipline (and patience) is the biggest part of becoming a winning poker player and this is the first step that you absolutely have to learn.
Recreational poker players don't exercise any discipline in their game. The play poker purely for fun. They can't make a tough fold when they should. And they don't know how to stop playing so many trashy hands before the flop either.
Unless you want to end up playing like them (and getting their terrible results as well), it really is crucial that you learn to stop playing so many trashy hands. Make the mental commitment to change this bad habit of yours next time you play poker.
Final Thoughts
I hope that this article gave you a few pointers on how to stop playing too many hands in poker. This is one of the first and most valuable lessons that you need to learn in order to have success in this game.
This is why this is the first thing that I discuss in my best selling poker book, Crushing the Microstakes.
That is, how to cut down on how many hands you play and exactly what hands to play in all situations (see page 66 of the book for the charts).
If you find yourself playing too many hands out of boredom though, then you should try adding another table if you play online. This will force you to tighten up because you will simply be too busy to play too many trashy hands.
You should also consider memorizing some starting hand selection charts in the beginning to help you stay on track. Print them out if necessary and have them ready any time you need them.
And lastly, you want to make sure that you understand the math as well. Being dominated in poker sucks (i.e. A6 versus AQ). You don't want to be fighting uphill battles like this too often.
This is the #1 reason why the bad players lose in poker. They play bad hands and often lose to the tighter players who have a higher pair, a better kicker and so on.
Lastly, if you want to know how to consistently make $1000+ per month in low stakes poker games, make sure you grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.
Let me know in the comments below if you play too many hands in poker and how you are working on fixing it!
