Pain For Sale-Playing Too Many Starting Hands

Keeping My Head Above Water

Keeping My Head Above Water

Here's your business-class ticket to cool, with complimentary mojo after takeoff.

When your poker game crashes, this is the black box. One day, they’ll make the whole game out of that stuff.

Build your game on POW—pearls of wisdom from the best damn poker blog around.

The best things in life aren’t things. They’re people who write free advice on how to win at poker—a game of money played with cards, not the other way around.

Pain For Sale — Don’t treat paper like plastic. Cash games aren’t tournaments.

PAPER: The longest journey begins with... a cash advance from Bank of America.

PLASTIC: “Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy chips—which is kinda the same thing.”

The sex of poker is really a game of mistakes. The biggest one? Pleasure. That fine line between success and self-destruction lives in one dirty (Harry) question:

“Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”

Poker is situational. Winning poker is about making good decisions. Feeling lucky and hitting the casino is like feeling athletic and going to a sports bar. It’s a bad call. It’s a voluntary madness—the psycho path.

In blackjack, there’s always a right move. Not so with No Limit Hold’em. It’s a game of inference under uncertainty. You’re not just solving puzzles—you’re reading people. And people are unpredictable.

No Limit Hold’em (NLH) has a high luck coefficient. It encourages pathological optimism. Feeling lucky is almost the right way to play—but only almost.

The difference between “almost right” and “right” is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Luck is thunder. It’s loud, impressive—but lightning does the work. And lightning doesn’t strike twice because the same place is never there anymore.

The sex of poker, then, can be misery. It no longer loves company—it demands it. Luck teaches backwards. Test first. Lesson later. It’s your university. Chips? Your report card.

Yes, it's naive not to believe in luck—but luck doesn’t always believe in you. Luck is a loan shark. It lends, but it never gives. And when you buy in with nothing but “lucky,” there’s plenty of pain for sale.

If pain is weakness leaving the body, then poker pain is weakness leaving your game. Not acquired—tuned in to. The poker frequency. Do you play infrequently? Is that one word or two?

In a standard $2-$4 NL game, playing too many starting hands is weakness. Your VPIP should be 20–30%. That means folding AJ under the gun, KT from the cutoff, QT on the button. Just saying no won’t fix bad play, but saying yes to everything guarantees it.

A jackass who persists in recklessness may eventually become a smart ass.

The lesson? Poker isn’t just a game. It’s a mirror. And the reflection isn’t always flattering. But if you stare long enough, you’ll start to see the edges sharpen—and your game evolve.

Growth Hacks for The Rec Player ♠️♦️♣️♥️

Crypto: The Ultimate Bluff Economy

The "Bro Economy" is driven by day traders, crypto junkies, and sports bettors chasing volatile gains. Fueled by FOMO, they favor thrill over strategy—creating opportunities for those who can exploit the chaos.

The Cult of The Amateur

If you play a hand as if you could see your opponents' cards, they lose; if you don't, they gain.

Poker Rewards (Selective) Aggression

Risk is a Feature, Not a Bug: Mastering Uncertainty – just as innovation thrives on calculated risk. Knowing when to push forward and when to fold is the key to long-term success.

The Leap Strategy

Risk isn't chaos—it's clarity in disguise. Push boundaries, embrace the fallout, and refine your aim after every leap.

Building The Plane While Flying It

Fail Forward: The Art of Rapid Experimentation – Poker, like startups, is about building the plane while flying—making strategic moves, adjusting in real time, and learning from every hand dealt.

When Bad Things Happen To Good Starting Hands

Variance shapes vision. The best players don't just survive bad beats—they evolve through them.

Bad Beats Are Overhead; Chips, The Cost of Doing Business

Risk isn't part of the game; it IS the game. Losses are investments, and every chip in play is the price of staying in the game.

Mental Edge Ops ♣️♥️♠️♦️💡

The Odds of Thinking

Conventional Wisdom is a Bluff waiting To Be Called.

Set the Speed Limit – Fear Speeds Things Up

Your Brain's Bouncer-What Gets through The Velvet Rope?

Losing Holdem ASAP

Tilt isn't just a crack—it's a call to recalibrate. Master your mind, and watch the field unravel.

The IN To My Sane

The loop traps the unaware. Break patterns, bend probabilities, and redefine sanity in high-stakes play.

Outcome Independence Mindset

Thinking in bets means trading urgency for edge. Burn momentum on impulse, you lose. Stack it with patience, you scale.

Stop the Spiral

Feedback loops fuel losses. Cut the noise before the noise cuts your bankroll.

Radical Abundance: A Force Multiplier

Shift from managing limits to engineering limitless possibilities, and play not with scarcity, but with strategy, design, and vision.

Infinite Patience Brings Immediate Results

The more hands you win, the more money you lose: playing too many hands boosts short-term wins but increases risks that harm long-term profits.

Energy Shapes Strategy

Flow attracts focus. Bring intentional energy to your game, and watch your connections solidify.

ABC Poker

The Alphabet Crisis: Analog Poker In A Digital World

The Meta Stack ♣️♥️♦️♠️☁️

Rewire, Reignite

You Can't Teach An Old Dogma New Tricks. Conventional Wisdom is a Bluff waiting To Be Called.

Be the Glitch

Unpredictability isn't randomness—it's controlled chaos. Become a shadow in their playbook. Don't be the system—be the error

Tranquility Base: The Ego Has Landed

Read the tells. Control the ego. Summon your alter ego and play like you're not even from Earth. This is next-level poker.

Decision Science

Turn every guess into a calculated gamble. Probability doesn't just inform decisions—it dominates them.

Adapt to Dominate

Solvers shape the meta, but true mastery lies in adaptation. Stay sharp, stay evergreen.

ABC Poker: Risk Smart, Play Sharp

ABC poker is about controlled aggression—high stakes, but strict discipline.

Poker Courage: Micro Bravery

Courage isn't about grand gestures—it's about the small, decisive actions that build confidence and define champions.

Failure Is Data Not Drama

Turn setbacks into insights. Fail better, learn faster.

Wise And Otherwise: A Game Of Partial Information

There are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck.

Night Vision: Playing in The Dark

Not having an expectation to win is liberating. Every search begins with beginner's luck.

Level-Up Lore ♦️♠️♥️♣️

Moonshots & Margins

Big ideas don't just need bankroll—they need fold equity. Think beyond limits, and scale with intention.

Luck Is Probability Taken Personally

We confuse luck with skill, misjudge outcomes, and fall for biases. Leverage setbacks, adjust strategies and use pressure as fuel for creative breakthroughs.

The Truth About Lying

Less "I" More Lie: Junk Words and The Secret Lives of Pronouns.

Range Craft

There are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck.

The Loophole: Manufacturing Focus

Players follow mental "apps"—predictable patterns. Disrupting those gives you the real edge.

Gut vs Grid

Solvers crack numbers, but instincts crack aces. Trust what machines can't compute.

Cognitive Gravity Is Your Cryptonite

Put the SUPER in Superman. Take the Poker Crash Course For your Black Box 3 lb-Universe-Brain

GTO For The Feel Player

Beyond Opponents: It's Not About Them. It's About The Game Itself.