Some Poker Grammar ... a motivational speech

There's a post in another forum that contains these lines:

"Oh great... I folded a straight flush"
...
"Oh great... this time I folded four of a kind"

Now I didn't read the hand histories at first and I thought "How stupid! Why would you fold a straight flush!?!"

(This speech is full of sarcasm)

Everyone knows what actually happened: X folded some cards that would've become a straight flush, quads, etc.

You hear the word "would've" a lot from beginning playes (the guy in that thread actually wasn't a beginner, but whatever). If you catch yourself thinking like this, try to entertain these possibilities too:

If opp had not had a ten, I WOULD'VE won that hand.
If opp had stopped all of a sudden and said "I found Jesus and will never gamble again. Here, take all my money", then I WOULD'VE taken all his money.
If Greta Garbo had come back from the dead, looking really fit, and offered to take me in the back room, I WOULD'VE got laid or something.

"Would've" indicates the conditional tense. For talking about reality, use the future tense.

If you call big bets with crap cards, you WILL lose money.

Great point.

Excellent.



It's like I tell my newbie friends...

I don't care at all how a folded hand would've played out. I only care about my long-term winnings.

I don't know how much: would have, should have or could have pays..... However, I pretty well know how much I will lose by playing crap hands - exactly what I bet.

Those thoughts are the exact thoughts that cause recreational players to see nearly every flop and limp with AKs (which they think of as a drawing hand).

Thing is, we all have those thoughts. Consider that fishstick (who seems like a pretty good player) asked a similar question about folding JJ when two opponents held overpairs but a J showed on the river.

When you can make the right play and not worry about the results, you have reached a high state of poker existence.

I guess people like saying these comments either b/c they are newbies are like to rant about what could of been to take away some pain of the loss