Unlocking Higher Stakes in Poker: How to Break Through

Bad luck or small bankroll? Diagnose what’s holding you back and solve how to move up through the poker stakes with high stakes poker pro Phil Galfond.


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Long time high stakes poker pro Phil Galfond has advice for how to break through to higher poker stakes, whether you’re playing low stakes live poker or you are trying to jump into high stakes online poker games.

This process starts with understanding some common thought process leaks that might be stunting your growth as a poker player.

First, your poker bankroll isn’t the primary indicator of whether you can win in the game so having a small bankroll shouldn’t hold you back from winning.

As Phil says in this poker tips video, if you are a winning player the bankroll you have today will not affect where you are 10 years from now. You will just win.

Luck (or more specifically bad luck) is another common leak to consider. Unfortunately, poker variance is here to stay.

Allowing the random happenings of the cards to negatively affect you, instead of taking responsibility for the things that you can control, will lead you down an emotionally draining path.

Speaking of things that you can control, here’s one easy poker hack mentioned in the video: growing your skill edge large enough makes extended poker downswings nearly impossible (if you get better at poker it becomes hard to lose over a large sample.)

So what might actually be holding you back from moving up the poker stakes?

Here’s a question to ask yourself - is my poker strategy built on poker tricks and poker hacks or do I have a solid foundational understanding of how to play poker like a pro?

As you start moving up to the high stakes your tricks and hacks start to be used against you by the knowledgeable poker players.

Through the rest of the video Phil has excellent advice for if you have confidence issues and can’t make the play off of your read, if you have issues with having a low stakes identity at the poker table, or if you have a fear of big pots getting in the way.

Phil Galfond is here to teach you how to think like a professional poker player.

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Producer: Matti Harju
Brand Design: Dan Deming-Henes
Creative Specialists: Quentin Cardinal-Juneau, Miikka Anttonen


TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 What's Holding You Back?
00:19 Excuse Number One
01:19 Excuse Number Two
03:54 How to Make Your Downswings Shorter
05:56 Winning on Tricks
07:15 Trick Number One (Don't Rely on This!)
07:53 Trick Number Two (...or This!)
09:46 Obstacle One: Are You Tricking Yourself?
11:03 Obstacle Two: Identity
13:35 Emotions