The game of poker is a card game in which players bet to place chips (representing money) into a pot. The highest hand wins the pot. It is played with a standard 52 card deck with some games adding jokers or other wild cards. Two to seven players can play.
You have a good hand, like a set or a big flop, and you bet with confidence. But a card you didn’t want comes down and you get sucked out, losing a large sum of chips. This is a common way to lose at poker. It can leave a player feeling sick and numb and convinced that the game is rigged, which leads them to write long rants on the Internet or just type ANGRY COMMENTS ALL CAPS in their chat box, neither of which helps.
There are a few adjustments that can be made to the way you think about poker, and the way you play it, to make you a break-even player or even a winning one. These are often based on learning to view the game in a more cold, detached, mathematical, and logical way than you currently do.
One of the most important changes that you can make is to learn to be comfortable taking risks, even low-stakes ones. Sometimes those risks will fail, but they’ll teach you valuable lessons about how to play better next time. Eventually, you’ll be able to risk more often in higher-stakes situations, too.