A friend of mine recently started playing poker, and I'm teaching him the basics a bit. He's been playing MTT's only so far, and he's really talented.
However, he is very very very negative about his luck. Basically he says: I'll make it into the money, sure, but I'll never win a tournament with 100+ players, because I just don't have enough luck. Even if I play a thousand times, I will have bad luck a thousand times. I will just never get some big money in such tournaments.
Now, I know that this is a wrong mindset, and that poker isn't abolut luck but about getting the odds in your favour. You guys know that as well. The problem is, I've explained this to him for literally tens of times, and still he keeps saying he's just too unlucky and he could never play good.
He thinks that if he'll start cashgaming, he'll lose 20 all-in's in a row and lose everything because he has so much bad luck. Basically, he plays really well, but he's just too afraid to take some risk. He gets far in tournaments because he's great at the (very tight) start. However, he maintains this very tight play until the very end of the tournament, and he's just too afraid to shove in some chips to the pot. Even when playing for the smallest amounts of money. He's not afraid to lose his money, he's just afraid of being kicked out of the tourney.
And the worst part is: I've been checking his stats, and he doesn't even have any bad luck. His win rates per cards are around average, there is nothing unusual. He gets in the money in most tournaments he plays, and I can't find any reason to assume he really does have bad luck.
My question: How do I help him to get over this and to start improving his game? I'm really kind of out of ideas.
Help?
get him reading some articles and watching a couple of vids then show him some blogs of some long time winners and show that it's not about luck in the long run.
