Whether they’re beginners or not, most poker players realize that your success in cash games isn’t determined in a single day, or even in a single week. Instead, it takes thousands and thousands of hands to determine your profitability with the game. But even with this being said, many players have the tendency to play overly-tight because they’re worried about the session at hand.

Afraid to Steal

To illustrate the previous comment, let’s say that a villain in the cutoff opens preflop with a 3xbb raise while you’re sitting on the button with 8sTs. Seeing as how your opponent has been trying to steal from the cutoff and button in nearly every unopened pot, it’s very likely that they’re on another steal attempt.

In this situation, there’s a very good chance that you can 3bet here and take the pot – especially if your opponent has shown the tendency to fold in spots like this. But on the other hand, not everybody’s going to re-steal here because A) they could be inexperienced and not observing their opponent, B) they’re afraid to re-steal based solely on their own cards, and/or C) they are already having a good session, and don’t see the need to risk anything to steal with marginal cards.

Focusing on the Long-term

Expanding on points A and B, these are interconnected because, once you gain experience and become better at profiling opponents, you’ll gain the confidence to steal in EV situations. As for point C, this directly relates to people not focusing on the long-term when it comes to poker. Sure they might be having a good session on the current day, but the goal of poker is to maximize your winnings in every possible situation – not just when you’re having a rough day.

Going further with this, let’s say that you re-raise the villain who made the 3xbb preflop raise with 6xbb. Including the big and small blind, you’re risking 6bb to win 4.5bb. Assuming you successfully make your opponent fold two out of three times here, you’re going to earn a 3bb profit overall. And based on what you’ve observed from the opponent, there’s a very good chance of this happening. You also have to consider that even if the villain would call you instead of 4betting, you’ve still got position on them postflop.

The overall point is that you need to look at stealing attempts and other situations from a long-term perspective, rather than worrying about how you’re doing in the current session. Because if you keep missing value situations like this over and over again, it will have a very negative impact on your long-term winnings.