04 Sep 2025 Beginner This material is for beginner players bluff combinatorics continuation bet discipline downswing exploit fold equity mindset probabilities «It's not the cards that matter, it's how you play them» - you've heard this phrase many times from players, from amateurs who come just for fun to seasoned players. It sounds bold, philosophical and almost profound, but is it really true? In this article, I'll try to debunk this myth about poker, which can result in losses of more than one bankroll. Regardless of whether you're a beginner or an experienced player, understanding the role of cards, odds and the structure of the game is important. This article looks at the debate between mathematics and psychology, the dangers of relying on feel and how GTO and solvers prove - scientifically - that cards do matter. The game that inspired this article I recently played cash offline in a place I frequent. My short story alone will probably give the reader the right ideas. But further on there will be theoretical confirmation of what I am saying here. 9-max cash game at $1/$3 stakes. One player is constantly going crazy: he opens almost the entire deck, constantly bets and raises on the postflop, and constantly bluffs, sometimes showing them at will, sometimes showing garbage at showdown. A standard poker maniac! In short, he burns his money in the heat of excitement. In a matter of minutes, he loses the first $500, buys in to $800, safely loses them, and throws in the second $500. At some point, he makes a comment about another player's hand. I don't remember his exact words, but their essence was simple: «I don't care about cards to win.» I answered him with a question, «Then why do you lose every hand?», to which he froze. And I continued with the finishing question: «If the cards don't matter, then why don't you win every hand, huh?» He just shrugged and repeated: «It's not the cards themselves that matter, but how you play them.» I didn't argue with him, and a few hands later I got KK. I open-raise - he calls. I get a set on the flop, I make a continuation bet - he calls. On the turn, the same thing: continuation bet and call. I make a third barrel on the river, having the first nuts, and the opponent goes all-in. Of course, I call, and he folds his cards without showing them. And I would have opened his all-in with a hand that is much smaller in absolute value. And when he gets up from the table to leave, I say to him as a parting shot: «Well, are the cards still not important to you?» He: «Yes, I still don't care about the cards.» I say to him: «Okay, I was just about to write an article on this topic.» He: «Let me know when it's ready. I'd like to read it.» And, in fact, here it is. The Illusion Behind the Cards-Don't-Matter Mindset The idea that cards don't matter is not only wrong, it's detrimental to your poker mindset and your results. I think that the other player wasn't thinking philosophically, but rather along the lines of poker not being about cards, but about people's fears. And at first glance, that sounds smart and, in principle, self-sufficient. After all, reading your opponents, catching tells, and identifying emotional patterns are all components of winning poker. And anyone who has played live for long knows that psychology is of utmost importance when your opponent is physically sitting next to you. But the catch is that everything related to the psychology of the game is only one component of the overall sum called Result. And that player took a partial truth out of its entire context and tried to turn it into a full-fledged strategy. Yes, poker is about people. But it's also about the probabilities of many events, and a player needs to be able to correctly assess risk, equity, and EV. It's about constantly calculating what your hand is worth in a given situation, what your opponent's probable range is, and how the board might affect it. And none of that is possible when you don't care about the cards, literally or figuratively. If you reject the structure of the game, then you're not playing poker, but rather you're performing and gamble, improvising, and steering in a game that, one of its main properties, is to punish guesswork. That's what that guy didn't understand. He clearly thought that bluffing was everything, and that if he could (1) convincingly fake having strong hands and (2) throw his opponents off balance through commentary, burns, and reraises, then he could make money consistently here, without ever needing a real hand. It must be said that of the number of hands that didn't go to showdown, he actually won many using this approach. But only until others got tired of it and started calling him down. - To remind him that cards are still important. Evidence That Poker Cards Matter If cards didn't matter, you could win with any two cards at any time. Hand selection wouldn't exist. Pot odds would be irrelevant. It wouldn't matter whether you were dealt AA or 72o - as long as you were dealt cards, you have something to win the hand with. But in reality, you do care what and how you play. In fact, any serious study, strategy guide, or mathematical model created for poker starts with one simple truth: The strength of a hand directly affects its chances of winning the pot. And this is not the opinion of «some kind of expert», but hard statistical facts: Pocket aces are a favorite with 82% equity against any random hand preflop, Draw hands only complete a certain percentage of the time (and, generally, a fairly low percentage). Marginal hands like look attractive but lose money in the long run. Trash hands like J4o play with negative EV from any position. Every winning player, whether they admit it or not, exploits this hand structure and outlook. A player can adapt to the tendencies of the field / the composition at his table / a specific opponent, but still prefer to play AK, not 72. This is not instinct, but disguised mathematics. Even the most aggressive players (of the adequate ones), who are guided by image, still do not ignore the strength of the hand. They just disguise it under the table talk and / or creative lines of play. In short, Cards are of great importance in poker strategy, if you are interested in profit from the game. Not in individual hands and not only when it is convenient. Cards are important on every street and in every decision from preflop to river. When you stop respecting the value of cards, you stop playing poker and start gambling. And poker, by its very essence, requires respect for its form and internal structure. And if you still think that cards are not important, then consider the following. What is the GTO strategy based on? What is the basis of the theoretically optimal game (GTO) - the most unexploitable poker strategy ever developed? I'll answer for you: it's not based on feelings or instincts. - It's based on combinatorics, hand frequencies, equity distributions across ranges, and probability trees. In a word, statistics. Solvers simulate play in millions of possible hands not to read your opponent's emotions, but to thoroughly understand how, when, and with what cards to play, with what frequencies, and how they work across the entire range. And when AI systems like the Pluribus poker bot were winning over time against live poker pros (live humans), they weren't bluffing with nothing, hoping for the best. - A bot doesn't know hope or any feeling at all. They did it by playing even better constructed ranges than live humans, by «understanding» board textures and play prospects even better, applying pressure with mathematically precise frequencies. And all of this stems from how ranges (cards) relate to each other on a given texture with a given action. Let's be brutally honest. There would be no solvers without the mathematics of interactions between cards. No equity charts without hand strength. And no balanced ranges if the cards didn't matter. If you remove the structure of the cards, the entire GTO ecosystem would collapse instantly: Nothing to solve. No frequencies to calculate accurately. No action trees to build. Just chaos. The idea that cards don't matter is not only wrong, it's a critical mistake in thinking about poker. It's a misunderstanding of how poker actually works at its deepest level. And beyond being a logical fallacy, it's also a kind of philosophical trap that leads us straight to the next chapter. Romantic vs. Classical Thinking Why do so many players cling to the illusion that cards don't matter? It's not just a misunderstanding and rejection of statistical facts, but a deeper way of looking at things. In one clever book, the author explains the difference between two types of thinking: «Romantic» thinking - based on impressions, emotions and intuition and «Classical» thinking - it looks deep to understand structure, logic and form. In poker terms, the «romantic» wants to feel his way through the hand. He relies on intuition. He can confidently tell when and who is bluffing. The «classic» strives to understand the mechanics of the game. He breaks down ranges, calculates pot odds and looks for a long-term edge. And here's the irony. Romantics often think that they are freer, more creative, more instinctive, and more tuned to the moment of the game. But in fact, without understanding the structure of the game, all their freedom is just an illusion. It's like improvising in jazz without even learning the scales first. You're not playing on skill, you're just guessing. And poker ultimately punishes guessing. A classic, on the other hand, builds his freedom on discipline. First, he masters the form and structure of poker, and then he can break away from it intentionally. But he still has a base - working and bringing in income. A romantic doesn't have one. The statement «The cards don't matter» is not about freedom, but about how the ego seeks liberation through denial, not discipline. And denial in poker leads to long-term failure. It leads to leaks, to misreading situations and opponents, and to frustration disguised as negative variance. If you want to grow, you need to start with what the game is fundamentally about and how the game is structured, not what you want. Live Poker Tells Expert Commentary Zachary Elwood is a well-known expert in poker circles on recognizing and exploiting tells in live poker and most things related to poker psychology. I had the pleasure of speaking with this remarkable man on his recent stream. If there are people in the world who can specifically and factually prove with mathematical precision that poker is good at sensing your opponents, then Zachary Elwood is one of them. So I asked him what he thought about players who are overly aggressive, constantly bluffing/pressing, and making comments like «It doesn't matter what cards I can beat you without them.» And also how much of poker is actually about psychology versus math. Zachary quickly responded by saying, «Math and structure outweigh psychology by a wide margin. Yes, psychology is important, and tells exist. But they are not the foundation of the game. Structure is the cards, strategy is the math, and tells/reads are a refinement.» And such expert opinion is really worth trusting. He did not downplay the area in which he has expertise, but put it in the right context. where even more important things still rule. You should build your game not on psychology, but on logic, probabilities and math, and only then supplement all this with psychology. This is how poker really works. Whether you believe it or not is your choice. The Right Hierarchy of Poker Tools What does this all mean in practice for a serious player? - That your priorities should be aligned with a realistic poker strategy. - If you want to be a long-term successful player, you need to build your strategy on instinct, bravado, or psychology. You should start by learning and fully accepting the foundations of the game: its structure, rules, cards, math, and probabilities, because they work all the time. This is the foundation of poker success. It's like you wouldn't build a house by choosing the curtains first. No, you start by choosing the frame and materials that will hold everything together. Poker works the same way as life, and the real hierarchy of tools and concepts is as follows: Structure: Hand Strength, Pot Odds, Stack Depth (SPR), Position, and Equity. Tactics: Bet Size, Fold Equity, and Pressure Points. Psychology: Image, deception, tilt control, and tells/observations. Playing style: How you express your strategy at the table (TAG/LAG/tight-passive/rock, etc.) Too many people turn this hierarchy of concepts upside down. They want to read faces, but they don't care about pot odds. They want to bluff on inspiration, but they don't understand their fold equity. They chase psychology, but they forget about probabilities. And poker punishes them for such disrespect for its essence and structure. Psychology and instincts have their own meaning, but they must be built on top of a solid foundation of mathematics and the rest of the structure - they serve to make even more accurate decisions than those based on basic concepts, not to replace them. When you ignore the basic tools or use them in the wrong order, you are not building a strategy, you are just gambling. You have to respect the architecture of poker if you are interested in winning it. And the cards in it are the form on which everything else is built. Summing up Cards in poker matter a lot. Not only because they determine who wins at showdown, but primarily because they determine the structure of the game itself. Yes, there is a lot of room in poker for timing, intuition and everything that we attribute to psychology. But none of this will work reliably if it is not based on mathematics, logic and form. How to build your game from scratch? Master the structure of poker, which was given just above, and only then give free rein to your intuition.
