Poker Winner Blog

Bookstores are filled with self-help books. Seminars galore promise to teach you how to be a winner in business, in love, and in your personal life. Some of these same principles can make you a winner at the poker table. Here are ten you may want to think about.

Be Aware of Your Strengths and

Weaknesses

An outrageous image at the table may work for some people but not for others. Some players are better suited to tournaments, others to ring games (cardrooms). Play your best game and play within the confines of your own comfort zone. In other words, know yourself, and do what you do well.

Act Responsibly

What you achieve in poker will be the product of your own play. Yes, luck is a factor in the game, at least in the short run. Over the long haul, it generally evens out. But until you acknowledge your own accountability for the results you achieve, you won’t be able to exercise enough control over your skills and abilities to ensure success.

Think

Don’t just play poker — you have to think about it. Unless you’re consistent about doing your poker homework, you’ll simply find yourself marking time. You need to keep up with the current poker literature, and you need to think about the game. Think about it while you’re at the table and when you’re away from it. Analyze hands you’ve seen. Decide whether you would have played them differently — and if so, why? Learning about poker, like learning about most other things, is a recursive process. Think, analyze, and modify your game. Then, repeat as needed.

Have a Plan

What is your goal as a poker player? Do you want to have fun and just break even? Do you want to be a top tournament player? Or do you want to be the best $15—$30 player around? How much are you willing to risk? You need a definite plan for your poker play. Without a plan to guide you, you’re likely to wind up as a pawn in someone else’s game!

Set Deadlines

If your goal is to play an average of 30 hours per week, then do it. If you plan to reread Poker For Dummies until you know it cold, then set a deadline for yourself and do that too. If you’ve lost all your poker money and need to rebuild your bankroll before venturing back into a casino, plan on how long it will take until you are back in action. Once you have a plan, go out and get the money you need to enable you to start playing again.

Be Realistic

If your goal is to win the World Series of Poker next year but you’ve never played a big limit game in your life, don’t expect to achieve that simply by virtue of having read this. Let’s get real here. While your authors are terrific teachers (who are now learning to walk on water) they haven’t quite mastered it yet.

Instead of indulging your fantasies, start with a challenging but reachable goal. Once you make it, you can set the next, more difficult, goal. Perhaps you want to set a goal of playing in one or two inexpensive tournaments per week, or playing in satellites that are usually part of the format surrounding major tournaments. If you don’t do well there, keep trying. But save your money. You’re probably not ready yet to invest big bucks in entry fees to major events.

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