If poker was all about exercising knowledge, then it would be basically all too easy to earn money at the game, but life is never that easy is it? For instance many authors have written excellent poker books without the effects of having written that book having any impact on their ability to make money playing poker.
There are far too many facets to what is a very complex problem when it comes to making money in poker, it is for this precise reason why many of my articles do not delve into how to play certain hands in certain situations. I feel that this is attempting to address the problem in entirely the wrong way.
At the end of the day technical knowledge in many fields is only one tiny percentage of the overall picture and poker is no different. Recently I have undertaken studying financial day trading and it is remarkable how poker and financial trading have so many similarities. In this instance it is the same when a player attempts to switch to other forms of poker.
The main criteria is in how you play poker and not the actual technicalities of each different poker form. What am I talking about here? Well it is simply to do with the fact that the making of a poker player involves many personality traits that are so often hidden from view or at the very least underestimated by the vast majority of the poker playing population.
Wherever I go these days I see undisciplined behavior at poker tables by players who are obviously very good technically. This much is obvious just by watching them play. I have been intently watching the lower stakes no limit games on Pokerloco www.pokerloco.com/thedean recently which is on the Ongame network. Once again I am seeing the same things, but what I want to move on to is what I call the poker pyramid.
This is a collection of skills and personality traits that I feel are essential to being successful in poker, not just in poker but in any field of endeavor. The biggest obstacle to any poker player is always the person who they see in the mirror every day. That person is human and humans have emotions and emotion is the number one enemy of any poker player.
Emotion in poker will make you do many things, it will also prevent you from doing many things as well. One of the key areas in poker is in designing your methodology. Luckily for us there are numerous professional poker coaching sites that take us most of the way if not all the way down this road. In days gone this to a whole new level where people can actually see playing processes first-hand without having to plough through thousands upon thousands of words.
So our method of operation or for want of a better word, our style of playing poker, can be found these days in a very short space of time but that is only one layer of what I think is a much larger pyramid. The main obstacles to success in poker come when people experience both wins and losses. This is because wins and losses impact on our emotional stability. It is easy to be disciplined when things are going well. The acid test always comes when a player incurs losses and this is where discipline really comes into its own.
But how can you teach discipline? The fact is that you can’t. This is something that must come from within. While it is true that discipline can be imposed on an individual, it is very difficult to do so when there is no one behind you forcing you to do certain things.
There are other factors at work too, and one of those factors is in how committed you are as a player. Often you’ll find that poker is a microcosm of life itself. By that I mean that there are so many personality traits that people use in everyday life that are either advantageous or destructive in poker.
For instance, being cautious in life is no bad thing. At the poker table, it will prevent you from doing rash things and cautious people tend to practice solid money management guidelines. On the other hand, people who thrive on risk tend to have very high risk profiles. They often neglect having adequate poker bankrolls and shun money management principles.
It is often said that a mediocre poker player with sound money management principles and bankroll control will make more money and keep that money than a far more skilled poker player who does not exercise these crucial aspects of the game. It is very difficult to become a skilled poker player without having had substantial experience. This is simply because players without experience simply have no experience of variance. This in my opinion is the number one killer in poker of intermediate and even good technical players. I am going to expand on this in a later article because I feel it is one of the most crucial aspects of poker at this time and will continue to be so.
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