What's the difference between playing "professional" poker and recreational poker? In attempting to help some others understand some of the differences I have laid out one major aspect that I believe makes the majority of the difference. If you want to take your game to the next level you'll want to take this into consideration. It's just my opinion, others may have differing opinions. But here it is.

This is an "advanced" posting that requires you read and understand the post Psychology of Losing - Know Thyself to get the most out of it.

Professional poker is not about any single hand, session, MTT, week or even month of play. Poker is a game of "incomplete information" and widely varying conditions. You can play any single hand perfectly
and lose - and you will. You can play an entire session perfectly and lose - and you will. You will catch bad beats, play against players who overpay for flush draws and make ai bets into your near nut hand only to get lucky. It happens. And at times it happens repeatedly. Over an extended period of time it will happen fairly regularly. The fact that every
other post it seems is a bad beat story is testiment of that.

Professional poker play requires skill, but you can be skillful and very unprofessional. Professional poker play requires courage, but you can be courageous and very unprofessional. Professional poker play requires proper bankroll, but you can play very unprofessionally with a huge bankroll. The list goes on and on. All of which are important aspects of
managing your game and career. However there is one over-riding value that you must develop for long-term, consistent, "professional" success. That value is DISCIPLINE.

With proper poker discipline no short term losses will stop you, and without it no short term wins will overcome the lack. And by "short term" I'm talking as much as a year!

This post will give you an look into the mind of professional poker discipline. First so you can see what it entails, and second so you can decide if you want to develop it to improve your life-long results with poker. It's not comprehensive by any means, but it will hopefully help you get a sense of direction if you're interested in having a "pro" level game.

The foundation of professional discipline is understanding that the process is more important than the results, ALWAYS. You have to "know your game" and execute it to the best of your ability every hand, every session, every week. That's the process. Now, if you do that and lose (the result), then you have been successful. If you DON'T DO THAT, you have been unsuccessful, EVEN IF YOU WIN!

This is a critical aspect of professional play. Why? Every action you take trains you for future actions. It reinforces and lays memories and habits in your mind. So, if you play poorly and get positive results you are more likely to repeat that play in the future. This is how bad players stay bad!! They make poor choices and win at times. Instead of punishing
themselves for making poor choices, they emotionally reward themselves for the results. So the next time that condition occurs they make the same poor choice and lose. BUT THEY DISREGARD THE NEGATIVE OUTCOME. They reinforce the positive results over the negative
outcomes, and they Literally train themselves to play poorly. EVEN IF THEY STARTED OUT PLAYING SOLID POKER days, weeks or months (even years) earlier!!!

This process is an unavoidable spiral for most players, and it's why most players have memories of winning but their current results aren't as good as their memories. In contrast a professional poker player gets better and better over time, winning more and more at larger and larger stakes. Because they understand that results TODAY are not the most
important thing. The most important thing is playing consistent, disciplined poker.

Here are examples of what bad players say.
"I hate trip tens, they always get beat."
"I'll take a coin flip with AK ANY DAY."
"I love JQ suited, I can crack aces with it more often than not."
"My Aces always seem to get cracked by dumbass players."
"I can play my way out of tilt. I do it all the time."

These statements reflect reinforcing nonsensical results from previous hands. And this isn't about those statements in particular. It reflects the bad players thoughts about the game. That SOMEHOW the fact that their aces were cracked in the past means they can AND EVEN SHOULD play them less than optimally when they get them next time. Or that they can call a huge preflop raise with JQ suited because they put the other guy on Aces and JQ is "a great cracking hand". These have no basis in reality. They are warped thinking based on the RESULTS of just a few hands, and
probably the poor mental discipline of reinforcing when your good hands got cracked and your marginal hands cracked someone else.

The professional player, on the other hand, KNOWS (I mean absolutely knows) that each hand is played in a vaccuum. The entire universe resets with each deal of the cards. Nothing that happened before affects what is happening now, from an "odds" standpoint. They play optimal play over and over. And if that doesn't give them the result they expected FOR THAT SESSION, then they go to bed without a second thought. They get up the next day and play exactly the same way. If
they don't get the RESULTS they expected, then they do it again the next day. (This assumes you know how to play poker, by the way, and you're playing correctly.)

The amateur changes their game based on the last hand's results, or the last session's. They spend as much time thinking about what happened before that it overwhelms their decision making right now. And if they get good results then they do that again! They let previous results dictate current play, even when their previous actions were Poor Poker.

The professional definition of tilt (at least mine) is this: Playing ANY hand of poker where ANY thoughts or emotions about previous hands cause you to make sub-optimal decisions.

And if you think that you can play poker while you're steaming about a bad beat or on a high from having your crap hand make a miracle river, you're fooling yourself. It may work now. It may work next time, and it may work for a month. But over a career you will lose all the money you won and then some. "I hate losing so much that I can 'play through' tilt" is
an epitaph for your entire bankroll. Maybe not today. But eventually.

Professional poker players who can get up from a table after 30 minutes and losing 1/2 their table stake to bad beats or whatever, will ALWAYS WIN LONG TERM. (Assuming they they left because they knew they were on tilt.)They have the discipline to KNOW that this one session is less important that playing on tilt. Why? They could win it back if they kept playing that session!!! (right?) Let's say they have 100% chance of winning the money back now plus more, but to
do so they have to play on tilt. What was the results? They made money! But what was the long-term consequence? They have reinforced in their own mind that they can "play on tilt", be undisciplined, and come out ahead. That works a few times. Until it doesn't and they lose their entire bankroll in one night. Then proceed to try to rebuild too quickly and
lose the money they borrowed for their next bankroll... etc. because they trained their brain to react poorly in adverse conditions.

I don't know if this has been clear or has just muddied the waters. But here's the summary. (and how a poker pro thinks)

I value my poker career over any single hand, any single session, any single MTT, week, month or year. I will not reinforce poor choices, poor decisions, poor play with positive results. The money I win by doing that I will lose 10 times over in the future. On the other hand I will play every hand as if the universe has been reset. I will monitor myself, and if I feel that I have emotionally reacted to a bad beat or poor play, I will leave the table immediately and not come back until I can play "clean poker". The value that brings over my career in winnings outweighs 10,000x what that one session would bring. If I can't walk away from sub-obtimal play now - when the stakes are relatively low, the rewards relatively minor and
the consequences relatively light, HOW WILL I BE ABLE TO WALK AWAY LATER when the stakes are HUGE, the rewards LIFE CHANGING, and the consequences DEVISTATING?

Do you see what I mean. What's happening right now is secondary to how I am training myself to be in my poker discipline.

I'm sure I'll add more to this and respond to questions, etc. But this is a start at least on this very complicated and important subject for those who
want to play professional level poker - whether full time or once a week. Professional poker doesn't mean you have to play poker exclusively. It's a "state of game"!


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