Poker Discipline - Taking Your Game To The Next Level

It is true for every sport that discipline is a key factor in consistent success

. Despite the common understanding that poker is a gambling game of chance, you have to realize that if one day you are to become a profitable pro, you will have to establish sportsmanlike discipline of learning, understanding, and incessant practice. "Talent" is certainly essential, but even the greatest talent needs a method, and method is acquired from careful study.

In fact, there is no such thing as spontaneous talent: music did not "just make sense" to Mozart - where would he be if he hadn't spent his childhood practicing? One could say that talent is well-practiced potential. But don't wait for a freaky father to hit you with a rod over your fingers every time you play the wrong card; impose your own discipline.

Amateurs play for the fun and the excitement of risk against blind chance. That is what keeps the business alive. Professional players leave chance no chance: the pro knows what his basic chances are and takes advantage of every opponent's slip, remembers repetitive patterns, and calculates the current odds. The serious player does not expect to have simpleminded fun: rather, he takes pleasure in efficiently emptying pockets as a profession. Chance only enters the professional's world as one of the elements against which he matches his intelligence and skill. The idea is not to gamble half-blindly, but to pitch oneself against another's method and win.

It is vital to be familiar with the varieties of poker games and to know which of them best suit your abilities and predispositions; not only to realize what your weaknesses are, but to know also which game incites you to your best effort and best engages your intuitions. Players who haven't the habit of self-introspection keep sullenly playing a game which doesn't engage their best faculties. Sometimes a benevolent professional looking from the side may advise the person to try another game type and the player is surprised to discover that they are much more talented than they thought.

There is a big difference between limit and no-limit poker. A disciplined player will not yield to temptation and will prefer the game in which he feels in full, cucumber-cool control. In limit poker, disciplined players tend to play with caution, act cool, taking the time to covertly collect information about opponents, intending to milk them by small moves. They will play only the hands worth playing: the best ones play only about a quarter of the hands dealt them.

A disciplined no-limit professional will evince the opposite of reserve, will be aggressive before the flop, and will play hands that to the limit expert would seem reckless stunts, always knowing, however, what precisely he is trying to achieve by every aggressive move.

In both cases, no less important than the right move is the ability to restrain oneself and quit when the situation is hopeless or when you feel you are loosing control: it happens to everyone, but the disciplined player dedicated to consistent performance will not pursue the phantom of mounting frustration.

On better days, never trust chance to maintain your good fortune forever - learn to leave before you loose the edge. Good players learn to establish not only the limits of their losses, but also the limits of their gain during each session.

by: Tom Kearns

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