Hardly a week passes by without some brand new poker strategy e-book hitting the market, andilst its popularity is understandable, the majority of them rely on one or two easy to learn but costly mistakes.
Poker is a game of deception and misconception. When you play against people and companies that make all kinds of claims, such as being profitable poker players or bookmakers that never lose, then you can rest assured that they are probably telling the truth.
But perhaps, you are stuck in a rut that you can’t move away from, perhaps you have been making the same mistakes over and over and although you know you shouldn’t, you can’t seem to do anything about it.
The solution to this problem is to adapt, and realize that no, poker is not a game of luck, it is a game of knowledge and feeling. Most of the best players play other people as if they were not human. They have nothing to lose but a lot to gain, which makes them great poker players.
It is a disservice to those players that focus on just winning the money involved and nothing else. Winning is far more important than making money, because making money is easier said than done.
You can make the final table in a huge tournament with a good strategy and have half the field, but if you do not adapt to the psychological tricks and blocks you will encounter on the way to the final table, you will walk straight into your opponents’ traps.
You need to get a handle on your own mind set before you adapt to the moment’s variance. If you are at the poker table and looking for a way to win quickly, you are probably going to lose more than you will win. That is why the advanced poker players spend almost all their time adapting their mindset to deal with the psychological Grind.
While you may be comfortable with high limit poker games and tournament games, the true test is going to be at the micro limit games and tournaments. You can still learn a lot by playing at these tables.
Because so many of the mistakes you will make at the micro limit tables will be fixed simply by adaptability. Once you learn your lessons at the high limit tables and you adapt, you will be much more profitable player at the micro limit tables.
Sure, we are all eking out a living and some of us are even broke. But, there are a few individuals who aren’t broke. These are the micro limit experts and they make a living because they eek out a living from the poker tables.
They may not be using their computer to learn the games, but the ones that are making a living because they know how to play the games. They may not be using their computer to do the games, but the ones that are taking advantage of the ease of learning how to play a game and making money at one table at a time are certainly using their computers.
If you are interested in making a living from poker, you can learn the games, you can learn to play, and you can do it quite cheaply. Because the micro limit tables are a perfect learning environment, you can learn to play without losing a lot of money.
If you are not permament about learning to play poker, you may want to check out some books instead. A beginning, intermediate and advanced player can all make money playing poker from the high limit tables on Poker Stars at $1, $2, $5, $10 and even sometimes $500 buy-in games.
Finally, if you are used to playing jayapoker in casinos, you can make money from the micro limit tables. I have made money in my car from playing Texas Hold Em too, and it isn’t a lot of money. But, for a few hours, it can be a lot of money.
When you are working towards making a living playing poker, you want to develop a goal. You don’t want to have ‘x-amount’ of money to be able to do this. Instead, you want to have a definition of what you want to accomplish. Next week, I’ll give you an example from my poker career as to how I have achieved my goal of making a living from playing poker.