Playing poker is a marathon and not a sprint. You’ll win and lose money along the way and it will make you slowly become a better player, gaining experience, wisdom and a better understanding of the flow of the games.
Is there a way to accelerate this process making you a better player in less time? Generally speaking, no; winning players are seasoned and experienced, but there are some tricks that might help you to grow faster and you are going to discover them.
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Ask always for help online on forums or offline to your closer friends whom game you do respect. It’s very difficult to understand and dig into every aspect of a hand alone, because poker is a so complicated game that there’s always a different explanation for a single spot.
The trick here is not merely ask for help, but it’s more subtle. If you are going to share with your friends your hands, it means that you in the first place have looked through them, spotting the difficult ones. This kind of review is the very first step for making you a stronger player.
Good poker players do… think they are not *that* good!
If you believe you are already mastering the game, likely you are a bad player. Beside the fact that there’s always to learn, a cocky approach isn’t going to pay off in the long run. Always be ready o criticize yourself and be ready to listen to advice from people you know you can trust.
Borrowing a business quote, if you think you are the smartest in the room, change room because you have still a world to discover.
Good poker players do… beat the stake!
Yes, sometimes it might happen you hit a bad run, but before giving any advice or thinking yourself as a valid coach, be sure you can look yourself into the mirror and say “ok I’m beating this level”. Winning has many shades, but it can be defined as “winning steadily at a given stake”.
If month after month you have a positive ROI from the Rs 100 buy in tournaments, then you can level up and be confident you are decently good. If you cannot beat a level steadily, you are not studying enough.
Good poker players do… study!
It summarizes it all. If you want to win, you have to study a lot, never thinking you know enough about strategy and math. There are always aspect of your game you can work on and a lot of people can tell you where your mistakes are.
Look for help and be ready to listen to their advice, which doesn’t mean you should not be confident in yourself, but means that you should never think you can win just by playing a lot of hands.
