3 Basic Principles

[gorden71]

A friend of mine posted this on another site, and I wanted to share it with everyone. I have found myself ignoring these basic principles on many occasions, never having positive results.
Hope you find this useful info:

1. Focus: How many times do you catch yourself surfing the web, doing your bills, Iming or chatting with your fellow poker players or just watching TV? It has been proven time and time again this trait is needed to be a successful poker player.

You have to be aware of your opponents and the happenings at the table and surfing the web or watching TV is a distraction that could hurt you in the long run. I find myself doing this and I miss vital hands or even people making attempts at bluffs.

I think this is one of the reasons why I do better live because I do pay attention and keep those mental notes where as online I am easily distracted.

2. Discipline: Players that stick to their gameplan and never allow their emotions to muddle their play always come out a head. If they don't get the best hand they keep folding until they do. We tend to call these players "Rocks" but in reality they are really just sticking to what they know what works in the long run.

These players that carry this trait also know when to get up from the table. I was very disciplined when I was making my living at playing poker. If I sat down at a table and the blinds went around 4 times without me winning a hand or playing a hand...I would get up and change tables or just not play that day.

Discipline entails a great amount of self-control and fighting off the temptation to play for luck. Don't make decisions that are not based on solid strategy and hard thinking and avoid impulses and temptations...this all falls under discipline.


3. Bankroll: How many times have we heard this word as we read all the various poker books on the market. Bankroll, bankroll, bankroll....it should be imbedded in our heads now that bankroll plays a large part of our success.

You MUST play within your bankroll so you are comfortable when you sit down at that table. If you are sitting down at a table knowing if you do not succeed you will be broke...then you are playing outside of your bankroll.

This is called playing on "scared money". I did it for two years and believe me it was not fun. I could not raise when I know I needed to raise but because I was "short stacked" I had to make a choice in my style of playing. Do I be aggressive and risk missing the flop which could cost me half my stack or do I limp in and pray to the poker gods that I hit and can take down a large pot.

These 3 traits are imperative to incorporate into your game to be successful. In my case I have ignored two of these traits in the past 2 months and I feel it in my bankroll. I have not been paying attention on the tables and I have been playing outside of my bankroll. I still have 90% of my Discipline but that is even lacking due to the fact I was trying to play on card luck just to catch a hand.

There are other traits we pick up along the way that help us in our game, but your primary traits should never be ignored. When you see yourself straying from them, stop and regroup. This is what I am having to do right now and it has become a slow, trying process to get back on track.

Who says winning in poker is easy? Poker is one of the easiest games to play, but mastering it is just like climbing Mt. Everest.

Good luck on the felts!

[Blackstone3]

Very good article.
Good points. I struggle with your three points.
ty

[Wyte22]

you left out one key point:


Raise it, like you stole it!! NOTHING beat good aggressive play!

[Vito_Nuccio]

1. Focus: How many times do you catch yourself surfing the web, doing your bills, Iming or chatting with your fellow poker players or just watching TV? It has been proven time and time again this trait is needed to be a successful poker player.

You have to be aware of your opponents and the happenings at the table and surfing the web or watching TV is a distraction that could hurt you in the long run. I find myself doing this and I miss vital hands or even people making attempts at bluffs.

You definitely need focus, but some can have focus with outside distractions. I play multi tables, multi games, multi sites, and can not watch every play at each, but I do get some decent reads from each game. There are different focus levels for everyone but I do agree, you have to give quality attention to actions of others, you can not rely solely on your play/cards.

2. Discipline: Players that stick to their gameplan and never allow their emotions to muddle their play always come out a head. If they don't get the best hand they keep folding until they do. We tend to call these players "Rocks" but in reality they are really just sticking to what they know what works in the long run.

This is important. Discipline comes in many flavors. You have to be disciplined in your cards, bets, stack, image, tilt level, just about everything at the card table. If you can keep your discipline during the worst of times, things will be better for you in the end.

3. Bankroll: How many times have we heard this word as we read all the various poker books on the market. Bankroll, bankroll, bankroll....it should be imbedded in our heads now that bankroll plays a large part of our success.

One of the most important theories in poker. Your bankroll is your life line. You must play within your means if you are going to survive the ebb and flow of winning/losing cycles. Even the best of players have slumps. The end result will come from how these down turns are handled by your mental and bankroll state.

If you take your first two traits (focus and discipline) and apply them to the 3rd (bankroll), you are well on your way to increasing your poker account. You will find yourself in a game where you can play your best, utilizing your poker instincts with no pressure on your poker standing.


Thanks,

[Stacker]

I agree with your 3 basic principals, although I'm still learning to put them in to practice.

Focus is hard for me at the moment as I have many distractions in my private life, but thats another chapter. I know that I should not even play while things are on my mind.

Dicipline has taken me to the later stages of tournaments. Lack of diciplin then sees me exiting just out of the money more often.

Bankroll is something I have read about, but Im not putting it in to practice. Im putting $50 in to my account once a month on average, which is not breaking the bank, although I'd rather the poker site was paying me $50 a month. I tried to freeroll my way through 2008 and I had built a decent sized bankroll, but my poor bankroll management and lack of diciplin killed it off.

Back to the drawing board...........

[phosphorescence]

that was a good post, though for some people your part on 'focus' doesn't apply.

in my case, at the moment i play exclusively MTTs, and i always have music/internet/IM/TV on while i'm playing. this is because throughout a tourney i play very tight until the later stages, and i find this stops me playing junk hands like A-rag or 'pretty' hands like JTs unless the time is right. if you concentrate solely on the tournament, you start to get bored and will lose your discipline.

while i may lose a lot of information on other players, players go out so quickly and you're moved tables and stuff that it's not that important. this method has worked for me quite well.

if you're playing cash games this obviously doesn't apply, because the same players are going to stick around for a while and you need to know how they play.

[tstrachan22]

You hit the nail on the head. IMO these principles are absolutely fundamental in achiveing success on the felt.

[html]while i may lose a lot of information on other players, players go out so quickly and you're moved tables and stuff that it's not that important. this method has worked for me quite well.
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I've been guilty of ignoring all three in the past and only in the last 6 months have I honed in on the big picture.

[wilsonmja]

These are basically good principles. Good post