How to be a Good Poker Player and How to Survive a Downswing

Qualities that make a poker player good

Playing poker for a living can be rewarding, but only if you are among those 2% who win a lot of money at the tables. Contrary to what James Bond movies depict, poker is nothing like what we see on TV, and whether you play Omaha, No limit hold’em or Stud poker there is a lot of hard work behind each success story.

Some of them are innate others can be learned, but those who realize that they lack most of them would be better off keeping poker as a hobby. Discipline and composure go head to head and are among the most important qualities a poker player needs to have. In the absence of these two traits, all of his work would be in vain, because a single session can be enough to ruin his life's work.

Bad beats will happen and only those who can overcome them confident that better days will come due to their skill, will thrive on long term. Patience has a lot to do with the aforementioned qualities, but it also implies the player’s ability to wait for as long as it takes to make the best play. Some sessions will be lousy due to lack of proper cards and while rookies will choose to alter their game for the sake of more action, veterans will not take unnecessary risks.

How to survive a downswing

Every poker player knows that variance is one of the obstacles that he needs to overcome, but when the downswing occurs, very few actually know what to do. The lack of solutions comes from the fact that players focus entirely on mending the effects, instead of trying to address the underlying causes. Bad luck is rarely the only factor and this means that most people are wrong when blaming fate for their mishaps.

A string of unfavorable results and being the victim of a suckout, are a few events that have the potential of triggering massive downswings. There is a difference between going on tilt and suffering a downturn, and understanding these two concepts is much easier when you have unrestricted access to relevant information. The only remedy for tilt is taking a break and thinking about what happened, something that can be used when confronted with a downswing.

If you have the resources to go on vacation or at least live your life without thinking about poker for a few days, you should do exactly that. Those who can't afford the luxury should think about the hands that triggered the downfall and analyze their game. There is nothing that a retrospective can't fix and in addition to finding the root of evil, this kind of reviewing gives you plenty of time to cool down and return to your winning ways. Especially those who want to make the transition from No limit Hold Em to Stud Poker should visit https://www.pokerinusa.net/ to avoid the most common errors that drive new players on tilt.