Let me introduce myself. Just to be clear I'm not a professional poker player--at least by my definition of "professional". By my definition, a "professional poker player" derives the bulk of his/her income from poker. I don't. I have a day job that provides most of my income. I am, however, a winning poker player.
I have been playing poker for a few years now and thoroughly enjoy our game. How many hobbies actually pay for themselves?
Poker is the only game I play in the casino. As far as I know, poker is the only game in the casino not played against the casino. I figure playing against the casino is a long range losing proposition almost by definition since the casino MUST win in the long run in order to stay in business.
I plan to blog occasionally with some insights for the casual player. If you're looking for professional tips to take your game to the next level you will probably want to look elsewhere.
Here goes:
You know the guy. We all know the guy. In fact, we all know several of the guys. You know of whom I'm speaking. The guy who never makes a mistake at the poker table. Every time you talk to the guy he tells you how he got knocked out of the last tournament and it's always the same story with only slight variations: "I raised with KK............idiot called me with J6 offsuit..........couldn't get him to fold........flopped a jack...........rivered a six." The story has an infinite number of variations but the basic storyline never changes.
Just once wouldn't you like to hear "the guy" admit that he was knocked out of the tourney because he played poorly? Because he made a mistake? Or at least he misread an opponent's hand?
Rest assured, I make plenty of mistakes. Sure, I get beat from time to time by the infamous "suck out" but I don't play perfect poker and probably never will. All we can hope to do is continually improve by learning from our mistakes. But how can we learn from our mistakes if we don't even admit that we make mistakes?
Until next time.
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