Patience: A key to winning at poker.
I had not played a cash game online in a while, since 1/1/08 to be exact, to me that is a long time since you can play anytime, anywhere and for as long as you want. Last night I got the itch to play, but it was about 10:00pm already when I started. I thought, “I’ll just pop in for about an hour, hopefully things will go well early and I can get out“. First mistake- things don’t usually go well early, and even when they do you start feeling good about everything and hang around longer than you should. Second mistake- because it was late and I didn’t want to be up all night, I didn’t really have the patience I should to wait for the best hands. Patience is usually my best poker skill, and I believe it to be one of the biggest keys to winning in the long run. At the low stakes I play right now, .01/.02 NL Holdem mainly, a lot of people play a wide range of hands. In the long run, waiting to have better cards than they do, pays off. In the short term, you’ll have bad beats or bad flops, but in the long run you’ll make money if you are consistently playing with better starting hands than they are. I lost money last night, I have to blame myself, I went into the game with a time limit on my mind and it effected my patience.
January 29th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
If patience is an issue, make your own starting hand guide that shows the weakest hand you will play from each position. You are away from the table so you will be objective. Then when you get to the table, you’ll know you can rely on it.