CasinoGaming.com


	Sundays: Inside Gaming Tuesdays: Video Poker Wednesdays: Off the Shelf Fridays: Richard Eng, Player's Edge Saturdays: Pocket Aces

POCKET ACES

Columns

• Back to Maryann's index

• Back to columnists' index

Maryann Guberman has been a writer and editor with many gaming publications, including Sports Form, Card Player, Poker World, Player's Panorama and Systems and Methods. She also has written and edited numerous books on gambling.

Oct. 23, 2004

Winning: Do It Your Way

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent. - Sophia Loren

Depending on who is giving the advice, you are liable to hear that you have to be of superior intelligence to master poker; if you're not street-smart clever you can't become a great poker player; it's imperative that you have a mathematical mind to succeed at poker; having the capacity to understand what makes people tick (psychology) is a necessity if you're to be a real winner. ...

These and similarly limiting statements are mostly true but they are not absolutely true.

To win at poker, you have to first identify your own strength. That strength will be your jumping off point.

For example, if you are a mathematically-inclined individual, you will easily master the concept of odds with little or no effort. You'll be able to figure pot odds and probability of a turn outcome to three or four decimal points and as a result, you'll need little more than a quick look at your hand to know what kind of risk you can‹will or won't‹take.

If you are a people reader, capable of catching the slightest dart of a glance and interpreting it, you will be ahead of the majority. When your opponent looks down at his chips before it's his turn to wager, you'll know immediately what it means and you will play your hand accordingly.

If you have a talent for memorizing cards, you'll be able to know without the slightest effort whether you should become involved in a hand as well has how you should become involved.

If you have a near-photographic memory and can recall cards that are folded without talking silently to yourself, you will have no trouble knowing which direction your moves will take.

Probably none of these abilities individually will make you a superstar, but with just one or more, when luck's on your side, they'll have people thinking you are genius personified.

Still, no matter which game you play, you can be a winner even if you possess just one outstanding forte but if you want to be a big winner, you will have to develop as much efficiency in other areas as you possibly can. Even before that, however, you have to decide if you really want to make money playing poker.

I know many people who play video poker on a regular basis‹some of them hitting their favorite Las Vegas local casino nightly. Most of them play a decent game; some play an excellent game. Still, I have yet to hear one of them tell me they made money playing video poker. They don't make money because that is not their primary purpose for playing. They want to get out of the house and forget whatever daily grind is boring, depressing, burdening, or overwhelming them. You'd be surprised at the number of people who admit to this! They have no satisfying hobbies or interests. But they have video poker and it keeps them active and it almost always keeps them without the extra spending money they might have it they didn't gamble at all.

It's hard not be be judgmental about this but like ring game and tournament poker players, even people with one or more pieces of the talent puzzle don't succeed because they aren't really interested in cashing out winners.

So while people can succeed, even with limited skills, they don't excel because they don't put their heart and soul into that one goal.

Once you can focus on the goal, you then you have to pursue it doggedly, with passion and commitment. You have to commit as much time as it takes. You have to practice. You have to remember, it's not brain surgery but you could not survive in that field either without intense focus.

And remember to start where you have a level of comfort and only a slight sense of apprehension. Play the low limit tables and the small buy-in tourneys and remember, for every tournament winner who rakes in the million (plus) in prize money, there are at least 500 who don't sail into the money enough times to pay for bus fare home yet alone a pizza and beer.