Poker: More Than Luck. A Lot More.
by Bodog Poker | Sep 8 2010
With sports networks showing highly-edited poker tournaments where pros like Evelyn Ng and Phil Ivey battle it out for massive pots, it’s easy to see how many people are caught up in the allure of the game. The fact that these televised games frequently feature pros that have years of experience bluffing or playing very aggressively helps make the game look even more appealing, as players are shown making what look like ridiculous decisions and walking away with huge profits. The fact is, though, that making money at poker is not as easy as they make it to be, just like driving in a NASCAR race is not about pressing down the accelerator and going around in a circle for two hours. In fact, so much skill is required that many consider poker to be a sport, even as it’s lumped in by others to be in the same category as roulette or craps.
How do you start to make money playing poker? By realizing that the game is not about against playing against the deck or the house; it’s about playing against other players. The online poker site or casino that you play at makes money by collecting the rake and to them, it doesn’t matter who wins or loses. The faster you realize that and the quicker you use these presuppositions against other players, the better chance you have at becoming a player who profits from the game.
Don’t get us wrong: luck does play a factor in the very beginning stages of any hand of poker. No one can predict how the cards will be dealt and there is very little information available on what other players are holding, but you don’t know how other players are going to do in games such as chess or checkers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t play those games skillfully.
Patience is a key factor in the game as well. Both Slansky and Hellmuth discuss this in their respective books about the game and Slansky in particular cites the idea that players should realistically look at earning a single large bet in an hour of play at a non-online poker table. If you are playing lower-ranged limit games (we’ll just say $5/$10 blinds,) and spend 50 hours at the tables, you should expect a rate of return of about $500 for the work you’ve put in. It’s a moderate amount of money, to be sure, but you are playing in lower-stakes games. Bigger money players can expect to win more money, of course, but they should have the skills to back up their larger bankrolls and be able to take the larger risks associated with playing against better-caliber players.
That example is based directly on the observations of real-world poker play and both authors wrote the first editions of their books before the game became the phenomenon it is at present. Online poker games move faster, though, and can frequently be more frustrating to new players who can’t seem to catch a card. Thankfully, you can look forward to playing in more hands and catching more cards per hour that are worth playing.
Keep your expectations realistic and realize that it’s not just about who has the best cards, but who plays the cards they have the best.
