No Work, No Money!

When I look around the poker world, I see that people like to play poker, either to compete, to have fun, or to make money. But I also see a gap in understanding how big the difference in effort is between the first two reasons and the third reason.

Poker has changed over the years, and you really need to be good to make decent money consistently. You can't just play 10,000 hands a year without studying, reviewing hands, watching courses, doing database analysis, or getting coaching to be even close to competitive.

This is also the main reason people think online poker is rigged: the skill gap is just too big, and they are emotionally invested in the game, which is, of course, the opposite of how you should approach poker.

You Need Reps

In today's poker, you can't just play live MTTs or even live cash games and improve as a poker player. If you think about it, your competition is playing tens of thousands of hands online per month, and you can barely play thousands of hands in a year playing live poker, so the gap in experience is already huge and getting bigger year after year. The number of years you play poker for doesn't matter; the number of hands played matters!

The other thing about playing online is that it is much tougher than live poker. The skill you need to beat NL10 is higher than the skill needed to beat a $1-$2 live cash game, which means playing against tougher competition makes you better.

Importance of Data

Previously, poker was a game of intuition and natural skill and talent. Times have changed, and now it is more about effort and data.

If I have data on how you are playing and you don't have data on me, you can only win by luck. HUDs and understanding of data have become more important than ever, and playing poker on sites that allow HUDs, without a HUD, would be a suicide for your bankroll.

If you are against a good player who is using a good HUD and has data on you, you will get exploited by not even noticing you are getting exploited if the player decides to "kill you" slowly over time. He can also decide to be more transparent and just go for max exploits, maximizing his winrate in a short period before you notice it and adjust.

These are reasons why you need to review your hands and do database analysis to spot your leaks and see if your competition is seeing a hole in your game where they can exploit you.

Mental Game

This is one of the most neglected aspects of poker by many players, and I can see it everywhere. Players will be affected by so many different biases, and the game will suffer. For example, (Recency Bias), a Player who just had a banger year and won a huge MTT will start thinking the game is so easy and will go into tougher games and play against better competition when he realistically doesn't have the skills to compete and was just on the better side of variance to win the bit tourney.

More often than not, the downswing will hit, and he will lose all of the money he won and more. He will lose confidence and again will be affected by another bias, thinking that he can never win, that other players are better, or that he runs the worst out of everybody. This will increase his downswing even more (Loss Aversion Bias) as he will also start to tilt more and play more conservatively, avoiding close +EV spots to avoid variance and risk of losing more money.

We also have one super common bias that we see in everyday life: (Hindsight Bias) people will evaluate if a decision was right or wrong based on the outcome, even tho they had no control over the outcome, except for previous actions to increase or reduce the probability of a positive outcome.

Recently, a hand was played on GGPoker in which a player folded pocket aces on the final table and avoided being eliminated. The opinions of people in the comments were split. Even the call with aces was a fist pump call, where the player would have an 80%+ chance to take the chip lead of the table and get additional bounties, as it was a WSOP mystery bounty event, and two short stacks were all-in.

Professional Athlete Approach

The way you need to approach poker is like that of a professional athlete. Sleep is one of the most important things you need to make the best possible decisions and focus during your session. Even a short loss of focus can cost you hours of winrate and set you back a ton.

Training on a daily basis. You need to have a GTO Wizard or other GTO bot to play against and drill the most common spots (BB vs SB, BB vs BTN, etc.). When you are good at these, expand your focus on other spots to improve.

Avoiding sugar during or before playing would be good as it can change your mood and affect your gameplay by giving you a burst of energy and then making you tired a few minutes later. This can also cost you hours of your winrate and set you back.

Always perform by playing shorter sessions, and avoid playing when not in a great mood. We can see from streamers who chase leaderboards how their game goes from A+ to D- over time, and with experience we can also notice in our own game that after few hours of focusing we are getting less interested and losing focus. This is where we take a break and come back later when we feel fresher.