Going through the blog posts of late, I know you should know by now I’ve had a rough, like really worse than cooler run lately with the cards. Although it may seem like it’s been almost a month since I’d posted a good win, the actual sample of hands played isn’t that great. I haven’t had a lot of time to put into the game due to external pressures such as work and other errands. But I’ve also got myself to blame for certain things poker related. Let me explain…

Do you know what is the one most important thing a lot of poker players fail to fully grasp? That is that very few players win enough to break even and even fewer (<5%) realize a considerate and steady profit. Why’s that?

I spent some time researching player stats online in an attempt to glean concrete differentiating factors between the real dominating predator sharks and the lesser aquatic vertebrate species. The privileged few that collect and the multitudes clueless happy-go-lucky individuals that donate. What I’d discovered didn’t as much surprise me as hit me sort of square over the head: “like, yeah, shouldn’t that have already been obvious??” The guys that make a killing at the poker tables are top notch heads-up specialists.  The one piece that the proven masters of poker have in common is the overwhelming experience in the kind of game most try to avoid.  Behind them they have tons of pots waged, some lost, but mostly won, in heads-up one-on-one confrontations.

The facts are indisputable: what makes or breaks a poker player is his/her ability to dominate his opponent singularly and utterly to the bitter end, until the very last dime is drained from the villain’s bankroll. To really master every facet of poker one has to start by isolating and destroying each and every opponent one at a time.

Cowering behind a group of up to nine players at a full ring game, set mining your pockets and waiting to out luck your unwitting opponent is simply not nearly as an effective way to mature and grow in poker. To learn how to win any poker game one has to learn to beat his opponents over thousands of hands straight up, sitting face-to-face across a single table.

Think of all the tournaments you had the fortune to run deep in and still lost? Or that time when you really got super lucky and had won a few fortunate coin flips to get heads-up? Yet really laid a stinker at the very end to loose out on a huge chunk of the total prize pool? I guarantee you, it is the money you loose out on by not properly butchering the last holdout player in a tourney that really matters. That could be your profit for a whole year. Instead, as most other mediocre players you have to enjoy the lower payouts and spread them thin to last until the next marginally successful hit (which is also a statistical inevitability by the way.. unless you are both a donkey and cursed).

So mine advice to myself then is to really refocus my game on the heads up play. Figure that one out and fast. As I think more through this exciting facet of the game, I’ll make follow up posts in the strategy section to share with the loyal readers. Until than, peace out!