Slow and Steady Wins the Race

What’s the Rush?

In poker, patience is key, especially for beginning and struggling micro stakes players. I think that patience is greatly overlooked and, therefore, commonly pushed to the side when people play poker. And I’m not talking about just patience with in-game play, but patience in all aspects of poker for someone looking to learning it and move up in stakes.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

So many beginning poker players are hell-bent on moving up the stakes as fast as possible with lofty dreams of turning $100 bankrolls playing 2NL into $5k rolls crushing 200NL; moreover, most drastically underestimate how difficult it is to make a sustainable living as a professional poker player. I’m not really sure why that is. Maybe it’s people underestimating the intricacies and advanced theory, strategy, and tactics in today’s modern poker game, underestimating the level of talent and skill of solid poker professionals, and just not understanding the game. Whatever it is, lots of people are just downright impatient and want to move up as fast as possible to become the next Phil Ivey or Tom Dwan.

Impatience = Recipe for Failure

The title for this sub-section of this blog entry could not be any truer. Impatience and trying to move up to soon, while at the same time overestimating your skill level, is a recipe for failure. You’ll find that you are not as good as you initially thought you were, your opponents are much better than you, and the game is a lot harder to beat than you thought it was.

Take Your Time, What’s the Rush?

So what is the key to success? It’s taking your time. Don’t rush your game, goals, and expectations. Set attainable stretch goals and push for them, but make them realistic! Build a foundation at the micro stakes ensuring you have a sound fundamental understanding of the game. Also, don’t get ahead of yourself and start learning intermediate and advanced strategies and tactics before you understand the basics really well. Also, make sure you are an actual winner at the lower stakes and a solid mental game strategy before you move up!

What Exactly Do I Need to Know?

I’m not going to go into that in detail in this blog entry, but expect more to come. The whole point behind this blog entry is simply to help you understand that patience = success in poker, especially for beginning and struggling players. So don’t rush it!