Champion of Poker

IMPULSIVE, AGGRESSIVE, IMPATIENT, BRAVE, RESTLESS, INTOLERANT

These six descriptive words are pertinent to my personality and character. Some time ago, I along with my partner did a psychological evaluation on myself. I have always had the ability to self analyse myself and I know full well my personality defects and am aware of my weaknesses….guess that makes me lucky because you need that to succeed in poker.

I asked her to write out one word descriptions of my personality and not to pull any punches because I wanted honesty. I did exactly the same and we did 25 answers each, amazingly we had no fewer than 17 identical words on our lists when we compared them.

As I looked down the list, something striking hit me that I had simply not comprehended before. There was not one single description of my personality that was an advantage when playing Limit Texas Hold’em poker full ring games but yet there were no fewer than six descriptions that were either pro short handed NL or anti full ring limit.

This is the kind of thing that a player can go an entire lifetime and never notice and it took me a few years I have to confess. Suddenly I realised why I was not enjoying poker online and why I had trouble concentrating for more than an hour at a time……I was bored out of my skull because the games did not fit my personality. It is like listening to a conversation where the topic has absolutely no interest for you at all. Yet that same person could drone on about something that interests you and you would be enthralled.

So I started to play six handed NL ring games and never looked back. I was earning far more money not because I knew the game any better but because I was concentrating far more intently for longer periods because I was thoroughly enjoying what I was doing for the first time. This is precisely why it is a fallacy to think that just because a pro is successful in $100-$200 games that they could beat all games below that.

They possibly COULD beat all of the games below that but the fact is that it is far from certain. If grinding it out proves impossible then they are not going to beat $2-$4 for instance. This is why many players play poker tournaments, they are just not cut out for the constant repetitive full ring games. But it does underline the point once again that in poker, in order to succeed you really must understand yourself as well as understand your opponents.

You will often be able to feel the flow of the poker game if you can learn to tap into that. The different player moods of your opponents can shift with each pot that they win and lose. They can shift with how tight they have been or how loose they have been or even who has needled them. You really need to be playing single tables in online poker to be able to tap into this game feel but when you do then it is a tremendous feeling.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson