Poker is a hard way to make an easy living

Cash / Marcus Bateman / 11 March 2010 / Leave a Comment

How you handle the trials and tribulations of poker will ultimately define you as a player in the long run, and being able to handle the unfairness of poker is a hallmark of all the truly greatest players

As the old saying goes: 'Poker is a hard way to make an easy living', and understanding why such a seemingly contradictory statement is true is important to dealing with the hard times of poker.

Poker is an extremely savage game - it's mix of luck and skill produces huge swings even for the best players - and it is often extremely unfair. Saying that, moaning about your luck when playing poker is a lot like complaining about getting wet if you go swimming, and it is extremely important that you are able to deal with the swings when you sit down at the tables.

A large portion of the money lost in poker is lost by people being unable to deal with down swings, where their bad luck starts to creep into their game, either making them play too timid and cautious (a recipe for disaster in all big bet games), or tilting and wild (just as dangerous) as they chase their losses. No one is immune to this phenomenon, and it is absolutely critical that you are able to not so much eradicate tilt (which is basically impossible amongst 99.9% of players), but to be able to reduce its effects.

You can see this in action if you imagine a long heads up battle between two specific player types. The first would be a genius card player who on their day is unrivalled, but when losing tilts hard and becomes all over the place. The second player would be an average heads up player, but who was incredibly mentally stable and hardly ever tilts. Over the long run, the genius player would actually lose in a match up like this, as although they would win most sessions (as they are the better player when playing well), the sessions where they tilted they will lose all of their profit plus interest to the stable average player through their awful play when tilting.

Poker is a much more complex game than just the playing of the cards. Staying strong in the face of adversity is arguably more important than your actual skill at the mechanics of the game. How you handle the trials and tribulations of poker will ultimately define you as a player in the long run, and being able to handle the unfairness of poker is a hallmark of all the truly greatest players.

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