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What a nice dream would be to wake up every day and have the freedom to do what you want and how much money you want. Unfortunately, most people do not even approach such a dream, some having boring job working from 9 to 17. However, professional poker players live this dream, they do not have a program that they must follow and they feel they can work. This is why people spend countless hours studying and improving their game strategy, as one day they will become professional poker players. There are two reasons for what a poker player would want to become a pros. One of the reason is that he can win much more money than he could earn if he would go for any other job. But for this there are necessary about 500 hours of poker with an hourly rate much higher than any other job. And the second reason is because , being a poker pros implies a different lifestyle, with a lot of travelling and a lot of money to spend.
Being a professional poker player is like being a businessman . He or she knows how to play poker on order to increase the income. Knows everything about pot odds, EV, what type of game suits best , what skills are needed for different types of games to win money. But there are some aspects by which the pros are different like skills, bankroll, guts and luck. Also the amounts of money that pros play vary. The only thing that they have in common is that poker is their source of income.
Being a pros you first have to be emotionally stable. As a professional, it is important to express your emotions as little. Also, you must be able to read your opponents thoughts.
Professional poker is not based on luck, but on many hours of playing .In the long run, luck is not a deciding factor. Of course, someone can lose any day in front of a beginner. But if you have an opponent for year, he will never make it out the winner. A game of poker requires maximum concentration and a long clearance from the player. He should not let opponents to “read” the attitude if he got a good hand or not. Becoming a pros you will need not only the knowledge, the skills but also the ambition and the desire of winning money. For most of pros, poker is their life but is often better as a secondary job. Those kind of players enjoy poker as an another source of income and a hobby, but they don’t relay on poker as the main source of income. Some of them try to avoid the anti social, monotone way of playing of other players. They try to find a balance between a normal social life with friends and family and the time spend in casinos for playing poker. So being a pros doesn’t mean that you are privileged, it also involves some “grey” aspects.
If in the first part were exposed general information about expected utility, how this concept applies in poker, and that people should play in general risk-neutral, in the second part about this concept we will see that people are inclined to play risk-averse. The risk averse players are those who are very cautions with their sum of money, even if the pot that could possibly be won, have the same value as their amount of money. Instead, risk-neutral poker players are not afraid to bet a big sum of money and they waive their right to bet if they realize that the probability of winning is small.
Opportunity cost
If you are into online poker tournament you can play either at one table or multi tables. Some players only like to play one game at a time, but most of the pros prefer multi tabling. Comparing to online games, in a casino, playing at multiple tables it is very difficult because you will miss out hands on the tournament and so you will decrease your EV. On the other hand, by playing multi table you will slow down the game and the other players will get very upset.
Another situation concerning the opportunity cost refers to the fact that playing in a tournament live in a casino, you give up the chance of playing a cash game. In order to decide what game you should play is good to think about the hourly rate that you expect to make from the tournament and the hourly rate from the cash games at the casino. The reality is that there are few people who are taking into consideration the hourly rate because most of them are playing poker because of the enjoyment factor of the tournament. In online poker games this sort of opportunity cost doesn’t apply much because playing a tournament involves only opening another window on the computer screen.
Bullying
In poker there are some players that can really play good only if they have large amount of chips and this is because they bluff very often so they can make other aggressive moves. They like to be in the situation when they can capture the entire stack of an opponent just from one hand. So the goal of those players is to win the tournament and not to survive during it. They play on the principle “everything or nothing”. By taking the stack of their opponents, these players can afford to bully into submission the other opponents in the game. For these players the EV made at the beginning of the game turns out to be a negative one, but on the long run the EV become positive because they play so much better with a huge amount of chips.
For a player to succeed in poker it takes various abilities and the most important are: tactics, psychological skills and game selection skills. Tactics refers to pot odds and value batting. These strategies must be learned by many beginners, but sometimes the experienced players have much to discover. Psychological skills include the capacity of reading people and spot tells. Experienced poker players have two fundamental skills that do not stand math: to mask the feelings (because opponents do not guess if you have a good hand or not) and that of others to infer by studying mimic, and gesture language. Psychologist Mike Caro, which sought a lifetime behavioral indicators of poker, said most attention to detail matters, for example the way the opponent keeps the cards, the way he looks or moves … Some give away, simply singing a song, sighing , beating with the fingers on the table , checking the cards and trying to build false runways .
One of the most valued skills in live poker is to read your opponent, those ‘poker tells’ that can make the difference between a brilliant bluff or a stupid bet. Unfortunately, many beginners fall into the trap of-and overestimate the ability to read opponents and major mistakes that lead inevitably to destruction of their bankroll. The ability of detecting poker tells is acquired in time, but most times it is preferable to accept the possibility of being made with a bluff rather to watch at any price to make a magnificent call.
The most important aspect when it comes to poker is game selection skills. Choosing what type of game you should play it is an important skill. While many players desire to improve their playing skills in order to win money, they forget this aspect of game selection. This concept doesn’t refer to the type of poker like limit or no limit, but rather to the type of poker game that it better suits a poker player, that it will be profitable for him. So finding the right game is difficult to master but here are some tips to take into consideration:
-You should consider the location. The poker rooms where you are playing it has a reputation for tough games or there is always full of fish.
-Consider the time. This aspect is not so important in online games because there are a lot of games that are being played. In live games it could happen to confront with fishier situations.
-Consider specific players. What kind of players do usually play where you play poker: there are fish player or is an abundance of professionals. It is also good to know their style of playing poker and to realize if you are able to formulate strategies to combat their styles.
-Consider the limit means to think how good you are at this type of game, how often you win, if you are struggling or you barely beat your opponents. It is good to stay on limits where you have a profit.
So game selection it is much easier to be done for online games rather than live games. For online games you can chose what game to play, you can analyze all the aspects mentioned above, you can observe your opponents playing styles ,but in casino games, you are placed at one table where you have to play, without knowing anything.
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