blonde poker forum

Live poker is a very complex game and I firmly believe successful players - or winners - or those that win more than others, have some innate abilities that we don't all possess. So saying that xxxxx, or any other keen young player CAN become great or a winner, is in my opinion, not the case.

We are all playing a game within a type of ponzi scheme where money at the bottom makes its way to the top, with many at the bottom and few at the top. Do the maths.

Many people 'suffer' from feeling they almost have a 'right' to make money at this game. It is absolutely not the case. There will always be players that spend hours learning and playing who never improve or win.

I firmly believe that innate personal traits such as the following create winners at poker.

Having a winning mentality
Being prepared to take risks
Having a gambling nature
Balls
Experience of having or losing money (relative to the sums you are trying to win)
Patience
Being relaxed/happy
Confidence.


Then mix in the learned skills:
Technical ability
Maths/Odds
Experience
More experience
Even more experience

And you can become a winner in this game. The less you have from the innate list, the more chance you have of not making it in this game. Anyone care to disagree?

I am unfortunately on an internet 'voucher' that cost half a leg and a few fingers so I cannot reply in my usual tl:dr fashion.

I agree the traits you've mentioned can help, however I firmly believe I could teach my girlfriend who is
- an intelligent woman
- with no gambling habbits/ ideas or tendancies
- no 'balls' as you've put it
- or experience of having or losing money


to consistently and steadily beat the £1/2 and below live cash and <£300 tournament games in a very short amount of time.
(this isn't to say she would magically be the best player in them, just be able to beat them for a profit worth playing for)


However, to be fair and honest.. its taken me a long time to get to the point where I do - and a little longer to gain the 'full' appreciation i have now.   Undoubtedly having some 'degenerative' tendancies (that are controllable, clearly difficult) will help you understand other 'degens' and therefore be able to adapt to them better but they absolutely aren't needed over fundamental mathematical understanding or life discipline tendancies.

- there are a couple of very good examples (on blonde) of people that are good at poker but great at life or 'discpline' and therefore make a lot of money in poker
- and others who are poker super geniuses but are so degenerate that they can't keep $10 long enough to buy a cinema ticket


its not a complete disagree, but not a complete agree.... :)

Quality topic will post my views tomorrow when im less tired.

I tend to think, that to be a long term, decently winning poker player, the most important element is high intelligence / high IQ - probably top 10% of the population.
This would be especially true for online winners, but still holds for the live stuff.

Clearly, you then need some of the other elements that you listed, and a good brain alone isn't enough, but it's the one thing that is the foundation for long term winners.

Do I need to quote Jungleman again ?

He was spot on, fact of the matter is it's all a bit of a joke, people who win think they are the dogs bollocks when really most of them are terrible, and if someone runs shit for a while then they're clueless, it's all just a massive luckbox fest, run good and you will win, run bad and sigh on your way home.

Fortune favours the brave?

Agreed; analytical skills/intelligence, I guess I left that off as a given, be interested in any stats on this amongst the top winners.

Ignorance is bliss.

jgcblack is quite right, pretty much anyone can learn to play poker well without breaking a sweat. All the skills mentioned in op aren't actually innate, you can easily learn to have such things as patience and aggression in the context of a game. Any average person can learn to apply an optimum strategy within a game. But when you devote a lot of time to learning/playing a game you need some kinda justification for that investment and thinking you have that something kinda special provides it. You can learn to play in 5 minutes and can get competant/good very quickly. I mean with Rosetta Stone they reckon a person can learn a whole new fucking language inside a month. Ultimately being good at poker is about shrugging the result when you play well and that only comes with experience.

The only difference that separates winners from losers is the investment of time. Most losers play for fun or to see some cards so just can't be arsed to learn how to play well, especially for long periods. Most people solve this by justifying they played well when they didn't. The % who decide to put in the graft aren't really separated by very much and probably wont have the whole innate package because poker appeals to both left/right side dominant brains. Good poker isn't all about just playing cards and jamming with 7-2 there's a lot of other skills to master like managing your finances, selecting games, mentally handling variance etc, mostly boring stuff but can be easily learnt all the same. Sorry to break the news kids.

All very interesting but...

How much did you lose?

The biggest things imo are

1. Emotional control
2. Detached from money

If you cant control your emotions or you cant deal with the variance of getting in multiple buyins with marginal equity then you simply wont cut it.

Degenning!


cant be a poker pro if u have a bad roulette/blackjack/sports problem!

Good post agree with the majority of this. Think that the investment of time towards playing the game is a very important factor see the Gladwell effect for instance. And as Jared Tendlar points to in his book
ALM and inchworm as forms of improvement.

Not all top players have high IQ sure it helps though. Also think there are different kinds of intelligence such as social intelligence with regards to people skills
that could/would be learnt through chance during life.

This

Didnt Phil Hellmuth give a woman who had never played before but was a competent thinking intelligent person about 4/5 basic hands/scenarios to play in a tourney and she cashed no probs, prob back before everyone was 6 bet folding tho :)

Don't really agree with a lot of this.

• Anyone who spends hours learning will improve. How much they improve will depend how they try to learn, how effectively they use that time and their intellect
• You can teach people who have no "gambling nature" or particular risk taking tendencies or "balls" or whatever you wanna call it and have no "experience of having or losing money" to get used to winning and losing money. I like to think I'm a pretty good example of this. I have never had a job and the only money I've ever had / earned has come through poker. I never gambled before poker and was pretty risk averse and careful where money was concerned but I like to think I've become somewhat successful as a poker player (albeit in a very minor way compared to a lot of people posting on here)

Thing I do think lend themselves to being successful in poker:

• Being a very analytical thinker
• Good emotional control
• Being willing to learn and put in the effort to improve (not really specific to poker but still true)

As far as personality traits go; I have noticed that all the most successful people I've known in poker are incredibly laid back and easy going people (I dunno if other people notice this as well?) This must help people deal with variance and just being able to shrug off losses rather than more uptight, highly strung people who are maybe more sensitive to swings