More poker tips and thoughts to inspire your poker game....
PRESERVE YOUR PROSPERITY! When you have a winning streak and build up a nice stack remember to preserve your prosperity. Just because you can afford to play the bully doesn’t mean it’s an obligation. Try to keep the same discipline when you are well ahead that you had at the very outset of an evening of normal online play. Great players stay steady in their strategies whether they’re up or down. If you start playing like you’re the Almighty, just because you’ve had a good run, you’ll pretty soon get reminded that particular job is already taken.
PLAY WITH PROFESSIONALS Every once in a while get yourself into a big tournament where you can mix it up with professionals. Texas Hold’em is not soccer. In poker you can often play and win above your weight. Just take a look at some of the WSOP results over the last seven or eight years. The winners’ enclosures are littered with professionals who were retired hurt by poker punks with only twelve or eighteen months of play under their belts. A sure way to learn all of the finer points of the game and to boost your confidence no end is to play with the best. You might even surprise yourself.
IN CYBERSPACE NO-ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM! I always know when I need to get out into a live action game. I usually find myself yelling or hooting at the PC screen. This doesn’t impress my dog and there’s really no logic to the outbursts as I’m otherwise on my own in the room. Once or twice a month spent in the company of winners, losers, drunks and cheats makes for the ideal contrast with the fast and furious pace of online play. It also serves to remind us all why ultimately we prefer to be at home listening to the sound of our own encouragement.
HOW MUCH MONEY IS OUT THERE? Just how big is the supposed online gaming mania that’s going on around us? Has anyone tried to quantify it recently? The answer is yes. The global figure is so enormous it more or less defies definition but Virgin Money’s latest 2006 survey of money wagered online in Britain alone came up with a conservative annual figure well in excess of two billion pounds sterling. Apparently over ninety percent of the adult population with an internet connection, at one time or another, have gambled money online. One in twenty of all the people surveyed by Virgin admitted to sometimes playing for up to five hours at a stretch online. On this basis alone, remembering the vast amounts wagered by Americans (despite their government) and the wild gamblers of the Far East, an annual global total of a Trillion dollars is far from fanciful. Don’t be fooled by recent drops in the stock market prices of some of the massive gaming companies due to temporary political blips. The future isn’t orange, it’s GREEN!
