Having a back up plan in poker

If you want to be able to play poker as a career then you need to have a plan in place for how you will make money. It is of little use simply going by the seat of your pants, if you do this then you will not be surprised or you shouldn’t be surprised that you failed. If you look at many football commentators when they critique the play of certain teams when things are not going well then they often say that they “lack a plan B”. This applies to poker as well because there is one thing in poker that will be almost certain to happen and this is that your primary Plan A will either stop working or it will at least temporarily stop working from time to time.

I would never consider myself a great poker player and many players are better than me……in other words they have stronger and more effective “Plan A’s”. However if there is one thing that I have learned to do in twenty years of gambling and that is to adjust and survive! There are some amazingly talented poker players out there who had some fantastic “Plan A’s” who are now facing up to working for someone else again in a mundane day job.

This was simply because they had absolutely no plan B. In my experience if you do not have a plan B and even a plan C and D then your plan A has severe problems irrespective of its strength! I have taken this a step further in that writing and coaching for me has become almost a plan E and F. I set myself a goal some years ago of never working for anyone else ever again and to do that then you absolutely must have several plans in place. So even though I may not have the best “Plan A” in the world, I do have numerous fairly good back up plans in place in case the primary plan fails for whatever reason.

In my opinion then this is key to long term success as a professional player. It was Charles Darwin who said that the species that will survive the best will not be the strongest or the most intelligent but the most adaptive. This applies to any living entity that is immersed within a constantly shifting environment. Poker is certainly one such environment and now I no longer strive for recognition from the poker masses or my peers as I often play in a style that forbids this from happening.

However at the end of the day poker to me is about not just making money but continuing to lead the life that I want to lead and that means never ever having an employer ever again. Being a good player involves more than just playing cards well, if you really want to be a pro then you need to have numerous fall back positions in place and not just the one way of playing. You need a primary strategy……a secondary strategy and also further strategies in case they fail. Even when things are going well then you still need to be working on fall back strategies.