How effective is good poker play?

What exactly is “good poker” play and how effective is it in this modern online environment? Well firstly I believe that too many players place too much emphasis on playing hands well. Do not get me wrong here or misunderstand what I am saying, at the end of the day we make money in poker by the accuracy of our playing decisions over those of our opponents. You always strive in poker to play your hands as optimally as possible and that is a given. However the overwhelming majority of players simply do not put in or cannot be bothered to put in that extra effort that is needed to really make a difference.

So they fall back and rely on the effectiveness of how they play hands to make them money. There is really only one problem with this and it is to do with how many big mistakes your opponents will make when you play like this. In years gone by then you could essentially guarantee that players on your table would make big errors frequently enough to give you a good sound earn rate. However things changed in around 2006 and the online environment became a whole lot tougher. I see this all the time, I see players go onto forums asking how to play certain hands in certain situations. It is as if there is only one way to play a hand. Obviously these players have yet to transcend the journey from novice to true expert but many never ever make that journey because they never work on their game for long enough.

Playing good poker is lots of different things; some people think that it is all about bluffing and semi-bluffing but there are many facets to playing good poker. The term “good poker” doesn’t just mean how well you play your hands. This is because how are you going to make money if your opponents are playing their hands every bit as well as you? Also can you be sure that you can play poker as well as what you think that you can? Millions of players the world over delude themselves in how well they play or delude themselves in how well their opponents can play. If you get this wrong or even slightly wrong then this turns winning players who are or should be winning players in their own minds into break even players and even losing players.

Many of the factors behind good poker have nothing to do with the actual playing of the hands themselves. They involve good game selection, watching your opponents and analysing your own game. When your opponents increase in sophistication then the variance increases and in many instances then you are really only just on the right side of gambling. If your skill level drops when you are losing and losses are magnified or you have misinterpreted the skill and ability of your opponents then you are going to have a problem making money playing poker. This is why I think many players are failing to make money; they simply do not appreciate the severity of the problem that they face. It is also why I think more and more players should be playing and using a short stack strategy than playing deep stack.

If you lack the full arsenal of poker skills then playing a deep stack can and will only serve to get you into trouble. I am certainly not saying that it is impossible to make money playing online poker but if you fail to take enough care and preparation and really fail to go into it with both eyes open then you are not going to be able to make much or all that much money.