Winning is Everything

Over the years I have seen my share of bad beats and suck out playing this crazy game of no limit holdem. There are going to be good times and bad. But the thing I see the better players do more often than most is play to win. In poker tournaments there is no tomorrow. Seriously, well placed risk is what any good player is looking to capitalize on when it gets down to it.

Too often I see players in tournaments that are playing to make the money instead of trying to win the tournament. Contrary to what you might believe these players are not all average or bad players. Some of them have very good games but simply do not understand the dynamics of managing a tournament. It took me a while to understand how to manage a tournament too. After a while you get tired of cashing and begin to ask yourself questions as to why you get the Final Table but are not placing in the top three spots more frequently.

For me it took some self assessment and pouring over my results a couple of times to plug holes in my game that were preventing me from being as successful as I could be. After doing so I realized that I was not taking enough risk late in the tournament to have enough chips to compete at the Final Table. All it took for me to find this out was to simply admit that I was missing something in my game and to begin to look for it in my results.

You can do it too. If you wanna be good at tournament poker or even cash games you have to always look to improve. There's nothing wrong with that because winning is everything!