The shortest way to poker success

Everyone is looking for the shortest way to achieving success at the poker table. Of course, I needn’t even tell you that most every new player who signs up and hits an online poker table for the first time in his life, thinks (or at least secretly hopes) that he is some kind of outstanding poker genius, someone for whom the game and its intricacies will fall into place naturally. Legends and hearsay about people who make it big overnight at the online poker tables abound, but then again, one can’t really hit a poker forum where 99% of the posters are not highly successful players. How reliable is all that information though? Most probably, not very. You see, us humans have a way of creating legends about our overachievers. There are all sorts of clichés about scientists “happening” over their most significant discoveries at a moment’s notice, as if by chance. The same goes for poker players, and because poker is a game with a significant luck factor involved, it’s so much more believable. The problem is though, that the same way those scientists we like consider lucky albeit smarter than average bastards were everything but that, successful poker players don’t effortlessly spring out of anonymity either.

Most of the major scientific breakthroughs throughout the history of mankind have been the results of years and years of study, discipline, hard work and number crunching. Since the analogy I’m trying to draw here is quite obvious: the same is required for poker success.
Like it or not, there are no shortcuts to online poker success. I’m a poker player indeed, but I’m nowhere near the level some of my friends have managed to achieve at the virtual green felt. The reason I never managed to break out of the mold of the recreational player is that I firmly believe I can make money EASIER doing something else, rather than playing poker at the level it requires to reward efforts with success. I can tell you that being truly successful at poker takes time, tons and tons of energy, grit and the ability to take massive downswings in stride and to bounce back from bankruptcy time and time again.

When you look at a poker player like Daniel Negreanu, all you see is a mostly smiley face, always radiating a weird type of charisma, and beyond that as average a person as you can possibly imagine. The problem is you don’t see the real engine that keeps that system ticking: the thousands upon thousands of hours spent at the green felt, at the online and the live tables. The countless heartbreaks and above all, the ability to take a punch to the face, then ask for another one and keep going. You don’t see that, and that’s the real secret behind the scenes in the case of pretty much every “name” pro you so envy and aim to be like.

Poker is a game built on math and if you sport a superior IQ, you’re probably starting with an advantage, or are you? According to many of the experts, success and IQ are only loosely correlated in life in general and in poker in particular. What that means is that a superior IQ doesn’t guarantee you anything at the green felt. At the end of the day, what it comes down to is grit and determination. You have to be willing to turn poker into your second nature, otherwise you odds for success in today’s increasingly competitive poker world will remain close to nil.