I’ll just come out and say it: I play poker to win money.

Just like any other poker player, I will take money from my friends, my ene­mies, my neigh­bor, the fathers of my son’s pre-school friends and even my wife.  Hell, if my grand­mother would sit down with me I would try my darnedest to take her money as well.

In order to win more money at poker, I have done what any true poker player does: study.

I study a lot.

I buy the books: Sit ‘n Go Strat­egy, Har­ring­ton on Hold ‘em, Online Ace, etc. I under­line impor­tant parts, take notes and imple­ment the techniques.

I take inter­net courses:  Deep­stacks Uni­ver­sity, the online inter­ac­tive course endorsed by Mike “The Mouth” Matu­sow. (great site by the way!)

I have dis­cus­sions with fel­low poker play­ers about strat­egy, odds, etc.

You’d think with all this dili­gent work my results would be bet­ter.  Online I am a break even player. Home games:winner.  Casino games: loser. To be hon­est, I am an over­all loser in poker. Not huge num­bers, but enough to irk me. Make me want to crack the nut.

After all this study­ing, prac­tic­ing and play­ing, I have come to real­ize there is only one REAL win­ning for­mula for poker: Play against play­ers that are worse than you are.  Sounds sim­ple, but it’s true. This is a preda­tory sport and the strong feast on the weak.

You want to beat the game, look for the table full of losers.

Top 10 Traits of a Los­ing Poker Player:

10.  He has a short stack. A good player knows that to win, his stack has to be replen­ished. Oth­er­wise he’s not play­ing poker. It’s called play­ing bingo.

9. A big talker, giv­ing lessons = BIG LOSER.

8. Looks like he’s been up all night. Prob­a­bly try­ing to get even. Win­ners go home when they are los­ing and cut their losses.

7. Com­plains about back beats.

6. Goes to the ATM. Def­i­nitely means he is going beyond his intended bud­get and prob­a­bly not using good bankroll management.

5. Plays almost every hand: loser

4. Tries to ver­bally intim­i­date the other play­ers. LOSER!

3. Talks about how much he won last night. LOOOOOOO-SER!

2. Throws his cards at the dealer.

1. Makes quick over-sized bets.

I am prob­a­bly not telling you any­thing new. But how many of us truly abide by these rules. It ain’t rocket sci­ence, but it works. In fact, it works way bet­ter than read­ing, study­ing or talk­ing about poker. To para­phrase Texas Dolly: Poker is a game of peo­ple played with cards.

I play poker to win money from the weak.

Why do you play? Let me know at stories@whydoiplaypoker.net

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