How difficult is poker?

I have lost count of the number of times that someone has asked me “how difficult is it to make money from poker”. This is a very difficult question to answer because I truly believe that it differs from person to person and can differ very greatly. Many people think that playing winning poker denotes intelligence and to a certain extent it does.

But not being able to make money from poker certainly does not denote a lack of intelligence either. There are numerous problems associated with trying to make money from poker. Firstly it is difficult for a novice poker player to discover a way of playing poker that suits their personality. This is little understood by most people but it took me a long time to discover this truth.

Most people play poker in a way that reflects something what they have read or seen on instructional videos. This tends to be the follow on from wanting to play a specific type of poker. But yet most people do not pay any attention to their own individual risk profile when they start off playing poker. For instance if you have a low risk profile then you really don’t want to be playing heads up or even six max poker.

These will be far more volatile forms of the game and if you cannot mentally accept big swings then you are simply heading for disaster. This is why you simply cannot automatically follow someone else’s style of play. What is correct for someone else may probably not be correct for you. Another example can be seen with tournament players, many regulars totally shun cash games because in their mind they are too boring.

If you find something boring then it is a sign that this form of poker obviously does not suit your personality. The term, “trying to fit a square peg into a round hole” here applies perfectly!

Another problem with learning how to beat poker is the sheer volume of educational material that there is on the market. This may not seem like a problem at first but you have two obstacles to overcome here.

Firstly the material may not be good enough or current enough to enable you to use it in such a way as to make you money. Secondly, the material can be first class but yet still not suit your own individual style and risk profile. There is a third problem in that you may also not interpret what the tutor or author is trying to say. So there are numerous problems that are associated with studying poker and when these are added to the complex personal issues that many people have then it is no surprise that so few people actually make money.

Of course, unless you are playing in a home game then all poker is a negative sum game. What this means is that the amount of money that is won does not equal the amount of money that is lost. This is down to rake and tips mainly but it does indicate the first major obstacle that a player has to overcome…..the overheads that are incurred through playing poker.

So now you not only have to be a winning player but you also have to be winning enough to offset your expenses. So what is the answer? I once read a very insightful statement from someone whose name I cannot recall out of one of my books on financial trading. The person said that “problems do not require solutions….they require transcendence”.

How profound that is because it applies to poker perfectly. There is no magical holy grail, no system or style that will show instant success and profits. Even if there is then it won’t stay that way for long because of the ever changing face of the game. I am afraid that the reality is stark and that there is simply no substitute for continued hard work.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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