Long term thinking in poker and betting

One of the biggest mistakes that novice and even intermediate gamblers make is that their scope or vision is limited to the short term. In some cases it is very short term. Strategies are not present and whatever tactics are being used are being so in a vacuum. Take poker for example, as a classic case, the overwhelming majority of players who start out trying to educate themselves do so in the wrong way.

They attempt to try and learn answers to specific poker hands in specific situations. This simply cannot be done as the number of variables that can arise in a game of poker are close to infinite when you take into account changes in players and even the moods of players. I don’t ever recall playing the same situation twice in my entire life.

So looking at individual tactics in a vacuum whilst being better than nothing isn’t ideal for reaching your optimal goal! Strategic thinking and not tactical thinking is what’s required and this applies to sports betting too. Tactics are only something that complements and assists you in achieving your strategy.

One might ask a novice poker player…. “what is your strategy in online poker?” They would probably come back with an answer that indicated that they were confused about tactics and strategy…..not the same things. Tactics whilst still being important are of far less significance than strategy. Once again taking poker as an example, too many players focus on hand examples and on how to play specific hands for far too long.

In fact millions of poker players the world over only ever look at poker in this way and think that expertise is having knowledge of how to play lots of different situations that could crop up. Once you have a good solid tactical understanding then you need to develop a strategy for making money.

In poker for instance, having a good tactical knowledge base isn’t guaranteed to make you money. Why is that? It is simply because your opponents may just have a similar or superior tactical knowledge base to you so you may have either no edge or minimal at best.

So you then need to look at a bigger picture than just merely how to play specific hands of poker as these are all too easily learnable. So what is a good money making strategy in poker? Well, you could go and locate a poker sites which has a good sign up bonus. This puts you into a better situation for making money as you are not dependent on your tactical knowledge to get it. Or you could use a tracking program like what I use for instance which is Poker Office on a site where few or no players use them or are allowed to use them…..this would be a strategy.

It is the same with any form of gambling, the professionals think strategically whilst the novices concentrate on tactics. You must remember that tactics compliment strategy and not the other way around.

Sometimes tactics don’t really matter at all. Many hands in poker for instance can be played in various ways and there are no set answers to thousands of situations that could crop up in a poker game. So remember this and remember it well, tactics without a strategy will be like beads without a string. Suddenly when you have a strategy in place, everything that you do seems to make far more sense and you suddenly notice that your betting activities have direction for the very first time.

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