Judging by the fact that you're actually reading this article, you've got an internet connection. I'll take a risk and guess you've already been to some of internet's biggest online poker forums. If you've looked closely, you can see how these forums are full of posts and stories about how a player went broke or at least lost his whole bankroll. First, there's the story. Then these players start listing reasons for why they lost, a whole bunch of them making up excuses for playing bad. Well, some of them are not "real" excuses, since they might actually think they played good but got unlucky because they lost with a bigger starting hand to a weaker one.
Terms like pot odds, implied odds and expected value are complete strangers for these players. There's no way they're going to know why they lose if they've never learned about poker's fundamentals. But still, some of them might play well even if they "just played", without studying. What breaks these players is the lack of self-control and discipline.
See, almost everything we do in poker comes from discipline. When you fold AT from UTG when that's what you know you should do, you're controlling yourself, having discipline. When you don't call a re-raise with 87-suited, that's discipline. But there's a certain point when most poker players lose their discipline. Players who know about the fundamentals of poker still lose because they don't have enough discipline, or sense in what they're doing to maintain discipline. Where is this coming from? What players should do in order to control theirselves better? Let's see.
Time Limits - There are two kinds of time limits you could set that you'll never cross.
First, how many hours will you play in one session. I used to play even 10 hours straight and it was simply too much, although I got a lot of hands in. In the long run though, this isn't good to concentration, self-control, discipline or health. Also, a very important thing in mainting discipline is; when you set yourself a time limit, stick to it. Even when you're losing, quite. When you're winning, quit. It's very important for some players to do.
Secondly, study yourself. I used to have certain times in a day when I played well and certain times when I played worse. For example, from 10 A.M. I might have played great poker, but at about 2 P.M. I had trouble beating the games. This was most probably because my discipline and self-control were slowly fading away when I had been wake up for a certain amount of hours. Even if I started playing at 1 P.M., I still felt like my discipline lasted only until 2 P.M. Anyway, I learned to adjust my daily rhythm (when you sleep, eat, work-out etc.) how I wanted and this made playing poker a lot easier.
Loss Limits - A very important limit in my books. At the same time, something a lot of players have never even considered. Doesn't it sound outrageous for someone to tell you should quit always when you've lost 4 buy-ins? Probably at first. For me, it has worked extremely well. I think there isn't such a player who can take numerous losses without letting any of it to affect his/her game. Maybe it happens unconsciously, but losing a lot will mess with the way you're thinking.
Think about this way: what's the use of knowing something if you're not going to use the knowledge? If you know you shouldn't go all-in and you still do... there's no kind of sense in that! It's basically throwing money away... consciously!
When I used to play more poker, now that I think of it, it was rare for me to play the best poker I could. Why? I was way too exhausted because of too much poker. I was never really playing as well as I could have been. With poker though, it's not just about immediate winning rates. For example, you win $500 when you play for 10 hours a day, and $400 when you play for 5 hours a day. However, you'll be able to win $750 in 5 hours after 2 weeks, and $750 in 10 hours after 4 weeks. Now it might be better to play 5 hours, right?
There are numerous advantages from being fresh-minded, rather than tired. But what I'm saying here is, you'll develop faster as a poker player when you play at your best. Even though putting in more hours might result more money in a short period of time - long run is what counts. Maintain your self-control and discipline. If you don't, you might as well say goodbye to your money.
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