2BlogPoker.com

Anytime you sit down at a poker table and risk your hard earned money, you should treat every thing you do as if you’d just sat down in your office. Business is about calculated risk, making the best decisions to generate the desired returns, and avoiding situations where the reward does not merit the risk. Sound familiar? It should, because this is exactly the way you should approach playing poker.

1) Risk vs. Reward:
Poker is a game of chance, there is simply no way around that. It is impossible to know what card is going to come next. What is known though is probabilities, and you should know your numbers inside and out. No successful business would ever make a major decision without knowing the numbers inside and out, whether is be a merger, launching a new product or even deciding to close up shop! Know your numbers and know them well.

2) Record Everything:
If you charge a meal to your work credit card, they probably expect you to put in an expense report. This is because documentation is king. There is nothing worse in business than being unsure where your money is moving to and from. Poker is no different. Record everything. What table you were at, what room, what stakes, buy in, cash out, time played, etc. This information is the key information that you should be using to (more…)

One of the biggest opportunities ignored by many online players is the ability to take notes on individual players for reference at table selection time. This simple step can make a huge difference in the profitability of your online play, and all you have to do is remember to follow through on it.

Every online poker site provides some sort of note taking system, this is step one. When at a table, everytime you notice something that you feel could be of value, jot it down in the note section for that particular player. However, this is a fairly common tactic, and it isn’t where most players miss the boat. Where most online players are losing out is failing to keep an external list of notes, particularly of player names, for them to cross reference for game selection.

When you sit down and turn on your favourite online client, you’re presented with hundreds, maybe thousands of options for which game to choose to sit in. Far too often players just go to their favourite game and stakes, and sit down seemingly at random, or perhaps at a table with conditions they like, such as last seat open or large pots. This is very short sighted though and game selection is where note taking really comes into play.

When you’re at a table and you notice JoeMama2009 is consistantly making poor plays, along with the note box for JoeMama2009 provided by the poker room, you should be writing his screenname down on a ‘Fish List’ that you keep either as a hard copy or in a text file on your computer. Do this with every player you deem to be fishy enough to profit from regularly. Once you have such a hard copy, the first thing you do when you go to choose a game is click each game you’re interested in and look at (more…)