Poker Discipline - The key to success in online Texas holdem
Poker discipline is something that all players should have as one of their main assets. If your discipline is poor, you should make it your highest priority to improve it. As a poker player, you will know that there are few things in life as exciting as landing a great looking starting hand in Texas Holdem. Being dealt a good starting hand puts you in command right away and you feel excited about the possibility that you will go on and win the pot.
But unfortunately this excitement is probably responsible for more losing hands and leaving players with empty chip stacks than almost anything else in the game of poker.
Excitement at a poker table is normally a bad thing. When people get excited - and when I say people I mean poker players in this case - they usually make bad decisions. They allow their normal level of poker discipline to drop and make crazy, irrational moves that can cost a big pot or, worse still, their whole chip stack.
Discipline is all about making decisions and sticking to them. If you are a tight player, you need to decide what hands you will play and have the self discipline not to waver from your decision. The most important part of that is knowing when to lay your cards down, especially when they look very tempting and you are itching to stay in the hand to see what happens.
It's as old as the hills but it's still as true today as it ever was; you need to know when to fold 'em. Even if you have a hand that looks like a monster, it can always be beaten and the bigger and better the starting hand, the harder it is to fold.
Dangerous starting hands that cause a lot of people to lose their poker discipline and cost them money are those such as A-10, A-9 or worse, Q-J, K-10. If you catch one of those in early position (that is when you are at the start of the betting) you should almost always fold them, there are just too many hands that can beat you.
Although it's probably about the hardest to master, poker discipline is one of the key skills that marks out great poker players and sets them apart from the rest of the pack, so decide on your strategy and stick to it.
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