I'm winding down today for a long-weekend off, and in a mighty fine mood too. This post is about something which I see far too often, people who get into online poker because they love the game - and then take a wrong turn which results in poker becoming a 'grind' (in a negative sense) rather than a pleasure. Let me explain........
with a couple of common examples. 'Bob' loves poker and discovers the online game, he starts with one table and wins some and loses some... depositing a few bucks every now and again to keep himself afloat. His desire to get better leads to strategy sites, forums and so on - where he learns that rakeback and multi-tabling are the way to go. Teaching himself to play 4, then 6, then 12 tables of breakeven poker, Bob starts to collect his 30% rakeback. After a couple of months the desire to play starts waning, Bob never needed to build a bankroll that bad, Poker was entertainment to wind down a couple of nights a week... feeling guity for not putting the time in was not the plan, playing a mechanical strategy over 12 tables is as far from 'fun' as Bob could imagine. 'Jim' donked around on the tables and found out about SNG tournaments, found he was quite good at them and started playing several at a time and really enjoying his poker sessions. Jim moved up levels, studied the math and got even better (hey, maybe he read the $16 Per Hour SNG Blurprint... my very own Poker Course!).
After chatting with college buddies and in online forums Jim discovered that SNGs were considered inferior skill-wise to cash games... and that he was not thought of as a real poker player. He was persuaded to move to cash games, multi-tabling and with a rakeback deal... the start of poker losing its appeal for yet another player. I could make up 100's of these, players get drunk on their plan once the possibilities of poker for money making are revealed to them.
After executing the plan they realize that it is actually no fun at all, and give up on the game. In my experience there are very few who say. "f-it, I play poker for fun! Lemme play what I enjoy" compared to the number who get sucked into the great conveyer. Hey, if you want the money and are happy to grind to get it then more power to you. In fact I wrote my course to teach people to do exactly that. What I hope this post will do is get a few of you who do not need to grind to reassess your situation and go back to whatever it was that made poker fun for you in the first place!
Good Luck At The Tables, Mark
Submitted by Planet Mark on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 10:42