Poker Articles

This article was written by Andrew Wiggins, AKA "Muddywater," an instructor for CardRunners.com.

When you start playing poker, your first big struggle is to break even. Then you try to become a winning player, then to move up, then to maximize your win rate wherever you settle. Not everyone states their goals this way or sets them in this order, but they're basically the same for everyone: stop losing, start winning, play bigger, and win as much as you can.

When you get nearer and nearer to the end of that chain, you face new psychological difficulties. You aren't playing with different-colored chips; you aren't trying to turn your bottom line from red to black; you aren't squinting through datamined statistics from that bigger game you're trying to move up to. You've found your game, and you win at it. It's cruel, but all this success doesn't really put a player at the top of a mountain, but rather in tricky and unforgiving psychological terrain. The wins get less and less euphoric, but the losses hurt just as much. You risk becoming complacent, stagnant, and unhappy.

I've spent plenty of time now grinding it out at the medium stakes, so resolving this problem has been one of the biggest challenges of my professional career. My favorite solution is to create artificial incentives. I create some sort of goal and make it both achievable and tangible, so that I can again focus the way I did when I was working toward being bankrolled for a bigger limit. I've sometimes devoted a certain part of my winnings to a project or purchase; if you try this strategy, you might decide that 25% of your profit next month will go towards a new TV. You'll have something to work for, and if you're like me, poker will become more fun. It will spur you to play your best game and to put in hours. There's never a guarantee that you'll have a great month, but having tied your results to something immediate is enough to get the desired effects on your game and mentality. A fancy dinner or fun vacation will immediately affect your life in ways that a mutual fund investment won't.

You can also create specific challenges for yourself; these can be either win rate goals you set privately or competitions you set up among your peers. A limit player might try to win three bets per hundred hands over his next 250 hours, and two friends might race to be the first to make $1,000 at $50 sit-n-go's. If you're doing a solitary challenge, you might want to start blogging, as that way you can get feedback, and you face public embarrassment if you tilt and play badly. I've done several challenges with a friend of mine, and each time it refocused my game and let me have a lot of fun.

For now, though, I'm working for my liquor cabinet. I've decided to devote part of my winnings to stocking my new apartment. I wouldn't normally spend that much money on booze, but it's fun to think about, and if I have a good month I'll celebrate it in style. If you've found your game and are grinding it out, I hope you make sure you have something to work for too.