Focus During Your Poker Game

Any professional poker player will tell you, any good poker book will tell you and just about anyone in poker that wins consistently will tell you,  watching the play and observing how players play a hand is a key part to winning poker.

In a “live” poker room you have many distractions that can take away from your concentration.  There can be sporting events on TV’s, chatter of other players, drunk players, even the appearance of the drink servers can mentally take you away from the table from time to time.  Online poker games though can even be worst as far as concentration is concerned.  Family members, TV, kids, phone calls, dinner, laundry and the list can go on and on.  These distractions can be just as dangerous to your poker winnings as anything else.

Even when these distractions are taken care of, how many times do you play and surf the internet, check email or chat.  We are taught early in life to multi-task, save time and get more done.  This is usually beneficial advice that can lead to better productivity.  Watching TV and folding laundry cooking dinner and talking on the phone come to mind and for the most part is not too detrimental to our every day lives.  This does not apply to playing poker because here, not being focus can cost you money.

Now, some of you are thinking, “Yea, but at my limit it is no big deal”, which may be true but I bet no one plays poker to loose.  When most experts say making 2 BB an hour is a good pace to be on, it does not take to many mistakes to turn a winning session into a losing one.  One missed value bet or one call when you know you shouldn’t, can wipe out hours worth of good play.

When sitting at the perfect table of weak opponents, with the right bankroll and enough time devoted to play the game, poker is still hard to beat consistently.  So there is no need to add controllable distractions to the list.  They could be the difference between booking a winning session or not.  Playing good hands and folding weak ones are just the very basic skills needed to succeed in poker, the solid players, even online, are always focused on who they are playing and how they play to get another edge at the table.