There is a lot of advertising copy in poker and most of it stems from the poker sites whose interests is to make them as much money as possible. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this except that you can end up playing forms of poker which simply do not suit you. I think that fundamentally most people that come into the game do not have fantastic poker skills…….I certainly include myself in that aspect. But what I would like to think that I do have is a ton of experience and the ability to be able to design systems that when placed into the proper environment do quite well.
Poker sites want to maximise trade but that is no different to any other market…….the stock market, housing market and certainly the poker market…….because that is what poker is……one big market. The market makers in this instance are not the New York Stock Exchange or the Chicago Mercantile Exchange but the online poker sites and land based casinos. They want to maximise the amount of poker that you play and there is nothing wrong in that because they are in business. There is nothing untoward or malicious……it simply is what it is.
However as a poker player then you need to steer around the hype and simply play the form of poker that suits you and don’t put into action more money for the sake of it simply because you have been coerced into doing so. This is not always easy to identify and can take a lot of self-exploring. The overwhelming majority of players who participate in poker are not great players. I have been a pro for nearly ten years and I still would never consider myself a great poker player. However I am very good at making money but I do that not by allowing myself to be spoon fed or directed into playing certain forms of poker.
I play full ring NLHE and not six max which is in vogue……why? Simply because I can play full ring better than six max and the lower variance suits me. But here is the key because full ring suits far more people than six max for the simple reason that you are correct in folding more and when you don’t have the skills or the stomach to play higher variance poker or high levels then you can simply find your Holy Grail further down the limits.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson plays poker at www.pokerstars.co.uk
