It is very important to exercise discipline for any game you play. Whether this is poker online or football on the football field! The desired end result of any game is to win, or to have at least learned something if you don’t win, so disciplining yourself is tantamount to success.
Serious poker players, or should I say players that take poker seriously, always have a game plan, the same way as the coach has a game plan for all the footballers on his team. The difference is that you are one man against the rest in poker and unless you are stinking rich from playing already, you probably don’t have a coach. So there is more than one role you have to fill; the coach, the banker and the player, all of these aspects of poker takes a good amount of discipline.
It is the wise poker player who focuses on patience, perhaps even does some poker meditation. Don’t raise, take a moment and meditate! Online poker plays really quickly, in fact the speed of this game can be phenomenal, remember it is a computer driving the game, not a patient interactive live dealer and pit boss in a casino.
Your poker software deals the cards, and it will fold your hand for you too if you are not careful and need to take a pee break, so you need to be on the ball all the time. It is fast-paced action from the word go, with the software calculating the stakes, counting the chips, posting the blinds and doing everything short of pouring the players drinks. Pity that!
Discipline is essential for playing online poker because of the speed at which this game runs. It is so simple to tilt and actually lose your cool. You know the chips you play with? They may not seem real, but you had to pay real money to get them and if you win, you can redeem real money for them. So take care! Online, all it takes is a heartbeat for your entire bankroll to disappear.
Take care of your money and it will take care of you, if you start to tilt in play, fold and log-off. Don’t keep playing for the sake of it! People have bad days all the time, so what if you had a bad day playing poker, don’t make things worse by not having the discipline to switch the poker game off, this is the only power in the game you have. That poker game will keep on playing whether you are in it or not.
Just keep your cool and this will make playing online poker so much more exciting. The next day you won’t wake up with an empty bankroll and bettors remorse. Remember that the same works both ways and you will have days when you have a rush, but if you clean out your bankroll because of a lack of discipline, you won’t get the buzz of winning with no bucks to play with.