The problem with many people in poker and a major reason for why they fail is that they see it on the television and get seduced by the thought of doing it for a living; I was no different once upon a time. But you need to learn fast that poker when played for a living is a job just like any other and you don’t go to work to have a laugh and have fun; you do that in your spare time. Success in poker is arrived at by doing many things and also NOT doing many things.

I was lucky because my mindset meant that I took great pleasure out of being professional. I don’t just mean earning a living from poker, but actually acting and thinking professionally in my whole outlook, this mindset helps to prevent me from doing silly things in games which is a lot easier than what it sounds.

For every correct path in poker there are a hundred dead ends and you will be forever tempted to go down them and when some big name infers that it is OK then you will see no harm in it. But in a future article, I will lift the lid on the world that is professional poker today and tell you EXACTLY what it is and EXACTLY how these guys make a living.

Most of the people who write about gambling make me laugh, they write for websites and magazines and such and it stands out a mile to any pro that they have never gambled professionally. If I had it in my power to be the editor of my own magazine then most of the stuff that is in them would get binned, they are not written to help players but to seduce players into playing poker and that is wrong.

The TV programs are the same; they need to create heroes and big winners so that new blood gets attracted to the game. This is why tournament Texas Hold em poker is marketable on TV and cash games are not. They want exciting climaxes and players winning six and even seven figure sums so they can tell the ordinary Joe at home how anyone can do it.

If I asked you to bet one hundred pound of your own money on either a chance to win one million pound or the chance to win ten thousand pound then what would you choose….the million pound chance of course. But what if the chance to win that million was exactly a million to one and the chances of winning that ten grand were two to one then which would you choose….exactly!!

Yet this is what people do in poker, they try and chase rainbows with almost no chance of ever succeeding but yet if they only trained their sites down a different path and did not have their heads stuck in the clouds then the chances of success could be considerable.

Specializing on one poker form enough to know it like the back of your hand will help you achieve that goal and get a substantial edge over players who flit from game to game and cash games to tournaments just simply craving action. These are the people that help you make a living.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson