Going back to the “pearls of wisdom” in the previous article, anybody who is a professional in an online $100-$200 game will earn a very considerable amount of money by the year end, you do not need to play higher than $300-$600 limit Texas Hold’em poker or the very biggest no limit games to make it pay.

But some of these players earn seven figure yearly sums so they kind of get used to a certain level of income. This is fine but it also means that they are not necessarily the best people to be taking advice from.

The other piece of advice about many games being dealers choice is true to a certain extent if you are playing live poker. But in the era of internet poker then the goalposts have moved considerably and you are not forced into learning numerous poker variations anymore. I am accomplished in all poker variations including tournament poker which I rarely play but yet I would shy away from sitting with top players in a game like Pot Limit Omaha for instance which is not my strongest game.

Despite the fact that you need to specialize, if you are in and around poker for as long as I have been then you cannot fail to pick up the nuances of the other forms over time. But poker is played for money and professionals need to win that money to pay the bills so they cannot afford to mess around. I play Limit Hold’em and No Limit Hold’em seriously and would not shy away from sitting in a game with ANYONE but only because I have worked on those games long enough to play them at a very high level.

This has come at the cost of not being all that great at some of the other poker forms but that has helped me to earn what I have earned over the years. There is no serious money to be made by someone who has learned bits and pieces about everything. What tends to happen is that you pick up other games over time anyway. Like I said, I am very strong at seven card stud purely because of the close connection with Hold’em.

But time is precisely what many people do not have and time in poker means money….lost money! Lessons in poker at the early stages can be very expensive and costly if you are learning those lessons at the table. I have known people lose six figure sums at poker in the pursuit of trying to make it pay. But it does not have to be that way and taking on a coach is a very positive step and massive quantum leap forward in your chances of making it.

It is far too easy even after you succeed in making money to think that you have cracked it and then go off and start doing whatever you want. Look out for the third and final part of this series on the site.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson