Poker has one rule that is much more important that any other: every player is to blame for all he or she does with the cards in their hand. It is never about luck, it’s about them and how they play.

You must not let others influent your gaming style. If you do that you will be at their hand. They can manipulate your game and use your style to win their hands and take your chips or money. Psychology is an important factor and players will attempt to use it against you, this is not because they are ‘rude’, but only because this is poker and these things go along with it, they absolutely have to.

Let’s consider a possible situation. You are at home, right in the middle of your poker session, having a great hand and a friend comes along to visit. You will make to mistakes. The one has already been made the moment you declared yourself available when in fact you were playing poker online and for this you should’ve saved your full attention and concentration.

So, you are now just one mistake away from losing money, still you are sitting there, with one eye at the poker table and the other at your friend. Regardless what he came to tell you, he is a distraction right now and he will affect your game.

Let’s say you continue to play and at some point your friends starts to tell you what he thinks about your hands. Without even realizing it, you follow his inexperienced lead and start losing everything you’ve made that evening. Finally, when left with nothing you and your friend decide ‘together’ that poker is not for you and you should forget all about it.

The second mistake occurred somewhere along the way as I am sure you all noticed. Letting someone else to evaluate your hands is the greatest mistake of all. Only you are allowed to do that, because you are the only one really involved.

However this presented case is just a minor situation. Because of the lack of attention, in an official tournament one player named Uli Gerloff lost nearly $9000 or more. Here is in short what happened.

He had a winning hand, clearly. But, when the last card was placed on the table, his opponent trembled with joy and acted like he is clearly the winner. Everything happened in a splash second. The next thing was that the dealer pushed the chips to the opponent and everyone, including Uli was convinced that the other player won. And he did eventually win because of the lack of attention Uli manifested. Uli realized only later that his hand was the winning one, but the casino stuff and the experts blamed him for being lightheaded and he was never given credit for that hand.

You and only you are responsible for your hand. No one else will tell you if you have the winning cards, you have to see at least that at the end of each hand. Don’t let others influent you in any way and trust only yourself and the cards in a game of poker.

Read up on your favorite poker players including Chris Grigorian and Curt Kohlberg today.

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