I asked this question a few months ago, right after I started playing. I didn't know. I'd have told you it was all luck - and I DID tell people that before I really started studying the game.

With all of the help I've gotten on this site over the past few months, I believe I have handle on what sets the pros apart from the good players/great players.

Feedback welcome

Let me break it down for you:

1. Discipline and Patience

Great poker players don't gamble for the sake of gambling. They don't call a pot-sized turn bet with a flush draw "hoping they'll hit". They don't call a villain's raise with top pair "hoping he's bluffing." They don't enter a pot with garbage "hoping they'll hit 2 pair or trips".

Great players don't raise QJo UTG+1 just because they haven't played a hand in awhile. Great players don't call in late position with QTo just because they haven't played a hand in awhile. Great players don't start limping any two cards because they're tired of folding weak/mediocre holdings and watching fish limp in with Q7o and turn 2 pair or something similar hand after hand.

Great players understand this and play every single hand correctly regardless of what they were dealt the previous 50 to 100 hands.

Also hand-in-hand with patience is great players understand that poker is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Very very rarely is one going to sit down at a table, or even four tables, and double up within an hour. Poker takes patience and waiting for the right OPPORTUNITY to get your money in. Facing a 3-bet with TT against a 7/4/1 rock is probably not the right opportunity, so don't rush it/force it (like many average to weak players probably would)!

Another aspect of discipline and patience is NOT being results-oriented. If you have an OESD on the flop and it costs you $100 to call into a $1000 pot, calling is the right call. If on the turn you still have an OESD and it costs $200 to call into a $2000 pot, calling is STILL the right call. Average to bad players will fail to hit and want to stop wasting their money, only lose out on an opportunity for a big pot later on.

Other examples: Getting it in pre with AA and getting sucked out on by QQ, getting it in with a flopped set and losing to a higher set or sucked-out straight or flush, flush over flush, straight over straight, villain hitting a 6-outer on the river - any of these situations can get one stacked. Great players say to themselves, hey, I played the hand correctly and it was just bad luck - that's poker! Let's move onto the next hand.

Conversely, bad players overvalue luck - an overvaluer will call a 2/3-pot flop bet with a gutshot, HIT the gutshot, and be convinced that they should ALWAYS call there, and start watching their stack dwindle. Or they'll shove top pair and win a couple times and be convinced that's right because of the results.

Great players understand that poker is all about making the CORRECT PLAY, and those who make the most correct plays WILL win the most money in the long run - they don't tilt and they don't get overconfident.

2. Studying

Great players STUDY the game. They study odds, theory, their own games, villain's games, why they won hands, why they lost hands, could they have done things better etc. They make notes of villain betting patterns, behaviors, mannerisms etc to try to assess their game. They amass as much mental information as possible to arm themselves before sitting down at a table.

Studying doesn't have to be between sessions. In the course of a session, great players are PAYING ATTENTION - who are the villains who are playing too many hands (good targets for pre-flop 3-bets)? Who are the villains who are betting into every pot in late position (good targets for check-raising)? Who hasn't played a hand in 45 minutes (a sign to get out of the way when they raise to 8bb from the sb into 5 limpers)? Who is willing to stack off with top pair or an overpair? The little tidbits of information the great players pick up by simply paying attention can add up to a lot of BB/100.

3. Experience

Experience goes hand in hand with studying somewhat. Great players analyze every session they play and try to learn from what they did. It doesn't do much good to have 500,000+ hands of experience if you're just playing each hand in a vaccuum, but if you're trying to remember things (i.e. I called raises with KQo and never won a single hand when I did so, or I've 3-bet AQo in late position 6 times and every time the villain had something better etc.), you're building up a memory bank of familiar situations. Every hand isn't a whole new ballgame to a great player.

4. Playing with a plan

This is probably the one aspect of poker where the great players separate themselves from other great player more than in any other skill. It's like chess - anybody can think 2, 3, 4 moves ahead, but not everyone can think 10, 15, 20 moves ahead. Great poker players don't just bet and then think about the next action - they're processing all of the information they gained from item 2 - studying and item 3 - experience. A great player will think, "OK, I have 77 in middle position with 2 aggressive players and 1 rock behind me and 2 solid players in the blinds. I'm going to limp, and if an aggressive player raises me and nobody calls I'm going to 3-bet, if nitty McRockington raises me I'm going to fold. If the flop comes with 1 or 2 overcards and I have position..." obviously there are tons of permutations that can happen, but the great players can play through all of those permutations in their minds, whereas an average to weak player will just think, "Oh, I'll worry about the flop when I see it".

Great players are NEVER surprised when they bet out their TPTK and get raised - they knew how they were going to respond to that 3-bet, regardless of the villain - before they bet out in the first place.

This also goes hand in hand with experience - the more situations a great player has already experience, the better a plan they can come up with.

It also goes hand in hand with studying - having studied villain tendencies, great players can adjust their plan to react appropriately.

5. Betsizing

Great players understand that deciding HOW MUCH to bet can be just as important as deciding WHETHER OR NOT to bet. If you're betting because you want the villain to call, what is the maximum amount you can bet that he will call? If you want the villain to fold, what is the MINIMUM amount you need to bet (read: risk!) to get the villain to fold. Over time, these calls and folds due to optimal betsizing can add up to a lot of BB/100.

The bottom line

A poker player's skill comes down to exactly one thing: DECISIONS. A player who consistently makes better DECISIONS than another player will eventually make more money than the other player - it's as simple as that. The pros are the pros because they consistently make the best decisions at the table.

Thoughts?

I think I agree with all of that. Nice post!

There are a few other factors that really separate the great from the good, but you've got all the main ones, and what you wrote is certainly suitable for BQ.

Opened this thread expecting to read some stupid, misguided question.

Actually quite impressed; good post!

Great players aren't secretly doing things we don't know about, they just work harder at the game, put in more hours, and make consistently better decisions. No secrets, only dedication.

Thanks for the positive feedback!

Yeah really interesting post.

Folding
I also think when i'm playing my A-game , i get away from mid-strength hands easily.
You need to be able to fold those AA, KK on flops when you are played back. Sometimes you are ahead, sometimes you are behind, but you need to learn to fold.

Very nice post, By reading it you can see one common element that is patience. The best players have that in abundance and top players don't let there emotions rule there brain.

Again nice post it was a good read keep it up.

Great post, good to read. I suppose one could incorporate also some characteristics of great players such as they excel in deductive reasoning and understand human thought process or that they generally master poker mathematics.

Pretty good, but does it apply to high stakes pros?
I see them making moves that are 'wrong' all the time - yes they do call from lp with QTo! Because they are playing a different game to us (well, me), where they need to worry much more about deception, meta game etc. Plus they know their opponents are also pros not just playing premium pairs and AKs.

Exploitative play is an important factor I think. Their study away from the table identifies leaks in the games of regs which helps them churn out winrates against solid players.

nice post

unless one of the posters here is actually a great player, I really don't understand the point of this thread.

guys , this is just what we think very good players SHOULD do. But we do not know for sure.

Plus , all those ideas are so generall that they cannot be argued with , as they do not really say much.

Take one random point , let us say "Playing wiht a plan" , it sounds good , but unless you actually know what is the plan for J9s , KAof , 33 ,..... you are not actually saying anything new.

In reality , a beginner in poker should ask himself "what makes a losing player lose less ?" , because this is his level.

I think the best way to get better at poker is to learn the habits of the most winning players, not to look at the losers and think "I wont do what they do"

Nice job, looks like you have put alot of thot into this concise and well written article.

I've blogged a lot about this in the recent past. In my humble opinion, the Edges that winning players have over losing players can be thought of in three basic categories: A) Preparation; b) Technical Skills; and c) Emotional Control.

These three can then each be subdivided into three sub-categories, and each of those can be broken down further:

Preparation:

• Pregame (game selection, warm-ups, etc)
• Postgame (record keeping, post-mortems, etc.)
• Off-Table Work (studying, physical fitness, leak plugging, etc.)

Technical Skills:

• Pre-flop Decisions (hand selection, position)
• Post-flop Evaluations (hand reading, equity estimates, lines)
• Line Implementation (bet sizing, deception, adjustment)

Emotional Control:

• Tilt Control (accepting variance, recognizing tilt, exploiting tilt, etc.)
• Bankroll Management
• Discipline (patience, paying attention, folding, etc.)

I'd give you the link to the blog, but the mods have banned me in the past whenever I do so. Check out my profile if you want the link.