With the new year starting I have been wondering what's separating me or you or anyone from being the next poker star? What's stopping us from being the next Tom Dwan, Dan Coleman, Jungleman, Ivey, Galfond, Hellmuth, etc.

Is knowledge and experience the only thing holding us back or is there something else?
I would like to hear your thoughts on this...if its just our work ethics, then why don't we wake the heck up and grind like there's no tomorrow so we can be millionaires like all of the people on poker's mount rushmore?!?!?!?!

$hip it, connor.

Beyond the sheer intellect and raw poker talent a big part of it is also luck. Being in the right games at the right time, running well and being positioned to get into the next lot of right games and right times. When Dwan and Galfond were coming up there were probably a lot of equally talented guys that just ran bad against them and didn't have the subsequent bank rolls to play in the huge games when whales sat down.

Some talent, some luck, some experience, some work ethic. Becoming a decent reg is possible with solid effort over a chunk of time. Becoming world-class certainly demands more than that.

If you think it can be done, then wake the heck up and grind like there's no tomorrow. Shock the world.

The main thing that separates those who get to the top and those who do now is risk tolerance. The guys who get to the top have one aim when they approach the tables, and that's to get to the top. Most of us try to make money, those are two competing ideologies really as those who try to make money and keep risk at reasonable levels will never be able to progress up the levels in a quick time-frame or handle the inevitable swings.

I know two nosebleed players who are currently doing very well having amassed 3-4m bankrolls, however the journey of both to the top where they are now winning hard involved multiple bust bankrolls including building 500k bankrolls then busting it, starting again, getting it to 1m / 2m or even 3m and then returning it to zero.

The focus on getting to the top rather than banking what they had and dropping to a lower level they could comfortably beat meant they could keep going... and needless to say this Do or Die approach requires incredible dedication, self belief, and talent to keep getting back on the horse and casting aside any failures.

It's quite possible to become an even better poker player than Galfond but way more difficult now to make as much money as he has.

Good comment. I think the path is much narrower with everything that's out there now. Just think that Phil Galfond was a 'who's he?' the first time he was on High Stakes Poker. That probably wouldn't be as true these days .. Shoot, you have players doing research on their tables for each day of the ME, and finding good intel!!

Phil will readily tell you that he was the only one of the group he 'came up with' to survive poker and there are reasons sprinkled in there as well.

Look at Chad Power moving his own business (house) just to be closer to Harbor Town in order to take advantage of the 'new' poker players there. Really? There are that many players who never played at Maryland Live?

I would certainly say that you will need more 'run good' than most of the players who are now near 30 or older .. and you will notice that those players are staying away 'from us' and sticking to the higher BI events where the player pool is playing poker in a more consistent manner. Look at David Peters who now 'specializes' in $25K events (at Aria)!!

The other 'big' step these days is finding a backer who will cover larger portions of the entry fees up front. This can happen even at the 'mini' tour level (MSPT/HPT/WSOPc). I even heard that Qui Nguyen was selling pieces of himself before the November 9 started at a big markup. Nothing else has come out on that subject that I've seen. GL

People seem to forget a small piece of the answer. Some of the early 2000s pros that got to the nosebleeds....got to stay at the nosebleeds because they were basically on a freeroll, using "play money" from Full Tilt, UB etc.....

Easy to bluff $200K when you have what at the time seemed like....an infinite source of big dollars.

I think some people were just born to play poker, like their mindset and brain is so unique basically talent like you said lol i can't explain it it's sort of indescribable.

Look at some chess masters like magnus carleson etc... or people who play chess professionally you wonder how the fk they got insanely good.

Having good old reliable Gus Hansen spewing chips whenever you feel like sitting him was also a huge perk for the non Team Full Tilt guys at the time.

Poker is, in many ways, like golf. the differences between the recreational players and the pros is not always apparent. Every weekend golfer has had a great run that makes him think he could play with the pros. Same with poker. The difference is 1) the level of detail that the pro's play at, 2) the level of preparation for every scenario, 3) the ability to consistently make the right decisions, and 4) the ability to perform with incredible pressure.

There are, of course, guys who binked the WSOP main and became instant big league pros, who might not be that much better than many regular rec players. But the majority of the players who consistently make the bubble at major tournaments are very good, very disciplined players with a deep understanding of the game.

This sounds about right to me. Talent matters. Having a good memory matters, especially when you see the the the same people in live games. Intelligence matters--if your IQ is 90 and you want to play at the highest levels, you're bringing a knife to a gunfight.

All of that said, what matters the most, in almost every profession, is how hard you're willing to work at it. In his book Outliers, Malcom Gladwell describes how in many fields, the people that make it to the top are the ones that put at least 10,000 hours of work to be the best of the best.

Bill Gates spent that much time writing code. When he was a teenager he often snuck out of his parent's house at night to write code at the local college.

The Beatles practiced five hours a night seven days a week--that's on top of whatever their day jobs were.

I was in an Army National Guard band with a phenomenal tuba player who practiced every chance he got. He was in his college practice room every day at 7 A.M to practice for two hours before his music classes started. Once when we were on an army base for two weeks he took his tuba with him and kept it in the barracks. After our duty was done for the day, he took his tuba out in the woods and practiced.

I've wanted to play poker full-time for a while, but I haven't had the chance. For most of 2015 and 2016 I was a caregiver for an elderly relative several days a week. Now that I have that chance to play poker full-time, I'm going for it.

I have ADD so it's easy for me to get distracted or "goof off" so I impose structure on the situation. I track my time, by quarter-hours, just like I'm punching a time clock. In every time block I record what I'm working on, so that it all gets covered. I record whether the time is spent on play, study or administrative tasks, and almost every week 25% of my time is spent on study.

When I study I attack the areas where I'm weak. I wanted to memorize odds and outs for a lot of different situations. I do that with flash cards. I wanted to learn how pros think about a hand so I started watching videos from a Weekly Poker Hand podcast. I want to get better at bluffing so I'm going to get a book on that subject. I figure out what I'm bad at and work on it for a while, then I move on to plug another leak.

I work enough so that those study/play/administrative hours add up to a minimum of 40 hours every week. There will be a lot of weeks when I work more than that. I had lots of jobs where I worked as much volunatry overtime as I could get, why shouldn't I do the same thing with poker?

I actually think that's one of the best things about being in charge of my life. There is no boss to tell me that I can't work more hours to make more money.

Loads of factors. The environment you were raised in, how this helped your mindset develop would be a big one for me.

The "Rage to Master" seems like a big un.
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/13/tale...ld_to_succeed/

I think the movie Whiplash, although a work of fiction, provides an interesting insight into what kind of obsession it may take to get to the top.

Hard work and talent only get you so far. You need some luck. Nobody would have heard of Bill Gates if the owners of CP/M were willing to license their DOS program to IBM at a reasonable price. He also got lucky that IBM didn't insist on exclusive rights, like Apple did. Otherwise, he would have been as well known as the guy that wrote minesweeper.

I checked out your link and the information was fascinating Even though I grew up lower middle class and didn't have much of an academic career (I flunked out of two colleges before anyone found out that I had a 99th percent IQ, but also undiagnosed ADD) I did have a lot of advantages growing up.

My father was an early adopter of technology (he had three "online newsletters" before the word "blog" came into use) and I grew up listening to Radio Moscow and the BBC on short-wave radio. My mom and dad were avid readers. Mom was a member of the Science Fiction Book Club and I was reading Issac Asimov when I was eight years old.

Once I found out that ADD was what was holding me back and I developed strategies to combat it, everything changed. As soon as I started watching poker on TV (I had never played it) I knew that someday I would be able to make money playing tournaments.

The work that I'm putting in is a big part of that, but the things I learned at home and from my voracious reading helped give me the background, the ability, and the belief that somehow, in some area, I would be able to achieve. Even though I failed in school I was successful in other areas. I was a musician in an army band for 23 years.

Now I'm ready to turn that drive and experience into a successful poker career. So you're right. Diligent practice is an important component to success, perhaps the most important, but the environmental factors certainly play a big part as well.

That's cool to hear man.

I almost always recommend people buy Carol Dweck's book "Mindset" for an insight into how our motivations can be shaped as kids/adults. She is a a sociologist but her work has had a big impact in sports science.

Podcast interview here:

http://sportscoachradio.com/carol-dweck-draft/

Speaking of luck ... A little set back during my weekly Thursday 'big' game.

1) 3 of 5 AA hands lost and I made skittles on the other 2.
2) Folded my over-pair to the table Nit after he had 3-bet Pre-Flop and led Flop and Turn. He proudly showed his 'once every 3-month' AK bluff.
3) Both KK/QQ hands lost.
4) On the last hand I played (rarely I leave early) my Turned JJ FH on 677J5 lost to quad 77.

Speaking of talent (I hope) ... I only lost 2 BI and an add-on. What a night!! 7 premium hands go down in flames in less than 4 hours. I promptly drove to a smaller game and made back a BI in 90 minutes. Hopefully I can go back to my 78s, set mining and the like to get back on some winning ways!! GL

"..what's separating me or you or anyone from being the next poker star?"

I would say, the limitations we set ourselves. People seem to believe that all the great masters of any game or sport are freaks of nature. In reality, they have simply done more of the right things than those who do not make it.
I believe anyone, without a mental handicap, is capable of becoming a great poker player.
Don't get me wrong. Abilities one is born with can certainly be helpful. Good with numbers, high IQ and so on. If Fedor Holz is much smarter than me, that means it will take more time for me to gather all the information he does and more time to learn how to implement it. If something takes him 100 000 hands to master, it might take me 500 000. But that does not mean I can't get to the point where he is, it just means it will take more time for me.

I like to think that a small improvement from where I am now is always possible. Think of it this way: If you are playing nl10, you can soon play nl16 if you work hard on your game. If you can play nl16 and continue to work hard, you can definitely play nl25 after a while. And so on. Is it really logical to say something like "You can get to nl100 but after that you don't have enough talent to climb higher, that's where it ends for you"

Stop limiting yourself. It doesn't make sense. The only reason to believe you can't do it yourself is because you are afraid of failing. Afraid of working hard on your game for 10 years without achieving much.
And those who say it is impossible for others, are the ones who thinks it is impossible for themselves.

"Chance favors only the prepared mind"

the distance between me and the top is so infinitely wide i do not want to think about it at this point.....i mean who cares?its like peering thru a telescope at a distant blotch in space.they could be born genius or anything.why is there only one phil ivey or patrick antonius or greenstein or siedel?why cant we all be like tiger woods?or david beckham or mike tyson?mental ability aside,i believe a pro called ed miller once said,theres a huge gulf in even just the technical ability of the best and the rest of the average population most are too stupid to even comprehend what they do not understand.

at this stage even just beating 25nl or 50nl online is becoming a humanely impossible task,just curious,what percentage of the poker population can beat 50 or 25nl online at this day and age??my rough guess would be 90 percent of the poker population couldnt make it.from my past experience both in the online and live world,i say the live poker population would fare even worst.most of us are just mouth breathing ******s.....man what would i give just to be confident in the knowledge i can beat 50nl online,not each day go by where i feel less and less of a emancipated man and more of a hopeless cripple.

the way i see it,poker is just a useful skill to have for when u feel like taking a break from life,and just going off to a foreign place or country with a casino or las vegas and just escape from life for a while and just become a vagrant poker player grinding the 1/2 or 1/3 or 2/5.u want to be the best?forget it....better to go watch rounders or something.even matt damon is terrible at poker and he plays a poker genius....the painful irony.

I don't disagree with anything that you said. But as part of the discipline that you talked about, I think that the one of the biggest factors is bankroll management.

In The Millionaire Next Door, the author talks about all of the rich people who got that way because they lived a modest lifestyle, drove an older car, and lived in a home in a middle class neighborhood. They saved and invested a lot of money. Many did not have a credit card and had no debt of any kind.

Let's translate that to poker. We all know that tournament players should have a bankroll of at least 100 buy-ins. Smart players understand that. I watched a coaching video where Jonathan Little didn't think it was a big deal that he once failed to cash in 50 straight tournaments. He has also said that every time he gets a big cash he invests some of it in real estate.

But really, how many players think like that? If I had to guess how many of the players in my local charity room are playing the $100 tournament with a 100 buy-in bankroll, I would say zero.

These are players who can never move up (or at least not for long) because they aren't even bankrolled at their current level. Once they move up, they are dead men (or women) walking.

I don't disagree with anything that you said. But as part of the discipline that you talked about, I think that the one of the biggest factors is bankroll management.

In The Millionaire Next Door, the author talks about all of the rich people who got that way because they lived a modest lifestyle, drove an older car, and lived in a home in a middle class neighborhood. They saved and invested a lot of money. Many did not have a credit card and had no debt of any kind.

Let's translate that to poker. We all know that tournament players should have a bankroll of at least 100 buy-ins. Smart players understand that. I watched a coaching video where Jonathan Little didn't think it was a big deal that he once failed to cash in 50 straight tournaments. He has also said that every time he gets a big cash he invests some of it in real estate.

But really, how many players think like that? If I had to guess how many of the players in my local charity room are playing the $100 tournament with a 100 buy-in bankroll, I would say zero.

These are players who can never move up (or at least not for long) because they aren't even bankrolled at their current level. Once they move up, they are dead men (or women) walking.

Basically, a lot of it comes down to how much work you are willing to put in.

People who make it to the top of any industry eat live and breathe whatever it is they do. It's no different with poker.

There is a lot of talent in the mix too.

now that guy is a smart man,the poker economy may not be around in ten or twenty years (maybe a small fraction) but the stock market and real estate will sure be.....its way way way easier to accumulate a million dollars in investments and real estate then it is to make a million bucks from poker......whatever money u make from the poker economy,take out a portion of it 20 or 30 percent and stash it in some index funds or bonds or reits or real estate....right now im saving $1000 every month from my job and investing it in a diversified portfolio......u dont want to be betting ur future on poker because there is none.u dont want to be 55 years old and grinding out a miserable profit at 1/2 or 1/3 and living off ur pension or social security like half the old farts i see at the local casino......

its a good thing u read the millionaire next door,cause the book sure didnt mention any poker players in the general group of 771 millionaires he interviewed......america has 11 million millionaires,how many of those come from poker lol?50?100?

I thought it would be good to post some examples of poker players who have made it to the "big time" and how hard they worked to get there.

When Phil Ivey is interviewed and someone asks about his skill of feel for the game, he often makes a point to say that he works very hard at it.

A friend of Andrew Robl said that he was "fanatical about studying the math."

Jonathan Little said that when he was building a bankroll to play on the WPT, "I was basically playing more SNGs than anyone in the world."

Online cash game pro Dusty Schmidt got the nickname Leatherass because of the time he spent in his chair grinding, 60 or more hours a week. He also wrote a very good book with the title "Treat Your Poker Like a Business." In that book he uses the example of college, saying that you should study until "you have a PhD in poker."

Last but certainly not least, in the old days of poker when Doyle Brunson was traveling the country looking for good games, he would sit in his motel room and deal hands on the bed to figure out probabilites.

Actually, it might not be that hard to figure out if someone wanted to spend the time. There are lots of places that one could get some tournament numbers, for example: WPT, WSOP, HPT, Sharkscope and Global Poker Index.