Yup, I don't disagree with that.

Here's a quote from a PGC I used to follow (PokerRon247's), it's a better worded version of my point:

"This morning I watched a vid of Zaza 6-tabling 200nl which was good for a quick refresher and confidence booster. As well as all the technical analysis during the vid, I really liked a bit where he talked about consistency, which is something I think is key to being a successful player. As he says, most people who play at the stakes I do have excellent hand reading skills, they have great poker knowledge, but they just fail to consistently apply it at the tables. An example he gave was a good reg barrelling off 3 streets to him with a hand that made zero sense to do it with. He said that the player (he knows him irl) would know that it was a bad mistake. The flop bet was marginal, the turn bet was very bad and the river bet was catastrophic. If the player was presented this hand as if it were played by someone else, he'd immediately see the huge error and assume that it was played by a fishy player, or an overaggro spaz, and would probably say that he would never do such a thing. It was a great example of how knowledge and application are two different, yet equally important aspects of being a good player."

Experience matters only to a point. If you have been playing for 10 years, that experience doesn't matter much if you're not doing the right things.

Getting really good at something is hard. There is almost always grunt work to be done, and it isn't glamorous or fun. Yo-Yo Ma, one of the most famous classical musicians in the world (he has played at the White House and been a character on the Simpsons--how many cellists can say that?) has been known to spend six straight hours in his hotel room practicing scales.

What does that have to do with poker players? We have to do our grunt work. We have to memorize odds and outs. We have to know equities, and we can't estimate how much equity we have in a hand unless we can put villian on a range.

I do a lot of brute force memorization. For example, one pro says in his book that when he is playing deep, if the situation is right, he will open with 20% of his hands, including small pairs and suited connectors from every position.

So, I played around with PokerStove. I started with all pairs and suited connectors. Then I added high card combinations until I had 20% of possible hands. I broke that down by position, assuming that the weakest high card hands in that range would be played in the later positions. Then I put those ranges on 7 flash cards (positions 1-5, cutoff and small blind, and button) and I memorized them.

Now when I encounter a player like that (Normad Chad says that Daniel Negreanu has suited connectoritis) I will have a very good idea what his range looks like. Or I could use that range against certain tables or players, or just to change gears and keep everyone guessing.

Of course my way is not the only way. I work a lot with poker books. Others buy very few books and prefer to spend more time on coaching sites. But the truth is that there are lots of people out there that have played for ten years but didn't get better.

Playing for ten years isn't the same as doing the work required to be great. Most of those ten year veterans don't run equities on Pokerstove, or review their hand histories, or learn what a 10% range looks like, or study tells, or sign up for a coaching site. The word for that is fish.

Very well said Poker Clif. I'm sure most of us have been to a live casino to play poker and have seen and heard the guy in his 50's talking about how he's "been playing this game for over 25 years." Yet he still sucks! That's because it's too easy, in almost any field, to get complacent after doing something for years--you stop learning, or at least learning slows to a crawl. Whereas new players in their late teens/early 20's eat up all the info they can get; and with dozens of websites offering info and training, that's how you get people who just two years into playing are tearing up the game.
Of course the point about experience is important too. But experience only counts when it's "learning experience," b/c if you make the same mistake with top pair/decent kicker hundreds of times, you clearly aren't gaining anything from your 'experience.' Does the guy playing 20 tables at once have 10 times more experience than the guy with just 2 tables open? I think not.

Thank you, but I must make one point. Watch out, everyone in their 50s is not a complacement fish. I'm 58.

One real crucial tidbit that I picked up recently is just try to make the best decision every time and that's it. For example, if you have Ah2h and your opponent has KhQh and the board is something like 3h4hTs9c, don't be annoyed if you didn't hit your flush, or if you lose the hand. Just focusing on making the best decision based on every possible street on every possible card.

For sure, and I'll add that not everyone in their 20's has a clue either.

Focus, Discipline, Work AWAY from the table, Attitude, Willingness to Adapt!

First time I played with a smart aggro guy in his 50s I lost a lot of money. Learned the hard way that not all old guys are nits and not all young kids are spewtards

this ^

the most important thing to study opponents and need to know to bluff

The key qualities that I was lucky enough to witness in a great player who I was friends with was an ever lasting belief in success and an enormous willpower to get there. This seemed to enable him to blend out frustration about down-swings or other misfortune things, may it be related to life or poker. His goal was so important to him that he sacrificed everything else for it.
You can see similar qualities in people like Steve jobs, who from my understanding abandoned his pregnant girlfriend because he couldn't resists this urge to achieve what he felt he had to.
Greatness in one area comes with deficit in another area.

If I were too choose just one I'd say discipline. Maybe not enough to be successful, but surely enough to be a failure without it.

I wonder if the stereotyped "poker face" is something a Poker Pro masters.

I always laugh when people tell me, "I could never be good at poker, I have the worst poker face."

I've been playing poker for years and never once considered this to be a significant factor in finding success at the game. Live tells in general aren't the most reliable source of information anyway. Players are going to deduce your handstrength based on your betting tells and how you respond to bets rather than what expression you have on your face.

Selfishness is not really a quality

I disagree. Certain players (the bad ones) often have very reliable tells that allow you to make folds or calls you never would have otherwise. This often occurs in the large pots and often is the difference between winning and losing.

I have trouble to beat NL100: (

Johnathan Little talks a lot about picking up tells. In one tournament, a player would put his chips in the pot differently with a weak hand than a strong one, spreading them in either a horizontal or vertical line. Once Little picked up the tell, he was right the three times he went with it and he busted the guy. There are all kinds of tells if you know how to look for them:

foot position, hand position, leaning into or away from the table, voice changes, sudden interruptions in talking or motions, where opponent is looking, how long villian he takes to bet, and many more. I've read several books or parts of books that talk about tells, and I still learn about new ones all the time.

No

Many people have great work ethic at poker, because it is a fun and addictive strategy game. The same way many people who are considered otherwise lazy have great work ethic at video games or message board posting or some other non profitable hobby.

I find working hard at poker very easy and have thus been quite successful with it. Ive never found working hard at any other profitable activity easy. Jobs and school sucked balls. Many pro poker players have similar thoughts on this.

Well, that's why I don't have a real job.

I agree having good emotional qualities is key not tilting when your losing is key to being a poker pro

I think it's the opposite. Good work ethics and an effort to study and practice more than everyone else gives you a significant edges that makes you print enough money at poker to not get a real job.

Work ethics would be one of the top skills that I think todays pros have.

Half Grunch:

Lots of conflated thoughts in this thread that fall between glamorization of poker pro-dom and misunderstanding playing optimally and being a a winning pro.
A strong bankroll, good bankroll management, a decent understand of the game, and not ever tilting are the necessary requirements of playing full-time. Im just saying that there's lots of good players who are wanna-be pros and lack these qualities, they rarely make it past 6 months...

the thing is that if they had that, a real job doesnt pay nearly as much for teh same amout of time dedicated

Doyle Brunson was the original Pokerstove, version 0.5. He wanted to figure out probabilites, so he would spend hours dealing hands on his hotel bed to see what the results would be. Sounds like a good work ethic to me.