Don't Rely on Luck in Your Game of Poker

When you have a seemingly unending streak of bad beats and get that sneaky feeling that nothing seems to be working right, you would sometimes suspect that it is not possible to win at poker without luck. While luck is important, any good poker player will tell you that skill is what is needed to consistently win the game.

Just like in any competitive activity, there are good days and bad days. To stay on top needs planning, a good strategy, perseverance, discipline and practice to develop your skills. Sometimes, you get lucky and get positive results and move forward. Sure, luck sometimes brings unexpected victories, but it will not guarantee a lasting and permanent success. That is why you need to devote a lot of time and effort honing your skills to get to the top and stay there.

If you ask professional poker players how long it took them to develop their winning skills, all of them will give you different opinions. But if you are a beginner and would like to see positive results in about a month, most would agree that you must put in at least four hours a day in practice.

Sometimes, you'd see players enjoy a string of wins and may look like Lady Luck herself is on their side because they win every time they play poker. The truth is, luck may have very little to do with their wins which may be the result of their skills, instead. Anything is possible with luck. In fact, even a fish can sometimes get lucky enough to score a win against good poker players. However, over the long haul, in the course of many hands, the skilled poker player will score more wins.

When good poker players rely on luck to win, their game would invariably turn bad. The reason for this is that when one feels lucky, one would start to loosen up and realize too late that his play has turned bad. So, when you are feeling lucky, stop for a moment and assess the situation to see if you are playing the game as intelligently as you should normally do. Lady luck is not for keeps. Sometimes she's beside you and the next moment she could be gone.

Having a bigger bankroll could make you rely less on luck. When you have a small bankroll, you begin to worry about those bad beats that have been eating up your bankroll, and so you begin hoping that you get lucky next time. Many poker players who play a game with big bankrolls tend to take in stride bad beats that sometimes come along the way.