The 14 Virtues of a Winning Poker Player: Detail Oriented

What It Means: A poker player who is detail oriented simply doesn’t let any advantage pass them by, no matter how minute it may appear on the surface: Because the best poker players know that the devil is in the details. If you’re not keeping a careful eye on just about everything in poker it can all blow up in your face: Or to put in words a poker player will understand, you’ll go broke!

The Flip-Side: Poker players, who ignore the small stuff –thinking it inconsequential– are long-term losing players, and they have no idea why. You’ve seen these players, they seem to play pretty solid, but for whatever reason they lose, and they complain all day long about it! Well, the reason is that they ignore the little things.

How It Relates to Poker: Details in poker are everything, since your edge in poker is extremely small against horrible players, and even smaller against halfway decent poker players. This isn’t to say that poker is unprofitable, just that the difference between success and failure is a very fine line.

Players who ignore the small things like looking for body language tells, looking for telegraphs, actually recording -on paper-things they have seen from their opponents are making the game much more difficult than a player who takes the time to do a little bit of extra work.

For instance, suppose you sit down in an Online Poker game with a certain player that you know you have played with in the past: In one example you have notes on the player, and in your notes you made mention of this player’s tendency to bet into the pre-flop aggressor, and that this always signifies a bluff where they will fold to raise. In the other instance you have no notes. This note could easily be the difference between a winning session and a losing session. And therefore the difference between a winning and losing player!

Imagine you play in $20/$40 limit Holdem game and this scenario occurs twice a session: Well, in a $20/$40 limit game the pot on the flop would usually be $100+$20 for the player’s bet, that comes out to $240 profit, because you did the little things: You were perceptive enough to see the tendency, you were diligent enough to make a note of it, and you took the little bit of extra time to check your notes on this player! Your tight aggressive strategy has nothing to do with this profit; it’s all about the details.

How to Cope: If you’re not taking care of the little things it really doesn’t matter how well you play, you’re losing a lot of money. There are so many small things you could be utilizing its mind boggling. If you find you aren’t putting in the extra time, you need to reassess why you’re playing poker, and think about how much profit these small factors could add to your winnings.

Ways to Make Yourself Detail Oriented: To become more detailed oriented you need to schedule yourself some time away from the tables; not all of your winnings will come from your solid play at the poker tables, a large percentage of your winnings will actually be made because of the studying you have done away from the tables.

Additionally, you need to make sure you are not missing bits of information when you’re playing poker: Make sure you have everything you need in order to jot down what you see, whether playing Online Poker, or in a brick & mortar poker-room.