Why Not To Be Results Orientated :

Poker is all about variance, variance is the swings that any online poker professional inevitably has. Often referred to as luck, variance is just the natural swing of probability. The important thing to remember is that variance in poker will always even out in the long run. I.e. if something is a winning play it may lose money in the short run however it will always make money in the long run. This is what can cause poker players to pick up bad habits due to variance.

Sometimes if a poker player sees a play work one time when he makes it he will put it down as a good play because it worked that one time. This is what being results orientated is, if a poker player simply thinks all the plays he makes that work are good and all the plays that don’t are bad he doesn’t take into account variance in poker. Now this mistake by poker players cause them to think that bad plays that may work one time are profitable in the long run. Vice versa poker plays that are good plays that don’t work are unprofitable plays and should be removed from a players game. In short being results orientated is a very bad idea.

An experienced poker player has to be on top of his game, what he must do is ensure that his tactics are not results orientated. A poker player should make sure that when looking at a poker play he has been making he takes a large sample size. A sampled size of about 50 plus will start to give a Texas Holdem poker player a much better idea if his play is profitable or not. This helps remove the large amount of variance that would occur in very small samples. By doing this a poker player gives themselves a great chance to work out whether or not poker plays in certain situations are profitable in the long run or not. The big thing that differentiates great poker players from bad ones is the way they view their game. Viewing a play in the long run is what makes a great player. Instead of thinking about how much a player has lost in one hand they should think how much a player has lost on average in that one hand.

A great way to look at previous hands a poker player has played in a certain way in online poker is to use poker tracking software. Poker tracking software allows players to look through all the hands they have played while using the software. This allows them to look at a number of similar hands where they might be using a good or bad tactic. It will also show them if these hands were profitable or not and allow a poker player to adapt his game for long run profit. This is how most professional online poker players prevent themselves becoming results orientated in their poker analysis.