Using Your Mind to Win Online Poker Tournaments

Have you ever been knocked out of an online tournament wanting to literally hurt somebody in a bad way? You set some chump up perfectly and he falls for a call, being way behind, only to suck out on the river. He doubled up. You are left struggling internally. Therein lies the essence of success in online tournaments. It is the fact that you must understand, cope with, and overcome these internal struggles, because more than anything else, your emotions will limit your success in poker.

Let me say that again more clearly. Your emotions will strictly limit your profit potential in tournament poker to the extent of your lack of control over them.

Compare this to sports like hockey, baseball and football, where emotions can propel a player to greatness, it can cripple your poker career. You can learn all the skills you want from the great poker books, DVD’s, and TV poker productions available to you. When it comes to real practice however, such skills are difficult to execute. For example, you are holding pocket 10′s in the cutoff with two limpers ahead of you, one is early. You raise 3 1/2 times the blind to try and get heads up. Surprisingly the big blind reraises you to 6 times the blind, approximately half his stack. Then the early position limper reraises again, all in. The other limper folds and it is back to you. Do you really have the power to fold here? What if you were holding Jacks, or even Queens? You see, knowledge is one thing, discipline is quite another.

Discipline and emotion often conflict. Tournament success will only happen when your discipline can effectively turn your opponent’s emotions against themselves. Since emotions control the majority of your opponent’s actions you will experience tremendous advantage in this regard, but only when you become a master of your emotions.

You will not earn money in each tournament entered, but each tournament entered will be profitable as a long term strategy. After studying and using my poker mind power, you will be going into each tournament as one of the favorites. Sun-Tzu in the Art of War is quoted as saying: While heeding the profit of my counsel, avail yourself also to any helpful circumstances over and beyond the ordinary rules. Hence, you may be a good player right now, even very well informed, but if your success is still limited, it is time now to look inside yourself and begin studying all over again.

Ming Yo is an online tournament pro. He writes for http://www.PokerStrategyArticles.com and has a Poker Mind Power Program at http://www.infonickel.com/1/ming_yo.htm