It’s easier to lose money fast than to win money fast. Many of us have discovered that weeks and weeks of patient bankroll building can be destroyed in just a few hours (or even a few catastrophic minutes) of online play. We’ve learned, in other words, that while winning is slow labour, losing can happen lamentably fast. It’s easy to see why. Winning fast requires that we play the right game at the right time against the right opponents; that we play correctly against very bad players, get lucky, and then get out. That’s quite the harmonic convergence of circumstance, and it comes along quite rarely. Losing fast, on the other hand, requires only that we temporarily lose our focus, discipline, or mind. That can happen any time. Playing angry, or tired is a rapacious bankroll stripper. Internet poker can be a winning proposition, but only if you’re self-aware enough and disciplined enough to get out of your own way! If you stay in a game you can’t beat, or bring a losing mindset to the table, you can lose months of profit overnight.
Don’t they know that they are playing for real money? Again and again we see people playing for real money (even big real money) as if they were at the play money tables. They just can’t seem to connect the digits they see on the screen with the green stuff they put in their wallets, and it causes them to make horrendous playing decisions. This is great for us, of course; it’s where our own (very real, very spendable) money comes from. But remember two things. First, when people are making senseless decisions, you’ll sometimes suffer mind-bogglingly bad beats, and you must be able to take these beats in stride. Second, don’t you lose your discipline, just because no one around you seems to have any. When we see bad players playing bad hands and raking big pots, the temptation is great to jump into the murky waters with them. Resist that urge! Simply not playing bad cards will guarantee that you don’t give more action than you get.
