If there's one thing that makes a good player...

What would it be?

Obviously being a good player involves many factors but I thought it would be interesting to start a discussion of what people think is the one most important divider between good players and bad players. Could be some kind of mental aspect like patience, emotional stability etc or something like hand selection, reading players etc.

PATIENCE, PATIENCE, and more PATIENCE. When I take a big hit, I look at my hole cards and say, "what was I doing in this hand anyway". It's hard to set and wait for decent starting cards, I find myself getting bored and find myself in a hand that I shouldn't be in. Just my thoughts.

Patience and dicipline

Patience can't be stressed enough.. and being diciplined enough to fold AA or KK or a strong hand i.e you have Aces.. board comes Js Qs 10c you raise and get reraised, so many hands beat you here. of course this is a very vague,

but in a nut shell knowing when your beat even though you hold a very strong hand yourself and make tough lay downs is invaluable

And aggression I think is key, if you are passive in any way a good player will exploit it and you will have a nightmarish time at the table.

If I had to pick just one, then I'd have to say hand reading. It's the most important skill, imo, and you can't succeed without it. Of course, without patience, discipline and selective aggression you can't do jack either. But of all of these, I defo think hand reading is the most important.

P.S. Oh, and emotional stability is probably up there too. I know of a few reeeeeeeaaally good players that have severe tilt issues, but they're still here because they are incredibly good and compensate with skill for their lack of mental endurance. But they would make their lives a lot easier if they just learned to control their emotions.

damn i really thought about it for a second but once i read the first post i realized it's quite obviously patience...without that you're pretty much just expected to lose in the long run...unless you're one of the few ppl who can walk away after getting lucky in one big pot and take the winnings...i think every other profitable quality of a player stems from the initial patience really...

Focus.

Decision making

Patience without a doubt

What about a player like Shaun Deeb?
He is always unsettled, and unpatience, but still very successful.

_dogmeat said:

If I had to pick just one, then I'd have to say hand reading. It's the most important skill, imo, and you can't succeed without it. Of course, without patience, discipline and selective aggression you can't do jack either. But of all of these, I defo think hand reading is the most important.

P.S. Oh, and emotional stability is probably up there too. I know of a few reeeeeeeaaally good players that have severe tilt issues, but they're still here because they are incredibly good and compensate with skill for their lack of mental endurance. But they would make their lives a lot easier if they just learned to control their emotions.

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Yeah hand reading is another big one.. you can have all the tools but this and like in poker will be very hard for you, players will sense this as a weakness cause obviously yo are playing with the hands infront of you and capitalize on it

Emotional Stability.. another big one.. I'm sure what I'm about to say everyone goes through but I'm sure I've gone through the worst variance in the world to get where I am now, who knows maybe its a combination of that and me tilting to make it seem a whole lot worse. But I know I'm alot better than what my stats suggest but still stuck at micros due to tilt problems.

I think I'm finally learning to over come them, after a few MTT cashes and me then cashing out a large sum of it I encountered bad variance countless times of me being 4-1 favourite( or alot of times it was more than that) post or pre flop and continuously getting sucked out on, I think in 30 games it happened 25 in a row. But I endured it I know at times I through money away but I backed away before I did any long term damage

Now in the last 20 games I have had an ITM of 57% only flawed thing with this statement is my profit margin should of been at least 20$+ higher.. lots of 3rd and 2nd cashes which I AINT happy with, mind you I think with alot of the 3rds I didn't have much options when you are 1/3rd or even 1/5th of the Big stack heads up. something I'm working on as I feel with HE, while being solid I play scared money sometimes which is silly.

Which leads me to my next point .. SCARED MONEY

Perhaps this has been a problem of mine for some while it still is but its alot better than it was, but basicly if you are gonna go into every game with this mentality especially near the bubble in SNG you are gonna get run over.

logic

Eclipsenz said:

Patience and dicipline

Patience can't be stressed enough.. and being diciplined enough to fold AA or KK or a strong hand i.e you have Aces.. board comes Js Qs 10c you raise and get reraised, so many hands beat you here. of course this is a very vague,

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This is backwards. On that flop, you will also have a lot of people semibluffing with draws etc, which do not have us beat yet. So we should 3bet the flop (player dependent etc).

If the flop is t52 rainbow, this is worse. His raise is stronger, since there are almost no semibluffs which are the hands we beat. So his range is a lot more for value. This isn't the best example, since many villains would raise tt-kk here also, but hopefully you see what I mean.

WiZZiM said:

logic

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Yeah, that's what I meant by hand reading, but logic seems to cover more stuff related to poker success.

Just try and be like Phil Galfond. He's got it all.

like everything else,
time and effort.

Like ever thing in life knowledge.

tcummo said:

like everything else,
time and effort.

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Time doesn't seem to make someone great by itself. Some people may spend lots of time but never learning. Obviously experience is the key but it is like reading through a whole textbook before an exam. Most of it won't go in unless you break it down and learn it...

rssurfer54 said:

This is backwards. On that flop, you will also have a lot of people semibluffing with draws etc, which do not have us beat yet. So we should 3bet the flop (player dependent etc).

If the flop is t52 rainbow, this is worse. His raise is stronger, since there are almost no semibluffs which are the hands we beat. So his range is a lot more for value. This isn't the best example, since many villains would raise tt-kk here also, but hopefully you see what I mean.

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It was a very vague example cause like you said in your example its entirely player dependant, but alot of times against a solid reg on you are getting reraised on 2 pair very easily j10,q10 qj, and sets come into the equation to. its possible they could have a draw you are right, thats where your own reads come in, but if they are on a draw and you 3bet oop they arn't gonna fold I dunno at micros no they don't. And if its late game alot of players reraise back putting you in an even more tricker spot.

scokyl said:

Decision making

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Well.. I was thinking this ^ (no I wasn't... yes I was.. wasn't.. 'was'... was not... errr.. umm.. idk)
I'd have to say 'Luck' (aka 'run good')

Experience,
Everything comes with experience, including patience.

Being profitable over a huge sample?

_dogmeat said:

Yeah, that's what I meant by hand reading, but logic seems to cover more stuff related to poker success.

Just try and be like Phil Galfond. He's got it all.

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Yeah, logic pretty much covers everything you said in your previous post. Tilt hand reading, etc etc etc.

I would agree that patience is huge in Poker. Not just patience to wait for the playable hand/position, but also patience to avoid tilting when your best hand gets beat by the likes of Q6...

Bein' smart! also > dedication, perseverance, good work ethic

why being me of course....but seriously I would have to say a fanatical passion for learning from one's mistakes

B.
R.
M.