This quote just jumped right out at me while reading Doyle Brunson’s blog earlier on. It then dawned on me. This is what separates a good percentage of the really good players from great players. They know the stakes in which they belong and they stay there until they feel ready to move up to the higher limits and take a shot at becoming a regular grinder at those levels. These players know their own skill level and can pick the games they play in accordingly. Something I think that I and many other poker players fail in doing before sitting down at a game, yet it is pivotal to any poker players success at the table that he can beat any game that he sits down at.

This is one of the things that I, myself need to work on fixing if I am going to improve my game. I am going to need to use a couple of valuable, yet mostly overlooked tools to help me increase my profit margins every time I sit down. First one is something that I have been threatening to do for around 2 or three years now; Take a notebook to the table and simply write down everything that you see of importance for evaluation after the game or on Dinner breaks. This information you can then use against your opponents when you have it time stamped in your brain after leaving the table to study it. As I said before it’s simple, yet effective. Another thing that I have just recently found in the past few weeks is exclusively for online cash game play though it is an incredibly powerful tool to help you find out more about you opponents or perspective opponents at the table at any given time. It is called pokertableratings.com and it is like the sharkscope of cash game play. I know this does sound like a big huge plug for the site but it is really an awesome website and it is not very widely used yet so it is good to have it on your side and become accustomed to it before anyone else starts to use it.

This week I haven’t been doing much at all; just chilling, posting on forums writing and I recorded a podcast last Monday for Suited-Aces. Feels like I spend my life on my laptop and I think It’s taking its toll on the machine. The hard drive is screaming at me to stop working it so hard, might need to replace that in the next month or so before it breaks down into pieces in front of me. When you start backing stuff up on to memory sticks, which is when you know it could frazzle any minute.

Hopefully I’m going to get back into poker in the next few weeks so I don’t need to oil my brain before playing next time. Feels like an age since I have played but I am feeling confident that this time I will actually stick to a game that I can beat and start showing some results that actually reflect on my knowledge and don’t show how much of a donk I am once again.

We’ll see what happens anyway. Hopefully its good news next time you hear from me.

D