by trujm

Between discipline and patience, is one more important than the other when it comes to the game of poker? Well, actually, no. They correlate with each other, but each attribute is equally crucial as far as profitability is concerned. How, then, does discipline play a role in whether a player is a winning player in the long run, or one who loses consistently?

Discipline is involved in a wide range of topics and situations in poker. It takes discipline to build and maintain an adequate bankroll. It takes discipline not to “donk off” the money you work hard at earning, and most importantly it takes discipline to walk away from the losing sessions with piece of mind and sanity knowing you can and will eventually “get the money back.” Disciplined players are always are of the fact that in the long run, they are winning players, and also that they are making an hourly wage at the table, including the losses. Discipline applies to both poker related activities and non-poker related as well. For example, disciplined players maintain a somewhat regular schedule of play, keep records of their play, and hopefully maintain a healthy and productive lifestyle. Non disciplined players typically play and act totally on impulse. It may come as no surprise that impulse decisions and poker usually do not make for a good combination.

Another way in which discipline plays a role in poker is in the ability to get away from a hand that you don’t necessarily “want to lay down.” We all know that feeling that courses through your veins. You truly believe you have the best hand, and you’ve felt this way the whole hand, and then suddenly you hear those words, “I raise” coming from the other end of the table. You evaluate the situation, think about every last detail (player position, player image, possible starting hands, and how the turn and/or river could have possibly hurt you, etc). Deception is a key tool in poker, so is this person just simply “making a move on you”, or are they sincere? Even if they are sincere, do they really have you beat? Those questions are not easy to answer, and there is no magic formula for coming up with the answer. I call this the “X factor” in poker: instinct. What do you feel in your gut? What kind of read on both the person and situation have you made?

The only thing close to an answer I can give you is that your ability to assess the situation and get a feel (and yes, a lot of the time it is just a “feel”) for where you’re at in a hand are, in my opinion, the most important decisions you make in poker. You can throw pot odds, implied odds and statistics out of the window. It takes discipline to have good instinct because a lot of the time your instinct tells you that you are beat, but it takes discipline to trust your instinct and to make decisions. Also to be noted is that when i speak of “good lay downs”, I’m not just talking about big pots where you have to call half your stack and you only have top pair with top kicker. I’m also talking about the minute-to-minute, small to medium sized pot decisions, such as holding a pocket pair with one over card on the board in a three way pot. I’m also talking about when you hold top two and the river card put a flush on the board. Or maybe I’m also talking about when you have an over pair but the person who only called you the whole time suddenly raises on the river when the highest card on the board pairs. Sticky situations like those call for rational and smart decisions, so you need to keep the mistakes to a minimum, especially in these situations. Don’t get me wrong, there is much more to poker than just knowing when to lay a hand down. However, everything starts with discipline and patience in poker, and trickles down from the top.

The rest will take care of itself.