Poker professional Dan Smith, who was previously featured in one of our in-depth interviews, has become one of the more notable players after being featured on ESPN. Smith went very deep in this year’s World Series of Poker Main Event and was lauded for his excellent play. Yesterday, for the website Entrepeneur.com, Smith gave four tips to everyone looking to become a successful poker player.
In the article Smith compares the approach to poker as a profession to regular jobs, so that people can relate to it more easily. In poker it’s very important to manage your expectations and Smith points out that you’re doing very well if you’re winning a 1,000 player tournament once in every 200 tries, something which can be hard to phatom for non-educated people in the realm of poker. Being heartbroken is a big part of the life of a poker player, and it’s great that Smith points out the tough side of things right away.
Besides this first point Smith also alludes to the fact that preparing before you start to play is very important. Doing things like calculations on certain hands and situations can be very tough to figure out, and having done it a couple of times already will make it a lot easier when you really need that info on the spot.
Making sure you avoid going on tilt is also a huge factor to being successful and even though you can never be sure it’s important to remain emotionally balanced. Check out Smith’s full write-up over here for more information from the world’s Number 1 ranked player.