You drive the old Pinto Instead of the new Jaguar. That way, if your nightmare scenario comes true, if unscrupulous thugs hold you up for everything youve got, theyll get less than they otherwise would. You have minimized your risk. Youve also improved your state of mind. In the likeliest scenario, you won get rolled. Youll go to the nightclub, enjoy the band, and come home with no worse consequences than a hangover the next morning. But if youve prepared for the worst, youll be much more likely to enjoy the event in the event that the worst doesn come to pals. Same with online poker, only the issue is not just enjoyment but also performance. If you e constantly worried about negative outcomes, you simply won play poker your best. And since some negative outcomes are unavoidable online, you can afford this worry. This means that you must minimize your investment, and thus minimize its mental impact on you. Im not saying that online poker is the equivalent of a nightclub in a bad neighborhood, but, okay, I am. At the end of the day, this point may be moot, because: most sites don have super-big poker games to begin with. As of this writing, the largest limit poker games routinely spread online are $20-$40. Of Course theres pot-limit and no-limit action as well, and in those poker games you could certainly drop a wad if you weren careful. So be careful. Don let your greed for online glory outweigh your responsible approach in form of gambling whos every technical and tactical aspect you simply can control. Is this true? Yes, its true. In the first place most play poker don take time to learn how to play poker the poker game properly; and thus the casual poker enthusiast routinely fall victim to the genuinely skilled and educated and dedicated play poker. In the second place, every poker room, in the real world and cyberspace alike, charges play poker to play poker. This charge, the rake, happens to good play poker and bad play poker alike, so that if every play poker were equally skilled, with each winning the same size pots with the same frequency, all play poker would lose in the long run. Since not all play poker are) in fact, equally skilled, the vast majority of unschooled play pokerers end up paying off both the house and the talented few. The combination of laziness and relentless raking trends most play poker toward negative net outcomes. Most play poker don like to admit this. They go to great lengths to deny it. They tell themselves (and their spouses, friends, dogs, clergy, any one else who will listen) that they e reak-even or better, though they don have the statistical evidence to back up their claim. If they play poker mostly in the b&ms, its easy enough for them to perpetuate this falsehood. They forget how much they bought in for. They forget a trip or two to the ATM. They let anecdotal memory of big wins wash away recollection of. Unpleasant and all-too-frequent losing sessions. Real-world poker is a fuzzy environment where distinctions between poker bankrolls and other poker money can be blurred, and all sorts of denials can take root and grow. Online, this lie is not nearly so easy to perpetrate. Every play poker must take certain steps in order to put real poker money into play poker on the Internet these steps leave a statistical I trail one thats easy to verify and damnably difficult to Deny. Face it: If last week you moved $1,000 into www. nakedpoker.com (not a real site, so don bother looking), And this week you don have it, youll have a hard time finding yourself or your spouse, clergy or dog that the minute went to gas, lodging, or food. Internet poker then, throws the fact of our losses into sharp, deny let earlier. This has a startling effect on some play poker. They fancy themselves winners in the b&m environment And then find themselves losing online, they often feel perplexed. Worse, they feel paranoid. Knowing (Imagining) themselves to be winning play poker, they can believe that they have suddenly lost all their skills. Groping for an alternative explanation, they conclude that the online poker game somehow rigged against them, and this is why, they lose. Wrong. They lose because they e generally not great play poker. They lose because they don make the strategic adjustments required of Internet poker. They lose because they lose focus or don treat their outcomes seriously, or otherwise in all into the plentiful and common traps of online play poker; They lose only now they have to face that fact, because the harsh reality of their depleted online bankroll is staring them in the face. So then, we have this fact: The majority of online play poker Will lose poker money, just as the majority of any poker population will. Your job, then is, to be in the minority. To achieve this goal, you will have to pay close attention to the nuances of the online poker game. Youll have to surrender your reliance on certain skills, such as reading face tells and body tells, and increase your expertise in other areas, such as interpreting statistical data. Youll need an honest self- appraisal of your poker skills and a willingness to adapt those skills in new and surprising ways. Quires, in short, hard poker work. If you e not willing to do this poker work, you must simply accept your place in the majority and be content to Jet your poker money flow to the skilled and diligent few, and to the house. This is not acceptable to most play poker, not should it be. After all, you poker work hard for the poker money that you choose to invest in online play poker. It stands to reason that you wouldn want to pee it away if you didn have to. Well, you don have to, not if you e willing to admit your limitations going in. So if you find yourself losing poker money online, don be so quick to blame the system. Don assume that you e being cheated; you e probably not. Be prepared to say to yourself, lilt may be that Im not quite as good at this thing (yet) as I need to be. Be prepared to improve. And then you can be Ace of the few who reap what the hapless many may sow. Whether you realize it or not, you take steps to prepare yourself for b&m poker play poker. If theres a drive involved in the journey to your poker destination, you spend time on that drive thinking about the type of poker game you are likely to find, how long you want to play poker, who you are going to encounter, and a host of other factors. Even if you e only traveling across a casino from your hotel room to the poker room, you e involved in a change of space, and this physical transition naturally brings about a mental transition as well. You go from just play pokering poker well to play poker.1I you enter a poker frame of mind. Online is different. Its a snap to get into a poker game Well, you can even clean the cat box and play poker at the same time. The fact of this easy transition from not play pokering to play poker means that the time of your mental and emotional preparation may be diminished to the point of nonexistence. You can find yourself involved in big hands and crucial decisions before you e ready in any meaningful sense. Im not suggesting that you must leave your house and go walk around the block before you settle in for an online session, although that certainly wouldn be a bad idea. Even five minutes alone with your thoughts will help you launch your online session in the right frame of mind. Why would you not take that time? Are you that impatient to get your virtual cards in the air? Then you have a problem with patience, and this problem is only exacerbated by the speed and ease with which you can become involved in on- line play poker. It goes deeper than this. When you go to play poker in a b&m, you e entering a poker environment. Everything about the place says poker: the play poke, the table and chairs, the dealers, cards, cash, and chips. Being in a poker environment helps you enter a resource state appropriate to the task at hand. Resource states are familiar frames of mind in which certain sorts of thinking take place. An artist or a writer, for instance, only starts to poker work productively when he enmeshes creativity resource state, the frame of mind in which his ideas most freely flow. Likewise, many poker play poker are not at their sharpest until they have warmed up, be- come mentally reacquainted with pokers decisions and patterns of thought. When you put yourself in a poker environment, your mind naturally shifts into its poker-play