The Path of Commitment

Life, particularly a life centered around the poker subculture, offers a broad range of challenges on many different levels. In order to survive in the poker world, your spirit needs to be very strong to maintain the commitment to excellence that playing the game on a winning level requires.

I see it in many aspects of life. People with ideas and a vision pursue their goals with force and vigor. Then somewhere along the road, they give up, becoming battered and weary, having wasted all the time and energy that they had put into the project in the first place. They lose their sense of commitment. It can be a terrible waste of a piece of a person's life. Sure, surrender can be the correct option in some cases. You need to be flexible and adapt to changes in certain circumstances, and not be too rigid in your approach to decisions, to be able to admit your failures and shortcomings and move on to a better vision in life. However, many people abandon their journeys with success just beyond the horizon.

Commitment means devoting yourself to a goal and pursuing the course with vigor – making a decision, choosing a path, and sticking to the course through all the hardships. In many things in life, good enough is good enough. Good enough in the poker world may keep you off the rail, but don't plan on making too many strides from there. If you want to just have fun playing poker and are playing at a level where your ability and finances can't get you into too much trouble, enjoy yourself and have a good time. If you are either looking to play poker for a living or are playing for money that is meaningful to your quality of life, you need to make a commitment to yourself to play poker at a level of ability that will not put financial, interpersonal relationship, or emotional pressures on your life. If you are unwilling to put the time and energy into following through on a commitment to excellence in your poker game, you should probably either play at a level at which the money has no significance to you or find another hobby.

And this commitment to excellence must be maintained. I often see players rise to excellence and then, impressed with their own success, begin to slack off. They get complacent and sloppy and lower their level of commitment to the game. They become cocky and arrogant within themselves, thinking that their previous success will automatically translate to current and future success.

Past performances do not make the tough laydowns for you. Players change, and the focus and flexibility that were once in your game to enable you to adapt to those changes are no longer there. Some players stumble along for years without any awareness of this issue, muttering about how their luck has left them to anyone who will listen (and even to some who won't). They don't realize that their trail is rocky because they have abandoned the path of their commitment. Players with "B" natural skills often outperform players with "A" natural skills through force of effort and consistency, because many players with great poker skills lack the emotional strength to handle the swings of the game.

If a player earns a bet an hour in expectation (a professional level of expectation) in a $20-$40 hold'em game 80 percent of the time, and loses a bet an hour the other 20 percent of the time, he will earn only slightly more than half a bet an hour. Those who are prone to tilt must understand how this affects results over time.

Most players aren't good enough, and those who are good enough tend to settle for enough to get by. To be a winner over time, you must follow the road of commitment and stay on it, no matter what storms, ravines, or boulders may block your path. Inspire yourself to make a commitment to yourself to be the best that you can be at all times. Study the game, put your heart into it, get your ego involved, and make your best effort when you are at the table. Grow as a player slowly and surely. Learn something new and improve your game a little bit every day. Don't be in too much of a hurry, just slowly and steadily move up the ranks. Most importantly, enjoy the ride!

Editor's note: Roy Cooke played winning professional poker for 16 years. He is a successful real estate broker/salesperson in Las Vegas – see his ad on Page 123.