By Henri Junttila

Poker is a tricky game. If you aren’t familiar with the game it can seem like a game of random events, when in reality the game has intricate patterns and a culture of its own. Poker has a large degree of luck, which means that it will take longer for the true results to converge.

In case you haven’t read my story, I was a professional online poker player for almost five years until I jumped over to making money online with websites. I stopped playing because it was destroying my soul (more on this later).

While I’m no longer a professional poker player, I do appreciate the positives ways in which poker transformed my life:

Discipline

In poker, if you do not have discipline, you’re dead. You have to care for your bankroll (your money). You have to be strategic about everything you do. The risk and reward has to be constantly calculated. Not with a calculator, in your head.

This requires brutal honesty. You have to know your strengths and your weaknesses. If you don’t, you will eventually go broke. As they say, poker is a hard way to make an easy living.

Hard Work

When I first started playing poker during a hot summer day in 2004, it was August and I had just bought my first book on poker. I thought I was entitled to win just because I knew the basics. I quickly realized that it wasn’t as easy as I thought, so I gave it up (temporarily) and blamed it on luck—this game could not be beat.

This is how a lot of people approach life. They act like life owes them something. When they don’t succeed after 6 weeks, they give up.

After a few weeks of feeling like a victim and blaming bad luck, I was suddenly struck by a new-found determination. I studied the game day and night. I failed over and over again, until one day, it clicked.

Patience

Patience and discipline go hand in hand. In poker, if you’re playing a normal game with 9-10 people, the large majority of hands you get have to be folded. If you’re playing too many hands you’re going to lose money in the long-run. The number of hands you can play differs depending on talent, the amount of players on the table and what you want to accomplish.

The same applies to real life. I’m a very impatient kind of guy, so I know what it’s like to want things to manifest right away. There’s a reason why almost all sales letters talk about making $65,341 within 24 hours of pushing a button, it makes sales.

In life and in business, you have to work hard, be disciplined, have focus and be patient.

Strategy

Poker is a lot like chess, but with incomplete information. In chess, you have all the information you need, but in poker, you do not get to see what cards your opponents holds and there are a lot of other factors that come into play.

We cannot predict the future. We can only do our best. Sometimes we miscalculate, but that is a part of life. As long as we learn all is well. It’s all about the process.

Objectivity

In poker you have to be objective, but at the same time you have to listen to your instinct. It is an extremely hard thing to do, because your emotions can easily get the best of you.

The same applies to life. You have to be objective about your decisions, but you still have to listen to your heart and let it guide you.

Intuition

The more you can apply your intuition in poker, the better you’ll do. Intuition comes partly from experience (your brain recognizing patterns) and partly from other unknown places. Sometimes you just know.

Listening to your heart and following your feelings is one of the best things you can do in life. Working on something you love makes you feel good, right? Why wouldn’t you want to do that all of the time?

Why I Quit

I quit poker because I had gradually lost my enthusiasm for the game. I started playing poker mainly to make money and when I had made enough, the reasons for me playing weren’t there anymore. On top of this, I really didn’t enjoy the strategic aspect either. It had become a job and I had created my own 9-5 without even knowing it.

The last two years of poker were gruelling, because poker can be tough psychologically, especially when it is your sole income. Why did it take me two years to quit? Because I was afraid, I didn’t know if I would be able to make money anywhere else. An illogical fear, but we all carry them around without noticing.

Wanna Try Poker?

If you’re interested in trying poker, I have to caution you that it can be very addictive. I never had that problem, but it sucks most people in. Be aware of what’s going on when you start playing. Keep it fun, light and play within your means.

About the author: written by Henri Junttila of The Wake Up Cloud.

This entry was posted on January 14, 2010 and is filed under: Change - 6 Comments »