The Best Time To Play

Now when it comes to learning about the game there are a huge amount of areas to focus on but all of these fall under two categories: (1) Learning the strategies on a hand-to-hand basis - generally how you play your hands while at the table. (2) Learning certain disciplines while not at the tables - bankroll management, analysing, preparing, table selecting, dealing with tilt etc etc.

It's often been said but it's worth saying again: you may be great at knowing about category 1, in that you may have an in-depth knowledge of strategy and know exactly when to fold, call or raise etc, but if you have the odd failings in a few of the areas in Category 2 you may be on a hiding to nothing. There are loads of metagame mistakes that can easily take the edge away from perfectly good strategical players. One of these, especially for the amateur player, is not playing at certain times.

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Now I woke up this morning, sat up in bed, reached for my laptop and fired it up. During the first part of last year and without hesitation I would have dived onto the PKR site, joined the first table that looked all right, and started playing poker. Today, I didn't do this for three reasons: (1) I still have some admin work to do for work. (2) On a Bank Holiday Monday afternoon, the majority of players playing at $50nl - $100nl are going to be fairly decent players. (3) I've had a good start to the year, poker-wise, and want to spend my afternoon down the pub while in a good mood.

Now while some of these reasons for not playing may not be how a professional player thinks, I have decided that these personal considerations mean that it would be wrong of me to play poker at this precise time. To stress: I would like to play poker while I can play my "A" game and with a clear head. All this means, if I am going to play poker then I'm going to play later!

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Playing at the best time is only a tiny aspect of the game but it's a very important piece of the puzzle that should be firmly in place when sitting down to a game.