Do you remember in the old Star Trek films where Mr Spock used to say “live long and prosper”? Well we could use that to a certain extent to describe one of the secrets to long term poker success and we could call it “be happy and prosper”. This is because being happy within you poker environment is the key to long term prosperity. Many people often think that I am quoting my own long term personal success story when I write but that is a long way from the truth. There have been long periods in that time since 2002 where I have struggled to either make money or to motivate myself to even play the game.
If you are not making money or even playing poker at all when you should be then something is clearly wrong somewhere. Most of this comes down to being happy in what you do and this means playing a form of poker that makes you happy to be playing it. If you find that after a while playing this game that you are starting to become bored then either play less hours or switch games. There are two schools of thought here in terms of whether you should specialise or not. I believe that you specialise in order to get one game cracked as soon as possible.
However if you want to achieve long term prosperity in poker then you will probably have to play other forms of poker sooner or later. This could be because your edge had vanished due to the games toughening or because you were no longer happy playing the game.
