From the Overly Abused Analogy Department, here's what I think is a good recipe for a good poker game: 2 parts Patience3 parts Knowledge1 part Fortitude2 parts Instinct1 part Luck Like any good gumbo recipe, the flavors and textures of the ingredients and how you go about cooking them combine to create synesthesia in the mind of the consumer when the concoction hits the tongue. (Yes, I'm a bit of a gourmet and like good wines, cheeses, cigars, coffees, teas, beers, etc..) So, let me break down my poker recipe a bit. First off, knowledge is like your gumbo's basic soup stock. When it comes right down to it, no matter how much instinct and patience you have, you can't play good poker if you don't really understand the odds and have experience playing in practically every situation imaginable. Poker is a game of incomplete information, meaning you can never be really sure what the other players are hiding. All you can do is make educated guesses. To do this, you have to have to be observant, know how other players play, understand the chances of any of a set of cards coming off the deck, and know how those cards could affect your hand as well as the possible hands of all your opponents. You have to trust your accumulated knowledge to form the basis of your game, just like a good stock made with carrots and celery and onions and bell peppers, reduced and then deglazed with some chicken stock forms the basis of your gumbo. It tastes good, it's not particularly exciting, but it's absolutely required. Next up, patience is like the roux. By itself, flour is bland and boring. You can cook it in fat to make a roux, which is a soup, sause, or gravy base. And just like a roux unifies a gumbo, patience holds your poker game together. Also like roux, if you cook your patience long enough it takes on a pleasant nutty flavor. With patience, your poker game will be thick and rich like a gumbo. Without it, the result is thin and runny. Next up in our poker gumbo is your instinct. I equate this to the sausage. Sausage is full of wonderful flavors and textures. There's the meat base, spiced to perfection, along with plenty of satisfying fats and a few other ingredients that turn meat paste into a delicacy. Getting a flash of insight into your opponent's hand, knowing you're right, and having your guesswork borne out by winning a big pot or avoiding the hell out of being checkraised feels good, just like getting a big mouthful of tasty, spicy sausage. Now, you can play pretty good poker with just some basic guesswork (like chunks of plain old chicken in your gumbo instead of sausage). But, the better your intuition, the better your game will be all around. This brings us to the Fortitude. You have to be able to take some brutal beats when you're playing poker. In our gumbo, this is the equivalent of okra. Okra isn't the best tasting vegetable, and it's slimy. On the other hand, it works with the roux to support the stew, helping to thicken it up, and supporting the flavors by adding its own subtle overtones. I'd rather not eat a big mouthful of okra by itself (maybe fried, but never boiled), but I wouldn't dare make a gumbo without it. And, finally, that brings us to Luck. Like cayenne pepper in a gumbo, you need luck in your poker game. Also like cayenne pepper, if you use too much luck then you'll get burned and regret the hell out of it. Overseason your gumbo and you've ruined it; gamble too much at the poker table and you'll similarly be reduced to tears. Now, if only poker (I mean GUMBO) didn't give me heartburn... Newswise, I bought a copy of Poker Tracker so that I can begin to walk the walk in addition to talking the talk. It's one thing to know that you're a profitable poker player. It's more important to know how profitable you are. That software package imports emailed hand histories from PokerStars and performs a boatload of analysis functions. It's a great way to measure your profitability without manually keeping logs, and it also lets you identify and plug leaks in your game. I'm in the process of following conventional wisdom and measuring my profitability over 10,000 hands played at the same stakes and with the same game format (Nine-Seated Low Limit No Limit Holdem). I'm 2000 hands into it so far, and I will post the results in 2500 hand increments -- so look for a post from me later this week discussing analysis of your online play.

Source: Poker