Ways to Differentiate Poker Pros From Amateurs

One easy way to tell the difference between Poker Pros and Amateurs is to judge them on their ability to vary their playing style. Good poker players understand the importance of being unpredictable and often play unpredictably. This is beneficial because being unpredictable means that your opponents can't read you. Amateurs on the other hand choose to stick with playing in a way that they're comfortable with. This makes them predictable, allowing their opponents to tailor they play accordingly!

Poker Pros have developed their ability to adapt to other players and poker situations. Online poker is a game of constantly changing variables, and no one way to play is always right. Adapting quickly to previous hands, your image currently and how your opponent is playing is a technique that Poker Pros have managed to master. Amateurs on the other hand need more time and find it hard to quickly adapt to new poker situations. They should remember that no opponent is the same!

"Tilting" in online poker is the phenomenon of playing a game badly because of emotional stress, bad beats and other negative factors in the game. Online poker Pros do not "tilt" because they have played enough games to understand that there are both winning and losing days! If they feel like they are losing initially, they keep their spirits up and continue to play without letting worries affect their gameplay. Amateurs however tilt easily and are immediately sent into a state of panic if they realize that they are losing. This does nothing but ruin their gameplay and they end up losing even faster!

Professional poker players pay attention to every aspect of the game. They analyse everything and pick up information as they play. Every decision that is taken by other online poker players, on how much they raise, what hands they show etc is taken into consideration by the pros. While professional poker players pay attention to everything else, amateur poker players pay attention to only themselves. They are too caught up in whether they are winning or losing, what card they have, and what their next move is going to be. This gives them no time to analyse other players, and often leads to their downfall in online poker games!

Now that we've given you the ways in which you can differentiate between Amateurs and Pros, what do you think you are? If you think you might still be an amateur, don't worry! That's how all Pros start anyway. Practice your poker online by playing in newbie tournaments on MOP and be on your journey to being a Pro! And for those of you who are smiling after reading this article because you think you're a Pro, we challenge you to take part in Mad Over Poker's tournaments and battle it out with other crazy poker players from all over the country!