Every successful poker player possesses a set of essential skills that give them a winning edge at the table. In this article we’ll break down the ten core abilities—from strategic thinking to mental resilience—that you need to elevate your game and consistently come out on top.
Patience
Anyone could have become a professional poker player if they had my childhood.
I was renting my own place in high school. I needed money, and I didn’t have it. My father wanted me to work for my money. He didn’t want to just hand it to me. I’m grateful he expected this of me at such a young age.
My dad got me a job commercial fishing. That’s the family business, so he was able to find someone to take me on. I worked seven days a week in Alaska that summer. I froze my ass off. We’d sleep six hours and then wake up to work. We were pulling 100+ hour weeks.
I learned very quickly that I wasn’t built like my father or grandfather. You have to be made of sterner stuff than I am to do that job. I was a geek who grew up playing video games and wasn’t good with my hands. I constantly held up my team and created problems for them.
When I got back the lower 48, I found it extremely easy to sit in a heated cardroom all day. As long as I wasn’t pulling fish guts out of cuts on my hand, I was doing great!
I will never forget the first hand I played when I got back to civilization. A dealer misdealt. I looked down at my hand and found out that I would have had Queens. I laughed out loud and couldn’t have cared less. The entire table stared at me like I was an alien from another planet.
As I sat around playing poker with a newfound patience, I felt like I saw through the Matrix. It didn’t matter how tight I played. No one was going to fold to me anyway. The blinds were so small in relation to my stack in a cash game. I could sit around all day and wait for Aces and get paid off. It was incredible!
Nearly 20 years later, nothing has changed. Patience is still one of the essential skills for any poker player to develop. There’s still too much money flowing through these United States of America, and people still suck at folding. You can make tons of money if you’re just patient.
Ability To Pay Attention
You can make a lot of money playing a fixed strategy at soft tables, but you’ll make more money if you pay attention. You don’t have to catch every detail, but try to keep eyes on the action. You’ll start noticing small details.
I was playing a hand last weekend where this came up. One gentleman played every damn pot. However, he seemed to go rigid when things weren’t going great for him. He’d fold the hand.
Later, he barreled the river on me. I had a mediocre two pair. I talked to him. The rigidity was gone now. He looked relaxed. I folded my hand. He didn’t show, but he legitimately looked pissed with himself.
Paying attention is one of the essential skills in poker. Those thin decisions can make or break your session. If you pay attention, you can get small contextual clues that can help you feel better about your decisions.
A Flexible Ego
You’re going to need to turn your ego down when you’re studying the game. You can’t learn anything if you believe you already know it all.
When you’re at the table, however, you’re acting. You need to turn your ego up. If you look defeated, your opponents will believe they can defeat you.
You don’t have to be arrogant, but at the very least don’t complain about your luck, roll your eyes, and fold your cards angrily. Look relaxed and ready to play. Look confident. Give your opponents reasons to believe you.
Willingness To Study
You don’t have to study six hours a day to play high rollers, but you do have to study.
Certain situations in poker are extremely important, but they don’t come up that often. You can’t practice these situations when you go to play poker because you won’t get enough repetitions. Instead, you need to seek outside resources.
Don’t give yourself an insane goal you can’t achieve. You don’t need to study two hours a day.
Honestly? The way I study is when I’m sitting on the couch. I tell myself, “pull up a training video on your phone. Every minute counts. Every minute is a victory.” I pull up the training video and start watching without a goal. Half the time I finish the video because the hardest part was just starting to study.
Open Mindedness
Open mindedness is another of the essential skills for poker players. Poker changes all the time. Plays that worked for decades can stop working overnight. You need to be willing to update your strategies constantly. Someone new to the game who hasn’t been playing as long as you might have a fantastic idea about how to approach a situation. You have to be willing to listen to them.
Controlling Your Temper
Everyone has a temper. You can’t remove your temper. That’s impossible. What you can do is control it.
One of the best players I ever played against would use his temper to achieve his goals. If you put a bad beat on him, he would get meaner. He would tighten up and get more aggressive. He was so hard to crack.
Losers don’t have this gear. They take one setback and give up. They have one tough hand, and they decide they don’t want to be a poker player anymore. Then they start gambling wildly to feel better about themselves. Don’t be like these players.
Probabilistic Thinking
Thinking in probabilities is a way to see reality on reality’s terms.
Let’s say you’re playing a cash game. You raise with QQ. Four people call you. The board comes 9-7-4 rainbow. You continuation bet. Two players call and then another player puts in a massive raise.
Let’s say this player is fairly boring. You’ve never seen them get out of line. Is it possible they’re raising Jacks or Tens? Yeah, sure, but maybe 50% of the time they would just call then because most people have learned to not go broke with one pair.
Since you can’t count on this guy making an aggressive move with one pair that often, you fold. Sure enough, at the end of the hand, you see he had fours. You didn’t know what he had, but you used probabilistic thinking to narrow down what he likely didn’t have.
Ability To Think Under Pressure
Being able to think under pressure is extremely important in poker, especially in tournaments. In fact, I would go as far to say it is one of the essential skills for anyone who wants to play poker.
If you find your thoughts are racing every time you play, don’t worry. That just means you need to practice and study more. If you see the same situations thousands of times in practice, you’ll remember the answer when you play. It won’t matter how nervous you are. You can fall back on your training.
Working Within a Bankroll
Losers play for ego. They want everyone to see them in the biggest game in the room.
Winners play the games they can afford. They play loose and they execute. They don’t have the money in the back of their mind the entire time.
Work Ethic
As a wise man once said, “everyone wants what you’ve got. No one wants to do what you did to get it.” A good work ethic is an essential skill for all successful poker players.
The vast majority of successful poker players are hard workers. They’re not looking for the mountain top. They just love the climb.
If you want the trophies, you’ll spend most of your time being frustrated. If you love the process of training and getting better every single day, you will succeed.
Conclusion
Mastering these ten essential skills can transform your poker game, equipping you to handle the highs and lows with confidence and consistency. By developing patience, discipline, and a sharp analytical mindset, you’ll be well-prepared to make smarter plays and build lasting success at the tables.
Want to read more from APT Head Pro Alex Fitzgerald? Try his article about the 5 Ways to Exploit Weak Players
