Maybe you are not as good as you think

A significant percentage of poker players believe they play the game perfectly but in reality they make numerous mistakes each time they sit down at a table. In fact some of the biggest mistakes they make are actually away from the table as you will find out below.

One of the biggest mistakes made by those who

play Texas Holdem

is having a premature realisation of skill. We have all heard and read stories of players who burst onto the poker scene, winning large sums of money at cash games or winning a poker tournament who then are never heard of again or lose all of their money and more besides. The main reason for this failure after such great success is because the player begins to believe they are much better than they are due to their previous winnings.

Poker is a high variance game and it is possible for even a weak player, who makes frequent poker related mistakes, to win big in cash games or find themselves winning a couple of tournaments simply with the right cards falling for them over a short period of time. This gives the player a massive boost in confidence, too much of a boost, and they start to play higher stakes far too quickly, against players far more skilled than them, and as a result they more often than not lose all of their bankroll.

The skills needed to succeed as a poker player develop over time, they simply do not appear overnight so you do not have the right to sit down at medium to high stakes game from the get go and expect to be a winning player. Before you make plans to rub shoulders with some of the better players at higher stakes, you should ensure that you are actually a winning player at your current stakes. This means that you have been a consistent winner over at least 100,000 hands of cash games and literally hundreds if not thousands of poker tournaments before you should even consider moving up levels.

The game can seem like the easiest one on the planet when you are winning but things can drastically turn for the worse in an

instant poker

can and will chew you up and spit you out if you attempt to progress too quickly. Be honest with yourself, are you as good as you think you are and do you really have the skills to take on good players? Has your success been over a long period of time or is it possible that you just went on a hot streak? These are just a few of the questions you need to ask yourself on a regular basis.