 Newsletter Signup
Stay informed with the
NEW Casino City Times newsletter! Tadas Peckaitis Archives
More Strategy Experts
|
Tadas Peckaitis Gaming Guru  Top 10 habits of consistent poker winners29 September 2025
By Tadas Peckaitis "Poker is a hard way to make an easy living." This famous quote by Doyle Brunson is one of the wisest statements ever made about the game. When you watch successful poker players play their game, it may all seem simple. However, the truth is that being a consistent winner at poker requires thousands of hours of studying and a significant amount of effort. The best way to become a successful poker player is to emulate the habits of the biggest winners, as they have discovered the keys to success. These are the top 10 habits that keep the world’s best poker players at the top, and that you should learn if you hope to someday join their ranks. 10. Taking care of their physical and mental health Poker can be a grueling profession, as it requires you to sit at the poker tables or your computer for countless hours, while maintaining your focus and thinking clearly the entire time. No one can play their absolute A-game for 12 hours straight, but being mentally and physically prepared for the game can help you maintain an edge over other players. As the entirety of their job is spent sitting down, elite poker players make an effort to stay active outside of poker. This can mean visiting the gym a few times a week, going for a run after a poker session, or even walking a few thousand extra steps every day. When it comes to mental preparations, it’s extremely important not to spend 100% of your time thinking about poker, as the risk of burnout is very real. The best poker players balance their time between playing, studying, spending time with friends and family, and engaging in hobbies that have nothing to do with cards or gambling.  There is always something new to learn in poker. Like in most fields, complacency is very dangerous in poker. Just because you know basic poker rules and can beat your regular games does not mean you should stop studying. In fact, the best poker players remain at the top by continually studying the game, learning new moves, and adapting their play to confuse their more skilled opponents. There is always something new to learn in poker, and even if you have the perfect strategy to beat your games, you can learn about other game formats or how to play against different player types. Staying on top of your game and constantly improving is the only way to ensure none of your opponents can overcome your skill edge by spending hours in the lab themselves. 8. Controlling their tilt No poker player is completely immune to tilt, but the ones who find ways to control and suppress it tend to be among the biggest winners. The biggest winners in poker employ various strategies to manage tilt, ranging from complete detachment from money to recognizing when to quit a session. To maximize poker profits, the best players tend to learn how to detach from the money they are playing with and instead focus solely on making the right decisions. This way, bad beats and coolers hurt far less. Less experienced poker players can’t expect to have this kind of emotional control, which is why practicing a stop-loss limit is a good strategy for tilt control. If you want to be a consistent poker winner, you will need to actively think about tilt control, develop a tilt management strategy, and stick to it in all situations to ensure you never lose money due to tilt. 7. Adjusting to their opponents’ tendencies There has been considerable discussion about game theory optimal poker strategies in recent years, but the most successful poker players continue to employ exploitative strategies to maximize their win rates. While GTO poker offers a great baseline strategy, it fails to adjust for player tendencies in any capacity, which means it does not maximize your winnings. The biggest winners in poker adjust to their opponents and make the plays that win the most money against the specific players they are playing with. The next time you play poker, think about your opponents and what they are likely to do. If you are playing with a nit, bluff them every time. If you are up against a calling station, value bet more often, and forget about bluffing. While you will make some mistakes and bad judgment calls along the way, your long-term win rate will thank you for making appropriate adjustments to your opponents. 6. Maintaining positional awareness One of the first lessons any poker player learns pertains to position. However, this is also one of the lessons that most players tend to forget on a regular basis. Positional awareness can be the real difference between big winners and break-even players, as the best players ensure they avoid playing from out of position with weak hands. Those looking to reach the very top usually go through stages in which they play too many hands from OOP, and gradually work their way towards being more positionally aware. If you want to be a big poker winner someday, you should learn how position affects ranges in different preflop scenarios and adapt the hands you play from each position accordingly. The key thing to keep in mind is to always consider position in every play you make, and always tighten up your ranges when playing from out of position. 5. Getting full value for their hands Amateur poker players tend to play poker hands in accordance with their absolute value, only going for multiple streets of value with their very best starting hands. Elite poker players, on the other hand, look for value in every situation they play in, and aren’t afraid to make thing value bets when the situation calls for it. For example, a player will reach the river holding top pair with a medium kicker, but with a high confidence that they have the best hand. However, since their hand is not very strong in absolute terms, they may elect to check and get a “free showdown.” The biggest winners in poker go for value instead, and they aren’t too worried about the rare situations in which they may get looked up by a stronger hand. Instead, they focus on all the times they get looked up by a bluff-catcher and win a huge pot. The only way to a truly big win rate is to look for full value every time you have the best hand, so make sure to remember this lesson the next time you find yourself in a thin value spot. 4. Staying aggressive If you’ve spent a couple of hundred hours watching poker on TV, you may have noticed that the player who bets first is often the one who wins the pot. The importance of aggression in poker cannot be overstated, and every elite poker player in the world relies on well-timed aggression to increase their win rate. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a time to set the trap or call of a river bet with a bluff-catcher, but only that being more aggressive than your opponents is one of the best ways to win at poker. Aggressive poker players are challenging to play against, and their opponents often become frustrated, making the wrong moves against them repeatedly. The next time you play poker, avoid being predictable, bluff more often, and try putting your opponents in uncomfortable situations with your own betting patterns. 3. Getting over the fear factor Fear is the one thing that holds many poker players back for years, preventing them from moving forward in their careers. Whether it’s the fear of losing money, the fear of looking stupid, or the fear of making the wrong move, it dominates poker games and manifests in many different ways. The best poker players understand that poker is just a game, and there is nothing to be afraid of. Every mistake you make is an opportunity to learn, and bad beats are simply a part of the game. The next time you are thinking of pulling a big bluff, don’t worry about looking silly. Instead, focus on the probability your opponent will fold, and go for the play that makes the most money in the long run. If you put yourself in uncomfortable situations that used to terrify you on a regular basis, you will eventually not be afraid of anything at the poker table, allowing you to gradually move toward becoming an elite poker player.  Bankroll management is another key poker skill. In line with game selection, bankroll management is another key poker skill that the best poker players never neglect. You can approach bankroll management from many different angles, but the key takeaway is that you must always have enough money to keep playing your games in spite of variance. Whether you play cash games or tournaments, you are guaranteed to run into some bad stretches and lose quite a few buy-ins, even if you are the best player in the field. For that reason, having an adequate bankroll for the games you play in is a habit you should always exercise. The exact size of the bankroll you need can depend on your average buy-in, how loose the games play, and how big your actual edge is. You should always aim to have at least 20 cash game buy-ins or 50 tournament buy-ins available to you before you jump into any game. If you can’t access enough money to meet these bankroll standards, drop down in stakes, save up to grow your bankroll, or look for a staking deal to make playing the games possible. 1. Playing the right games You don’t need to be Daniel Negreanu to beat your home game. In fact, in most cases, all you need is some patience, basic poker skills, and a solid bankroll. The biggest secret to success in poker is knowing which games to play in and which to avoid. Access to the right games can be the defining factor in your poker career. The likes of Dan Bilzeiran and Alan Keating have made millions playing poker against weaker opponents. Instead of mastering every element of the game, they focused on gaining access to the weakest games with the highest stakes. There is a big difference whether you play on a new site like ClubWPT Gold, full of recreational players, or an established online site full of pros. The best players in the world know that game selection is one of the most important skills, and they spend a lot of time trying to get into the games where their edge can truly shine. This applies to tournament poker players as well, as they too can use game selection to their advantage and win more simply by avoiding tough fields and playing when the competition is the softest.
Top 10 habits of consistent poker winners
is republished from Online.CasinoCity.com.
Top 10 poker mistakes good players still make1 September 2025
Becoming an elite-level poker player can take years and requires continued efforts to keep improving and stay ahead of the curve. While a few players do reach the elite level, many become relatively good at the game but never reach the heights of the likes of Phil Ivey or Isaac Haxton. The reason, in most cases, is the inability to eliminate key mistakes from their game. ... (read more)
Top 10 non-Texas Hold’em poker games every player should try25 August 2025
Poker has become a global phenomenon over the last couple of decades, but most poker players only ever play one game, Texas Hold’em Poker. Yet, there are dozens of different poker variations out there, and many of them are action-packed and very exciting. Whether you are new to poker or someone who has ... (read more)
Top 10 takeaways from the 2025 World Series of Poker21 July 2025
The 2025 World Series of Poker has concluded, delivering an epic two months filled with dozens of incredible stories. From Martin Kabrhel and William Kassouf’s table antics, to historical performances by the likes of Michael Mizrachi, Shaun Deeb, and Benny Glaser, it was a WSOP that will be remembered for years to come. ... (read more)
Top 10 ways to become a better poker playerPoker has always been a dynamic game that requires constant improvement to stay ahead of the field. In the era of online poker, this is more valid than ever.If you want to be a successful poker player, you must keep learning. It is as simple as that. Fortunately, there are many ways to improve — and that being said, we can jump into a list of top 10 ways to become a better poker player.10. ... (read more)Top 10 most common poker mistakesSometimes, as poker players, we become so focused on our own game that it becomes difficult to notice obvious errors and blunders.To help combat that, below is a list of common poker mistakes that you should review, assess and make sure you aren't committing. Avoiding these errors will surely improve your game in no time.10. ... (read more)Tadas Peckaitis |
Tadas Peckaitis |