Money Worth
The best actors and actresses get the boot before they got the roles. Michael Jordan was kicked out of his high school basketball team for being “too clumsy”. Most businessmen lose million-dollar business deals before they are able to seal multi mullion-dollar ones, and most billionaires went bankrupt before they made their first (and second, and third..) millions. They learned early on that the victory lies not in the prize but in the battle – and the prize just follows.
In the game of poker, the same concept applies. It’s easy to have a low stack before the chips come pouring. After all, you crash a car before learning how to drive, so why should poker be exempted from this rule? It’s not. Sure, money matters in this game. You need money to make money, and in this case you need a wad of cash before you can buy your way into a chair around the poker tables. Money is something but it’s not everything when you’re playing poker. It’s an aid to victory, but winning isn’t based on the chips or the pot – usually, it’s the game itself and how well you played. The cash comes as a reward. A common mistake that most poker players make, especially in Texas Hold’em, is that they focus on the chips in the middle more than their cards, their opponents or their actions. Because of this, they end up making bad calls, being too transparent, being completely oblivious to the bluffs around them, and thus losing more than they expected.
The bottom line is that money is quite important – heck, it’s probably the reason why most people are in that room with you – but the point is, you have to totally focus on the game and not the prize. The more you focus on the prize, the more distracted you are from the game and the less chances you have of winning them both.