You need discipline to win at online poker

Here's a great line from the actor turned poker pro, James Woods. I strongly believe in what he's saying. You have to be disciplined to win at online poker. I realized that there will always be ups and downs when you play online, so you have to play a disciplined style of poker to leave a winner. If you play too long, you can lose your winnings OR lose more than you want. It's always good to set a limit for yourself. For example, if I win $250, I will quit. If I lose $250, I will quit. If you play a tight game, I think you can win $250 and then quit before you give it back. Stick with a limit and pull yourself away. James' response to Bluff magazine is what I follow myself.

Bluff: Excuse the interruption. You've been playing online?

James Woods: Yes. Every morning I get up and think: "OK, while I'm reading the paper I'm gonna just play." But there's a big distinction between playing and really playing -- you get people who say, "OK, I'm gonna settle into the evening and play poker all night," and of course, what happens is they go up a bit, down a bit, you might have a little rush and then go back down, but by and large they're gonna kind of grind themselves down. What grinds you down more than anything else is fatigue, sheer fatigue.

A friend of mine, who was once in a terrible car accident, plays poker for a living -- he hangs out at Hustler. He has to live off his poker winnings and plays incredibly tightly and aggressively -- he plays the tightest hand imaginable, but when he's got it, he plays. He will lay down a full house, if he thinks it might be the weaker full house, without even thinking about it; and the reason is he has to make $500 a day to live. He says: "If I make 500, I take my 500 and I get out of there before I make any mistakes." He says you have to learn to be disciplined more than anything you could possibly imagine. So I thought: "Well, I'm gonna try this as an experiment."

So about five or six weeks ago, I decided to get up every morning and play, and I have a kind of ritual: I play with the dog a little bit and, before I take a shower, I order my room service (I'm in a hotel at the moment), read the paper and play online. Which means that I'm not enjoying myself (although I always do enjoy poker), but I'm gonna be playing just to win $500, no more. That's my deal. The second I win 500, I log off.

The first month, I lost one day out of 31 days -- so I've won every single day by playing incredibly, incredibly tight, not playing for fun. It's amazing what happens if you don't get emotionally involved in the game and you sit down to win.

Full James Woods Q&A