LanaRhoades said:
big amount of money won on the tourneys defines a tough player according to myself.
I see a lot of descriptions of what a good or strong player does, or how they play, but only a few of you seem to get the point that the good player is the winning player in the long run.
The best poker players in the world do not always play well, and they do not always win. But they are the best because they win the most often through their consistently good playing. Simply put: they are far more consistent in winning and earning profit than they are in losing. The frequency of their wins/big cashes vs. the frequency of their losses/non-cashes.
And of course there are anomalies and contradictions. Take Gus Hansen for example. I'm sure some people would argue he is not a good/strong player and point to his $20 million in online losses, while others would point to his titles and his lifetime earnings in live games and claim he is a legend. So, it would be best to try to avoid false dichotomies here, because it is not simply either or; strong players can and do lose tournaments and cash sessions, and weak players can and do win those games as well. But if you zoom out to the overall bigger picture, you will see that some players tend to lose most of the time, and other players manage to win enough to make profit and continue playing.
It is sort of like trying to say, a strong baseball player hits home runs, and gets on base. Well, sure, pretty much all of the strongest hitters do in fact hit home runs and get on base a lot. But just because a player hits one or two home runs, or gets on base every now and then, it does not make them a strong/good player, in the same way that owning a guitar does not automatically make you a musician, and owning a gun does not make you a marksman.
In my mind, the good player is the long term winning player. If you ask it as, "what makes one a good poker player?" and you list all of these things that many have listed here, but do not include being a profiting/winning player, you are basically saying that a player can consistently lose and still be a good/strong player. I don't see any other sport/game/competition where that philosophy would fly. The football teams with losing records are not considered good/strong teams. Chess players who compete at the highest levels yet consistently lose are not considered good/strong players.
You know the old taunt, "SCOREBOARD!!!"? That exists because we directly correlate the results of games/competitions with ability strength and skill level. No one cares if you are a "good" boxer who can never seem to actually win a pro fight. You might be good at sparing in the gym and hitting a heavy bag, but in the actual competition, you fail and lose. That could mean you are not necessarily a terrible boxer, but you certainly cannot be considered a good one. Would you then say "good boxer, bad competitor?" I don't think so. In order to be considered a good boxer, you must compete and perform as one, and when you fail, losing more times than you win, no one will be there to say you are a strong boxer.
So if you do not yet have a lot of experience playing poker, don't get too discouraged if you are not yet a winning player. This is a lifelong war, not a handful of battles. I have seen plenty of good players whose stats show how much they struggled to perform well and win consistently at the onset. Do you think they focus on the part of their past where they were still a losing player? No. They focus on the present and the future, and are ready to work harder in the present to improve more in the future.
