Do you know that baseball scouts use a system in order to look out for potential baseball players? They use 5 factors or 5 tools to know if a player is a good all around player or not. Here are the 5 tools:

• hit for power
• hit for average
• run well
• are good defensively
• have good arm strength

For poker players, they also have these 5 tools but with less emphasis on the physical aspect and more in the intellectual side. Here are the traits of a good poker player:

• selective
• aggressive
• deceptive
• experienced
• A thinker

If you are selective, you can actually pick up spots that will be good for your overall game including choosing the right starting cards and knowing the right time to perform a bluff. But don’t confuse being selective with being tight because selective players know how to adapt on each of their poker adversary and do not lean on a one strategy against them all.

Aggressiveness is another thing that a good poker player should have. With this, you can come up with a lot of ways to master winning the pot and will make your opponents respect you as a good poker player. There are adept players who play too tight and too loose but I haven’t heard about a better passive player.

Experience will make a player more adept in poker. That’s why they said experience players know it all. They know how to manipulate their emotions when things go wrong in the poker table. The experience you get from previous games will give you knowledge on what to do in your present and future games.

A player who thinks carefully and make moves with a plan in mind is a thinking player. And aside from that they also have a side plan when things happen unexpectedly. Another characteristic of a thinking player is that they think in advance compared to their opponents.

So that’s the what a 5 tool poker player should be. Do you belong?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 1:25 am and is filed under Poker Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.