You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold
You gotta be wiser, you gotta be hard
You gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger
You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm
You gotta stay together -- Des'ree

It's not uncommon for a reader to take me to task with questions about how to survive poker online. Because my preference is live action, where I can see the faces of my opponents and get a read on their playing style based on the methods I use to match identities with physical features, I sometimes shy away from being definitive. I do get an abundance of input, however, from online players, I survey the literature and I spend a lot of time trolling the web games, just watching.

I have often stated that today's players have to learn how to shift gears in order to compete against the up-and-coming winners who think of poker as a fun game rather than a means of income. I stick to that philosophy, especially as it applies to the short-run, tournament action where anything can (and will) happen when it's totally unexpected.

Now if you are a serious student of the game just learning to play, and this refers to live action as well as cyberaction-- you simply must possess the ability to play hard and fast by the rules. If you try to deviate, you're going to be a MIA statistic very quickly.

The fine line between the two types of poker, tourney and live--is that little devil called time. Give any novice a few hours, some courage, some chips, and a decent flow of cards and she can probably score a win now and then. But ask her to do it more than 50 percent of the time over a period of six months and I'm sure she'd sink in her own tub of sorry tears before trial is over.

The trick to winning regularly at poker is that there is no trick to it at all. It's all a matter of dedication and practice.

Think back to when you or a friend got a new puppy. The tedious task of housebreaking the pet, teaching him to walk calmly on a leash, training him to sit, stay and come on command all took dedication and practice. The puppy wasn't a born genius so he didn't learn after just one lesson. If you didn't stick to the lessons, your puppy grew up to be an adult with very bad behavior. You lost and the dog won. If you took your time and applied sound training practices, the project was a success.

As silly as it sounds, that's how it works in poker as well. You have to teach yourself how to win, step by step. There is no shortcut and there should be no deviation. You are not playing the devil-may-care cards of the feckless pros in the tournaments. You are not yet skilled enough to understand the complex concept of bluffing and semi bluffing. What you are is novice with perhaps a Poker 101 book under your belt.

Yet that's not a bad position to be in because if you learn how to play the right way from the start, you might just find out that all that practice, dedication, hard work, and hours of concentrated play have made you the kind of player who doesn't have to do anything but keep up the good work.