I went to Vienna with 20 or so members of www.theflop.net from Budapest. I made about 400 Euros and thought that my experience was a very useful one to illustrate a main concept in low limit poker. It has many names: ABC Poker, basic tight-aggressive strategy, and "playing the rock" come to mind.

Here's the point; people often ask me "Can you really make money playing poker?" or "How much experience do I need to be able to make money playing Hold'em?" My answer is - not much really. Very low limit poker, say everything under $3-$6 is not that complex. The strategy you need to win is simple to explain and difficult to execute only in one respect; it requires a LOT of patience and discipline. It can, in fact be quite boring at times. It is not tricky, it is not like what the big-pros do on TV. It almost never involves bluffing. So, here's what happened.

I sat in the casino for 2 days, about 16 hours of play, and was losing slowly. I was losing my blinds when i was in the blinds. I was losing the occasional call to a raised blind when I had a pocket pair or a medium strong hand in late position, e.g. However, I never once looked down and saw a premium hand, e.g.:

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Then - with 5 minutes to go before our big tournament started I asked the dealer to please deal me 2 black aces.

So he did ! I made 150 EUR. I said "Again please".

Damned if I don't look down and see the same again. I made 150EUR.

I then said "I don't want to be greedy - so this time give the aces to my friend". I got . I made 150 EUR.

i played 16 hrs and made almost all my money in 5 minutes of play.

If you wait - you will get the cards. If you get impatient and start to play sub-standard opening hands, you may luck out occasionally - but usually you will lose. And - this is important - if you make big bets when you get the premium starting hands your opponents will not be sophisticated enough to equate your raise with a premium hand. They will not notice that it's your first raise in 4 hours. They will call you and you will usually win.

That's it. Not complex, not deep like chess - even boring - but, making 450EUR in 2 days of play is actually not that hard, provided you can wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait ....