Difference between a good player and a dominate player.

Now with the lush amount of information regarding poker being out, a lot of people have now become "good" players. However, many have not taken it the next step to becoming a dominate player. What's the difference?

A good player has a strategy, and that strategy works well, it lowers the amounts he loses and maximizes his gain. It's often a very simple strategy such as picking good cards and playing them aggressively.

Isn't that what you should do? Yes and no. A dominate player will eat a player like this alive. A dominate player is someone who reads what his opponents are doing. He is a player that studies every single hand and every possible thing every player is doing. He is trying to see what gear everyone is playing at and is constantly changing his own gears in order to take full advantage of this information.

Do you multi-table? Yes, then you have no choice than to be just a "good" player. You have to live within a strategy and stick to it pretty strictly as you can never have a very good read on any given table if you have 36 different opponents. Can you dominate and multi-table? Only if you have a photographic memory and can scan your computer monitor very quickly. Even then you can only do so well as it requires much thinking to decipher your opponents moves and thinking and to exploit that knowledge.

So when should you multi-table and when should you dominate? You should dominate when you are playing a tournament, this information and knowledge can mean the difference of busting out on the bubble and making the final table. You can multi-table if you are playing a bunch of weak players, often at a small stakes table, but be weary of the sharks at your table who may appear harmless. You should dominate if you are at a table full of "good" players.

How do you become a dominate player? It takes a lot of discipline and patience, along with a lot of practice. You must make guesses on reads, and when you first start out you will more than likely be wrong a good amount of times. As you practice, you will begin to get better and better. It requires a lot of practice and study, it may seem boring to study hands you are not involved in, but the knowledge that is there is invaluable. As you begin to get better you will just begin to react to players more so than reading them, you will get gut feelings and they are often right on the money. If you have the patience, and the discipline you too can become a dominate player.