Realistic Expectations Playing Poker

A new poker friend just called and was telling me how his game was not going well, I tried talking to him about having realistic expectations.

After talking and discussing different things for a while, I asked him exactly how much was he losing?  

He said he was making a little.  I asked exactly how much is a little?

He answered today he started with $15 and only got it up to around $30 and it took almost an hour!  (he was playing on a .25/.50 cent table).

I tried to explain that he was making 30 big blinds in less than an hour this was an extremely good rate.  

The pros talk about making 1 or 2 big blinds an hour (of course they don’t play on a .50 cent table either).

He said that he was sure a good player would start playing and run $15 straight up to $60 in less than an hour.

I tried to explain that it didn’t work that way.  The edge that a good player has is no where near that great and it takes time to play enough hands for the odds to work in your favor.

You have to have some realistic expectations when you’re playing poker.