The most important piece of poker advice ever

I am a good poker player but I am not a great poker player. Luckily for me, just being good is often all it takes to win money. How do mediocre guys like me win? The answer happens to be the greatest piece of poker wisdom ever. Now pay attention. This is important. Are you ready? Here it is:

Play against people that are worse than you are.

That's right. If you go into a card room with the goal of taking on the best poker sharks you can find just to prove how good you are, well then you are asking for trouble. Sure, playing against top rate opponents is a great way to make you a better player - if you are smart enough to learn from the experience - but you should make your bread and butter against schmucks who bluff too much and chase draws at bad odds.

So if your goal is to prove yourself to be a badass by beating all the other badasses, well have fun and good luck. 

Even if you are just mediocre - like me - you should also keep trying to improve. Remember, the better you get, the easier it will be to find people that are worse than you. Logging the hours in the poker room will also help you identify the players who are better than you. It is fine to sit at a table that has one or two guys that are better than you, you can learn from them without losing money to them. Just make sure that most of the guys at the table are worse than you. Often it takes a while, maybe an hour or two, to really figure out who is good and who is bad, so be very cautious at first. If you discover that there are three or four guys better than you, switch tables or go home. The longer you stay the more likely it is you will lose money. 

Now here is the hard part - do you have the ability to admit that there are better players out there than you? Can you identify them? Can you say to yourself, "Tom is better than me because he mixes up his game better than I do. He switches styles very well and I have trouble guessing what he is doing. I am not going to try to impress all these other guys by standing up to Tom and beating him - screw that. I am going to avoid Tom unless I have the nuts." Can you swallow your ego and do that? If so then you might avoid losing all your chips to Tom, and then when those fish Dick and Harry donk off all their chips you won't be there to collect some of them.