Playing good poker is about making as few mistakes as possible

If your wish is to play good poker and make money playing poker, you need to learn how to make as few mistakes as possible - and it doesn't matter what your are playing, cash game, sit'n'go, or multi table tournament. The poker player who makes the least mistakes has the best chance of making the most money than the one who makes maybe just a few mistakes throughout a cash game session, sng, or mtt. And when it comes to making mistakes, being patient in poker is extremely important.

You can minimize your mistakes by playing fewer hands to start with. The fewer marginal hands you decide to play, the easier your decisions will be when your chips are on the line and you flop top pair with your K4s or similar.

How to make sure you're making the best possible decisions? First of all, make sure you are rested. Sometimes you can't really understand that you're actually tired before you've played a few hands. If it's a multi table tournament you have just started, you'll just need to live with it, but if it's a cash game, just stop, close the tables and come back at some point later in the day ... or week.

If you still have to play poker after a stressful day, whatever the reason might be, it's always a good idea to drop down a level or two so that even if you do make a lot of mistakes, the financial consequences won't be so bad as they could be otherwise.