Luck evens out over the long run. If you play 8-10 hours a day everyday, and keep track, the bad beats will eventually pan out. But for every bad beat you are expected to get more than an equal amount of bad calls that win for you. The basic secret is to not have a table full of guys that will chase you down. 2-3 at a 10 chair table is the max, and 3 is pushing it if they have enough chips to hurt you, but not enough worth winning.The thing about tv is that it is a tounry setting, and often a lot easier to throw chips around, even if the prize money is huge. Because uually these guys have been sitting and pitching cards for days, and they are tired, bired, have a reputation, whatever. Totally different than in live games with real money in frot of them.
I have sat at tables in both situations, tournies and live, with a lot of pro players. The truly good ones have the ability to switch their games form live to tourney, and from hand to hand.
Ultimately you need the cards, or the money. It is a lot easier to bluff witha stack size equal to or greater than ANYONE, than it is to try and make a move on someone who you can't hurt. This obviosly helps if you have the nuts, but if you turn the nuts over all night, you won't get a lot of calls. This will allow some bluffing for sure, but you have to pray the other guy doesn't have the goods when you try it.
Poker isn't all that disimilar than sports betting actually. The best way to do it is to grind it out, take your wins and losses in stride and don't get too emotional.
I have seen guy win tournies and be broke within months if not weeks. I have seen some pro buy into tournies 15-30 times and these are 1K to 5K buy in tournies. If they do not make the money they are out some change. Sure the prize pools are huge, but These guys do this every single week, sometimes twice a week. Doesn't take a lot of no money finishes to eat up one nice win.
A lot of people miss that too. Just like the guy that hits a huge parlay and has more money than he has ever seen in his life. He might piss that all away in a month or two.
Success is actually the worst thing for gamblers to attain, unless they have the correct mentality to handle it.
But I love poker, it is defiantely a nice addition to sports, but is a lot like work, and is very hard to play in the summer now that bases has started. You just can't play all the time and stil monitor baseball lines and moves. And you just can't run to a cassino for a quick hit and hope to be serious about it. If you want to gamble,m then sure it is OK, but like anything else, to be successful you need patience and information.
This is of course aimed at NL or PL games and surely not limit games where you can have someone else play for you. Just give them a rack of chips, have them play every hand and hope they win more than they lose, that is basicaly what everyone else does. As long as you have a single out keep calling.