One of the things I hate most is losing without really knowing why I lost - I'll find myself thinking: "did my constantly raising opponent actually get better cards, should I have called down with 2nd pair more often? etc. etc."Especially in turbo's this situation regularly arises for me..How often do you higher-stakes players have this - not really knowing if you ran bad or played bad - or do you not even think about individual matches in this way and just focus completely on long term patterns and results?
A pro is someone that makes money from doing somethingI assume a semi-pro means ... losing players then? Or just break even? :)Either way, remember with poker that it is possible to play a flawless game and still lose, or to give a less extreme example you can play a game that will beat your current stakes for a reasonable ROI and still lose.With that said, if you lose a game you should (at least I do) examine why you lost it. In some cases you will see very clearly that you were dealt AA at 1500 stack sizes, your opponent shoved with KK and he got there. This is clearly not your fault and you can be happy with how you played and moved on.In situations where you are unsure if you went wrong or not, then chances are you probably did. If you cannot pin point your mistakes you should just go to any hands where you were not 100% sure on your play and post them here or on 2+2 - best of all I would recommend taking the whole hand history and getting someone like Ryan to do a HH review for you. If you cannot spot any big blunders then maybe you were just making some small mistakes like missing value on certain hands or calling down too lightly in a few small pots.To sum it up - it's very common to be confused about why you lost as you're moving through the stakes, but learning to go through your hand histories and recognise these mistakes will aid your development as a player greatly - in the early stages when you cannot spot the mistakes yourself, seek out help from the community with individual hands, or get a HUSNG coach to look over the HH for you.Hope this helps :)
If we're getting technical I understand the term Semi-proffessional to mean an activity done part-time for money. A proffessional is someone who does the activity pay pay full time as a main source of income.That being said, I concur with the advice given especially the coaching part. A ton of advice & help can be given from a couple of HH reviews.