Poker consists of not one game but is really a complicated group of games that are related to each other in some way. So while they are interrelated, some require a much different set of strategies and experience than some of the perhaps more popularly played versions of the game.
For this reason, you may have played successfully many of the more familiar games for years, but find yourself confronting a version that demands sets of skills and rules that you know nothing about and have not experienced. At this point you would be wise to decide which of the versions you want to be expert in. But can such a decision be made?
Every poker player is there to win the game and the bank. But for a beginner, to decide which poker game is the most profitable is practically impossible. Every one of the games is complex, allowing plenty of possibilities. None are decidedly more profitable than others.
What decides the overall profit in any poker game is how well you combine your goals, your strategies, and the unique possibilities of the specific game. That is, one must simply decide which game one is best at (at least as far as earning money is concerned) and work to continually improve oneself. Other games may be played occasionally, but mostly as refreshment. Your best profits will usually be at the one or two poker types you have been specializing in for a long time.
This answer is not going to appeal to everyone. To the novice player, some games seem to offer more possibilities of high earnings than others and so stay with those games until luck finally strikes. You can hang around for that lucky streak if that is what you want from the game, but you will sacrifice the potential of regular earnings.
There is one belief usually held by newcomers that if they get to know the game of no-limit reasonably well they stand to gain greater profits than by playing a solid game of limit poker. It seems to them that by betting large sums even though losses are inevitable, those large bets will turn a net profit in the long run.
Now if you are after consistent profitability, you must delve more deeply into the question. Gain is a result of managing your cards well in the face of a constantly increasing bank. The size of the bank, though is not determinant of how you manage your cards. Good card management is determined by the rules of the game. Each hand needs particular skills to make that bank grow to its highest profitability before you collect it. As you are now aware, successful strategies differ greatly between the game versions.
To be just a mediocre player, pick a game that seems to you a winner, without any further contemplation. You may win an occasional hand, but you will lose the potential to learn how to raise your strategic skills above your opponents’ and thereby raise your earnings above theirs.
The author is a successful limit cash game player. He plays poker online and receives Rakeback at Ultimate Bet and Rakeback at Absolute Poker. Unique version for reprint here: Discovering Which Poker Game Will Make You The Most Profits.

