I think even good players sometimes don’t adapt very well. They have pretty good basics, usually, especially these days online, but they don’t adapt enough to the flow of the game. They have just a basic strategy, and they aren’t very flexible. It’s very important to be flexible with your strategy in poker. If something you are doing is not working well at one table, there’s a reason. You have to think about it, and adapt.

Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier – 12/2009 – in CardPlayer

Most people – especially younger ones – have little experience with diverse people. They live in relatively homogenous towns and neighborhoods and usually relate to people who are fairly similar to themselves.
In online and casino poker games, you have to play with whomever sits down. You must compete against very different kinds of people: aggressive and passive, friendly and nasty, educated and uneducated, quiet and talkative, intelligent and stupid, emotionally controlled and uncontrolled, and so on.
You therefore learn how to understand and adjust to people who think and act very differently from you. The faster and better you do it, the better results you will get.

David Sklansky & Alan N. Schoonmaker – 09/2007 – in Two plus two Magazine