Keep­ing score in pok­er couldn't be any more straight­for­ward: You are ei­ther win­ning mon­ey or los­ing it.

The peo­ple who play tour­na­ment and cash games at the high­est lim­its get the most at­ten­tion, for ob­vi­ous rea­son. When a sin­gle pot holds enough cash to pur­chase a home or cov­er a year's salary, peo­ple no­tice. But reach­ing the high­est lim­its is both un­rea­son­able and ill-ad­vised, be­cause most peo­ple aren't hard-wired to han­dle the swings.

Your goals should be eas­i­er to man­age. Here are five ways to be hap­py with your place in the vast pok­er uni­verse:

Keep loss­es small: OK, your read was off and you lost the pot. The chips are go­ing in the oth­er di­rec­tion, but let's look at the good news: You didn't pour gas on the fire and lose your en­tire stack. Since mon­ey not lost spends every bit as good as mon­ey won, by keep­ing your loss­es min­i­mal, the saved mon­ey can pro­duce se­ri­ous long-term re­sults.

Lay it down: I don't have math to back this up, but I can speak with au­thor­i­ty here in the same way that I can tell you that the sun is hot, even though I have no in­ten­tion of ever go­ing near it. The play­er who has the abil­i­ty to fold in dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions is go­ing to be light years ahead of the per­son who at­tempts too many "hero" calls.

Avoid the syn­drome: Fan­cy-play syn­drome is the pok­er equiv­a­lent of the Harlem Glo­be­trot­ters' brand of bas­ket­ball. It's en­ter­tain­ing and the ta­ble will get a re­al kick out of it when you show your op­po­nent the 7-2 af­ter a win­ning dou­ble-bar­rel bluff. The re­ac­tion when the play is a los­er is con­sid­er­ably dif­fer­ent.

Per­fect game: There are days at the pok­er ta­ble when you can look back and say to your­self, "You know, I don't think I made any mis­takes to­day." You max­i­mized the val­ue in your bet­ting lines. You were smart and had a han­dle on the three el­e­ments I al­ready men­tioned. You ex­ploit­ed the weak play­ers, and had the smarts to stay away from the bet­ter ones.

When you can walk away with this as­sess­ment on a con­sis­tent ba­sis (few are ca­pa­ble of hon­est­ly pulling this off any bet­ter than 3 out of 10), the re­sults will speak for them­selves in the long term.

Slow and steady: Every kid, at one point, has been told the sto­ry of "The Tor­toise and the Hare," but the tale is in­cred­i­bly ap­plic­a­ble to pok­er. If you can rou­tine­ly find games at lim­its you can con­sis­tent­ly beat, all you have to do is sit back and en­joy the ride.

Bank­ing a $200 win isn't go­ing to get any­body's at­ten­tion, but if you are keep­ing ac­cu­rate bankroll records and watch­ing the prof­it ac­cu­mu­late over time, it's much more im­pres­sive than a big-win play­er flatlin­ing his or her bankroll be­cause he or she did some­thing stu­pid.

Got a pok­er ques­tion or have a com­ment? Email Chuck at cblount@ex­press-news.net.