mikebrad brings up a great point. Don't try to be the next pokerlistings or something like this. You must make sure you have a defined niche and target smaller keywords first to build your site.
For example, on one of my sites I wanted to attract poker players looking to play in online poker leagues. Instead of going after 'online poker leagues' as my first keyword I went after 'internet poker leagues'. A much less competitive keyword, but it got me some traffic to start while I built up me
SEO standings for 'online poker leagues'. Now I rank top 4 in Google for both terms.