Making Good Decisions
Posted by Sean Lefort
Posted by
Sean Lefort
posted in
Gen. Poker
Making Good Decisions
If you sit down at the computer saying to yourself, "I want to make the most money I can possibly make today", it seems like a pretty valid objective. After all, that's the ultimate goal. But the tricky part is that making the most money is really just a by-product of making good decisions. If the focus shifts from making good decisions to trying to make the most money, it's potentially a recipe for unknowingly slipping into a routine where you're not making as many good decisions. And this of course, through a multitude of ways, leads to making less money.
I should explain what I mean in a more practical sense. Typically, my poker routine is very strict. I usually play roughly the same hours on the same days of each week. I play the same games at the same sites and employ the same strategies. Because of this monotony, I tend to slip easily into "workmode" where I'm just "doing my thing". Essentially, I'm playing my C game. It's an embarrassing admission but one that is true all too often and one that I'm working hard on correcting.
When I sit down tomorrow morning to play a session, I'm not taking my past winrate and mind-numbingly applying it to 1000 hands of poker so that I win $X and leave the computer to go do other stuff. I'm sitting down to embrace every decision I encounter with thought and effort in a manner that leaves me making the fewest mistakes. This is where my focus needs to be.
I took this approach to playing today and noticed some immediate benefits. First of all, I played better. Secondly, even on decisions that were fairly elementary, I was taking more time to think about each variable and this endorsed all sorts of new positive feedback. Often times, I recognized more than just the obvious right play. I recognized precisely why it was the right play, why it might not be the right play if some of the variables were changed, and why I'm making money from my opponent by making the decision. As a result, results were much easier to accept. Sure, I got the money in bad because I got coolered. But I'm 100% certain it was the right play because I gave it sufficient thought and understood the situation well. If I wasn't certain it was the right play because it was a tough situation, I marked the hand for review while being content that I did the best I could do at the time. Had this been a week ago, the slight uncertainty upon reflection of my decision in-game due to the non-optimal thought effort would breed potential for some silent tilt. String together a collection of such decisions and voila, I'm now playing my D game because I'm not 100% emotionally stable.
Another interesting by-product of this focus shift is that I felt remarkably satisfied after my session today. I didn't even care all that much whether I'd won or lost. Instead, I felt rather proud and accomplished at making so many good decisions. It truly felt like a "job well done", not an easy feeling to find and experience as a poker player, especially from such a routine run of the mill session.
Before writing this bit, I searched for an old blog blurb I'd written (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/56/medium-stakes-pl-nl/tilting-43682/) regarding silent tilting a bunch of years back that was posted on 2p2. I re-read it and thought it was pretty reminiscent of today's epiphany. Then I checked out the date. October 26, 2007. Five years, to the day. :P
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I always caught myself saying "oh good, I'm changing things. I played that hand differently than I used to play it, that must be a good thing." And then rationalizing all kinds of reasons why my new strategy is better than my older strategy. Not really going anywhere with this, guess I'm just saying be careful with the "I'm going to play good from now on, and the only reason I was losing before was because I was playing badly" psychology.
I have a question for you. Let's say a guy has been a 100nl reg for a few years. He used to be a 4 to 5bb/100 winner, but over the last 2 years he's dropped to about break even or maybe slightly just under and is now just relying on rakeback. He's started expecting things to not go so well, so doesn't even sit down for poker in a great frame of mind. He's always played 4 to 6 tables. The stuff he used to do, just doesn't work out so well, anymore.
Do you think it's a good idea for this person to go back to playing one table and to do so with an extreme level of focus? Spending a decent amount of time on selecting which table queue he is going to join and then sweating that table, maybe for half an hour or more, before he actually starts playing? Setting up his HUD to show far more data than he would normally bother with and just really look to give himself an edge on the multi-tabling regs who are at that table, as well as the weaker players?
Of course, he's not going to make much money for a while, playing one table, but this seems like a good way for players to get their confidence back and to start feeling like they are making better decisions than their opponents again. There must be a lot of players who are capable of playing their A game at one table, but not at six. While the variance obviously makes it tough for anyone without a large roll, don't you think that a lot of 6 tabling 100nl regs would be better off working towards a stage where they were playing one table of 400nl but bringing their A game to that higher-stakes table?
If you really study one table, right down to timing tells, BS in the chat, watching table dynamics between other players you get to see so much more, especially if you are using all the capabilities of your HUD?Notecaddy and have the time to process all the data properly, in your head, I would have thought. I do actually think that the luxury of being able to focus contributes to how online players find live games so soft. Obviously, the play is pretty weak in most casinos, but as a decent player you pick up so much more info sitting down and watching how everyone is playing and what mood they are in, rather than trying to figure out how 36 players are playing over 6 tables, all at once, as multi-tabling regs have to.
For me personally, a lot of this post had to do with me focusing on other things in my life and leaving poker on the back-burner where I would log a bunch of tedious hours a day and call it a job. It was easy to fall into that routine and it took an epiphany like this to realize that the game deserved more of my energy and focus.
I'll also point out that I don't think its necessarily so much about picking up more information, but moreso about being more clear about the information you do have and making the best decisions accordingly. You might normally think, "Oh, okay he's weak here because of these stats so I'm going to make the call"... when if you spent a little more thought energy on it you might have gone a step further and thought, "Oh, okay he's weak here and my range also represents a lot of nut hands.. I think turning my hand into a bluff with a raise is even better than call." Basically just allowing yourself to think about situations on a deeper level instead of always applying your "surface thoughts" to the game (ie. playing your C game).
There's a Chinese proverb saying to prepare for the rain before you know its coming.
If I can make a habit of doing this only a regular basis my winrate would improve dramatically. Thanks for the reminder!
If at any point in your career you are finding yourself just doing the same thing, either a well done, is in order as you are now #1 in the world. Orrrrr.. there are some more things that you can learn and still develop on. Even if you are #1 in the world, you can still improve to try and get further ahead of all opposition..
Thats the ultimate goal for some to be the best that they can be, not everyone can be #1.. but someone has to do it, so why not all try.. and maybe we all bump into each other in the top 0.1% of players..
It's as if, when you're in a downswing, you say to yourself "well, it doesn't matter what I do, I'm running bad and you can't win tournaments when running bad", so you switch off the part of your brain that's looking for small edges and optimal plays, and you just sit there mindlessly waiting for the next opportunity to win 10 flips in a row and ship a turbo tourney or something.
I don't know why I'm saying 'you' here, as I guess I really mean 'me', haha. It's definitely something I went through a few months back. I've really benefitted from taking a step back and focusing on making the best possible decisions each time I play, though, and it's really a good idea to try to step out of your game for a moment sometimes and take a look at things on a deeper level than just checking that you're not making huge errors. It's really easy to not make any huge errors or terrible plays, but still be playing at 60-70% of your best game or your highest level of awareness. Sometimes you do have to kick your own ass a little and make yourself 100% accountable, even when it seems unfair.
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