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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