Quote:
Originally Posted by Aces123123
In the current issue of the 2+2 magazine Mason writes that it doesen't take 10 000 hours to become an elite poker player. He argues that the 10 000 'rule' only aplies to physical sports and not knowledge fields. This isn't true, because the findings were first uncovered when studying what seperated chess grand masters from other chess players.
What do we mean when talking about being elite? It is not only being able to win at the game, for that you only nedd a bit of knowledge and sitting down at a table where the rest of the players are completley clueless. I think we are talking about being among the best in the world. Not necessarily winning the most money, because this depends more on the skill gap between your ability and the other players ability than on your ability in a vaccum.
Anyways some reasons why it may take longer to become elite:
- Not all information is correct
The information available needs to be put into a context. Sometimes it is correct to min 3-bet your aces, sometimes it is correct to move all in. Much information is also delivered by forum posters whose credentials are questionable
- Bad feeback loop
Sometimes it is hard to find out if you are losing because the others are playing better or if you are losing because you are unlucky. There are no tools to check your lines, the same way chess players can check their lines with chess software. There are some solvers, but they depend on you puttin villian on a correct range. garbage in, garbage out.
- People have incentives to not share their information
In chess, there is usually more money to be made from teaching chess than actually playing. Except at the highest level. Not necessairily so in poker.
So some reasons why it may take a while to get really good at poker. There are of course some things that will speed up the learning process, but Iam saving that for another day. this post is already too long
Hi Aces123123:
Please find below the chapter from my book
Real Poker Psychology on this subject.
Best wishes,
Mason
10,000 Hours
In
Positive Poker: A Modern Psychological Approach to Mastering Your Mental Game by Dr. Patricia Cardner with Jonathan Little, there’s a lot of emphasis on 10,000 hours. Apparently, to become good at something at an elite level you need to spend 10,000 hours working on it, and you need to work on it the right way. And of course this 10,000 hours includes poker.
Let me give a little history. In the early 1980s I lived in Southern California where there were lots of big poker clubs and developed an interest in poker. But only forms of draw poker were legal at that time and there was very little information available on these games. I did get what there was and did study it. Thank you David Sklansky, Mike Caro, and John Fox. I would say that after maybe 20 hours of work, the low limit games became beatable for me. Of course, I continued to review my hands and think about the game, but never came close to 10,000 hours.
In 1986 I wanted to leave my job and move to Las Vegas. To do this, it became necessary to learn limit hold ’em since that was the game that was most appealing to me and the draw poker games were not spread in Las Vegas. Fortunately, I got some help from David Sklansky and remember asking David how long he thought it would take to become a good limit hold ’em player. His answer was six weeks and I found that to be about right. That is, after six weeks I was a consistent winner in the $10-$20 games of that time and was able to leave my job with the Northrop Corporation and permanently move to Las Vegas in 1987.
Now since then I have continued to work on my poker and was able to become proficient at other forms besides draw and limit hold ’em, but the 10,000 hour number is crazy. So where does it come from?
I think there’s two answers. The first is that to be an elite athlete at some particular sport, it does take 10,000 hours. But that’s not because knowing what to do in many situations is so difficult. It’s more to do with developing timing, speed, and coordination, and that does take a long time. Of course, in poker, timing, speed, and coordination is not an issue.
The second reason has to do with the large short-term standard deviation that is present in most forms of poker. It’s my contention that there is little difference between the top players whether it’s tournaments or cash games. But it sure doesn’t seem that way.
Let’s look at tennis again. It’s also my opinion that the difference between the best players that you see on TV is quite small. So why does a Roger Federer or a Serena Williams dominate so much? The answer has to be that tennis also has a small short-term luck factor. That is, if you’re a little better than someone else, you’ll win most every time, and I’ve talked to a number of very good tennis players over the years and they all agree with this.
In golf, the best players don’t seem to dominate quite as much as they do in tennis, and unknown golfers always seem to hit a few tournaments each year. And the most likely reason for this is that the short-term standard deviation in golf is probably larger than tennis.
Now let’s look at poker. One of the things we see here is that every year there are always a couple of players who seem to do great. They’ll win a number of tournaments or score big in the cash games. So does this mean they are really elite players who have put in a tremendous amount of time playing, studying, and reviewing their games to gain a large edge over the competition. The answer is no.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that these people aren’t excellent players who don’t put time into improving their games. In fact, some of them are clearly the best in the world. But their true edge isn’t as big as it may seem, they just got on the right side of the standard deviation, and when a top player gets lucky, he can have incredible results.
As one final specific example, let’s talk about ranges. This idea has been the rage for the past few years and it certainly is quite significant relative to how top players now approach the game of poker. In fact, it has significantly impacted my play and that of many, many others. But if I or some expert was to write a definitive book on ranges and how to use them, how long would it be?
When I asked David Sklansky this question, he told me five pages. I tend to give a few more examples in my writing, so my answer might be seven or eight. But one thing is for sure. To master ranges and understand well how they work and how they should impact your strategy at the poker table, it won’t take thousands of hours. The number should be much, much smaller.
And one final thought. If new players understood that it would take 10,000 hours of play and study to become a top notch poker player, I wonder how many new players there would be. Again, you don’t need to work on timing, speed, and coordination, and you don’t have to gain a knowledge of advanced mathematics to play well. So a lot less than 10,000 hours should do the trick, and I do mean a lot less.