When I was a young child, my dad went through a phase where he would regularly go golfing. He would tell me what a difference having a good golf partner had on his own game; if he had a good golf partner to push him harder, his game did better as well. Of course, my young mind couldn't quite comprehend the psychological phenomena that had taken place, so I just concluded that there was a fairy godmother following around the “good” golfers and that my daddy also reaped the benefits of the fairy godmother when good golfers were around.
By now, you might have figured out that this post isn't really about golf. (And, if you haven't figured out that this post isn't about golf, odds are you came to 2+2 by accident and didn't realize that this is not, in fact, a forum about golf.) What this post is about is that having a good partner in poker, like having a good partner in golf, can tremendously help in your own growth as a poker player.
Before hopping into some specific benefits of having a good “golf partner,” let me tell you a little bit about my story...
After playing some home games, a couple friends convinced me to try out casino poker for the first time. My first experience was a positive one, and I came out $100 richer. I'd only played a handful of (mostly break-even) times when, at the end of June, I opened my account at Full Tilt Poker with $500.
Unfortunately, I had no idea that online poker was so much more difficult than live poker. In a very short span of time, my $500 had dropped to about $180.
It was frustrating. I found it maddening. And I concluded that this must not be the game for me.
So, I put in a withdrawal for my remaining $180 and thought I'd put this game behind me forever.
Well, Full Tilt takes a few days to process your withdrawal request and, conveniently enough, they allow you to cancel your withdrawal at any point during their processing time. During the days that my withdrawal was (in theory) being processed, I was watching the World Series of Poker. The announcers were talking about some pro who learned about poker by posting difficult hands on Internet forums. I thought to myself “I could do that” and, showing an obvious lack of self-restraint, I canceled my withdrawal request and was back to grinding.
So, come July, I had discovered the micros forum. If you're interested, my first ever post is available
here. It's pretty LOL-worthy as I ask when it's a good idea to fold after continuation betting (wait. you mean I really can't call a turn check/raise with my unimproved queen high?).
By August, I met a few 2+2ers and, for reasons that I still don't entirely know (and I doubt he even knows), bravos1 took a very active interest in helping me improve my game. He also introduced me to bigbadbabar. And from there forward, I relentlessly bothered both of them with questions about poker, trying to figure out as much as I could from such seasoned veterans.
What happened next was something completely unexpected; in just a few months, I transformed that $180 that I had fallen down to into literally thousands of dollars. I moved up several levels (starting at 0.25/0.50) to where I am now, playing 2/4 and 3/6 (after having playing more than 10K hands of winning poker at each level beneath 2/4). Every step of the way, I've been a pretty big bankroll nit (I usually have 600+ BB for the level I'm currently playing).
It's kind of funny looking at it all retrospectively; when bravos1 first chatted with me, he predicted that I'd have a $1,000 bankroll by the end of the year. Having gotten rather used to losing money at that point, I told him flat out to his face “That's not possible.” As it turns out, he was right.
So, why do I mention this? Because I'm very certain that I could never have made it to this level of play within such a short period of time (only a few months) if I didn't have the assistance of bravos1 and bigbadbabar; in fact, up until my involvement in 2+2, I was losing money. And it's my opinion that a lot of noobs (but also veterans as well) will have a much richer experience playing poker, for a plethora of reasons, if they have a good “golf partner” to discuss poker with.
- Help goes both ways! Very often, after I asked bravos1 or bigbadbabar a question, I'd thank them and apologize for bugging them with so many questions. Both of them told me, however, that it wasn't a bother at all. In fact, in discussing these concepts with me, they noted that it helped them to understand the concepts better, too. Having to think through the questions another person might ask you engages you in a thought process that only results in helping yourself by helping others. And in such an exchange, both partners are the benefactors.
- Poker doesn't always offer accurate feedback on your decisions immediately, thus making it difficult to “discover” the correct action on one's own. As we all know all too well, in poker, you can get rewarded for a bad decision and punished for a good one. Having somebody else to discuss decisions with (especially somebody more experienced than you) can help you differentiate good decisions from bad ones, independent from results-oriented thinking.
- Poker is lonely, but it doesn't have to be! Ed Miller once commented that the average poker player's experience goes something like this: “'Is anyone out there?' (Echos.) 'Am I doing this right?' (Echos.) 'Can anybody hear me?' (Echos.) The loneliness is enough to drive poker players totally batty. And its [sic] enough to drive their games squarely into the crapper too.” Miller concludes, however, that “Poker is not a social game” and that “Learning to play poker well is a solitary exercise.” This is one of few areas where I disagree with the Noted Poker Authority and feel that discussing poker with somebody can have tremendous benefits. That's not to say that you shouldn't also spend time with yourself calculating EV for a given hand; it's just to say that there's also benefit in sharing your results with someone else and having him or her offer his or her thoughts as well.
- Tilt reduction. It's really helpful to have somebody to scream at when that idiot fish calls the flop with unimproved 65o and then goes runner runner trips when you have pockets aces (and, yes, this exact hand happened to me earlier tonight). When you play by yourself, you can get thoroughly frustrated by the beats and have nowhere to vent your frustrations except against the cards and your own chip stack. A lot of otherwise fine players might find themselves in -EV spots because of tilt. Having somebody to vent your frustrations to (rather than taking it out on your own stack) can save you quite a bit of money!
- The downswings are shorter. A lot of fantastic 2+2 posters have observed that downswings may be in large part due to bad luck, but the ones that last the longest are the ones where the player on a downswing tilts and plays worse because of the downswing, trying desperately to turn the downswing around by playing poor and marginal hands harder. As noted above, having somebody who you can vent your frustrations with can help reduce this tilt and, thus, reduce the duration of the downswing as well.
For a number of reasons, having a good “golf partner” in poker can help you improve your game and make money. I've enumerated a few points that I find particularly salient, but there are no doubt many more benefits that come as the result of having somebody who you can discuss poker with.
To those who lurk, I'd strongly encourage that you start interacting with other poker players in this forum (only good can come from it!). To those who just post, I encourage you to get the AIM screen names of some of your favorite posters and chat with them about some questions you might have. To noobs as well as vets, I think that you can gain a lot simply by helping (and being helped!).
And to those who made it this far in my post, I'm sincerely impressed as I'm sure you have better things to do with your life!
But I also offer my sincere gratitude for reading through this milestone in my 2+2 posting career.
Best of luck to everybody at the tables!
Two Plus Two
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