I was racking my brains trying to come up with something for my 3500th and I came up blank. How many more threads do we really need about blind play, stats to look for, how to use a hud, table/seat selection and all the other great things that have been written about far better than I ever could. Just mosey on down to the library and you will find tons of great literature for your poker mind to chew on. So for my topic I decided to just make a confession.

Confess you say? About what? Well, I’m just plain lazy. And I’ve gotten away with it for 8 years of poker! Lazy how? Well, let’s just say that I have a mathematical mind and numbers come easy to me. It’s a part of what drew me to poker when I felt that I was losing that edge I always had when thinking about numbers and when I felt that razor sharp memory of mine starting to fade with age. Poker was a way for me to stay sharp. I studied and played and had a nice way to make a few extra bucks over the years. The FEEL for the game came naturally. When faced with a difficult spot I was able to use my mathematical sense to let my intuition guide me after doing a very rough assessment of the situation. Maybe it was because the games were so soft, but this rough guestimate approach to the game was enough to allow me to be a winner and amass a nice bankroll (even after much profit taking). I wasn’t crushing the games by any stretch, but I was certainly winning to the tune of about 1BB/100 or so at FR.

Unfortunately, this crude approach to the game has left me with a very fuzzy approach to my poker thinking. As time went on and the games got tougher I found that my hand reading abilities were not quite where they should be. I am struggling for the best way to put this, but when thinking about hand ranges at the table I find myself kind of seeing through a fog and getting into the general area of where I should be, yet not seeing the full picture. This has hurt me significantly as I have tried to migrate over to 6 Max where you are faced with tougher decisions because of the need to maximize value on even the smallest of edges (yeah, I’ll get to the point soon). The end result has been a difficult transition that I have shared with all of you most of the year (Yes Dragon, there is some whine in hear if you want to look at it that way ).

So what is the nugget of advice I have decided to give to the community for my 3500th? Well, it’s simple. There is no replacement for doing the hard work. You may get by for a while on your natural instincts and your whiz kid Rain Man ability to glance at the board and have a feel for the right play, but if you ever truly want to succeed then you need to put in the work. Do it now before you get to the level (or the game) that is going to force you to do it. Don't develop bad habits that you will pay for when you get to $3/6 or $5/T. Whip out Stove (although I just discovered Equilab and it is the nuts for running equities and testing yourself on this stuff) and start studying your hands equity against different hand ranges. Do thorough session reviews after you play (Don’t pass on this because you ran like God and feel like you will never lose again or because you played like crap and just want to chalk it up to run-bad). Sign up for the session reviews every month and challenge yourself to spend an hour or two each month breaking down someone’s game (it’s so much easier today thanks to vids than it was a few years back and you will grow as a player). Stop posting that “AA gets raised on turn, what do I do?” thread and start truly grunching other peoples threads. Put your poker mind on display for the forum. Explain why you recommend a certain action rather than saying “fold pre”. If you feel that way fine, but back it up with what ranges you feel you are against and what your equity is in that spot. Leave it all out there to be shredded by the rest of the forum until the day comes that you are thinking about the game with laser focus and know that you are making as close to the best EV decision as possible every time you make an action at a poker table. Leave it all out there until the “tough love” stops because it is tough to argue with the sound logic you are putting forth.

I have been a lazy poker player. I learned these lessons the hard way. 8 years later I am doing the work that I should have been doing all along in order to perfect my 6 Max play. Don’t make the same mistakes that I did. This isn’t easy. Thinking and studying is hard work. I know because I avoided thinking too hard about the game for a very long time.

There is nothing epic about this post, nothing earth shattering at all. I simply hope that you will take it as good advice that you should heed. If my words help someone avoid taking the easy way out then I am satisfied with this post for my 3500th.

Nice post.

a rather unlazy way of saying you are lazy...

Good thread, I know I can see myself in the post

Great post Antneye! I know I suffer from this "syndrome" as well. Not because I'm mathematically inclined, such as yourself, but I find that there are not enough hours in a day and will always choose playing over studying. I think that a more balanced approach wouldn't be a terrible idea. Nice work, and congrats on the 3500 milestone!

This is a very interesting paragraph, because it goes right into your motivations of playing and your way of approaching the game.

In which way did your mathematical sense guide you beyond simple stuff like: "getting better than 4:1 on your FD, I call"?

difficult indeed - been tying to move up and your "whining" is LOL - your positive attitude and hard work towards your recovery has really helped me work my own way up from a "modest" downswing and control my tilt (was -380BB and back to -25BB now).

Really appreciate your posts. Congrats on 3500.

good post thanks

Learn,learn and learn.Lenin

This is a tough Q for me to define. I would basically say what you said,
"getting 4:1 on my FD", "board paired?" "anything out there that should make me discount my draw?" and other very general thoughts. Although I tried to think about villains range on each street and how to narrow that range with each additional action it was always a very murky thought process.

What I am trying to do now is truly focus on villains range and think before I act. I have been the king of just mashing buttons based on a thought process from the last street without truly stopping and thinking about how the present streets card and actions affect things. In soft games you can get away with being lazy but not in tougher games.

I wish I could define this better. I tried to think of ways to describe this before I wrote the post and the best words I could come up with were "foggy" "murky" etc. I truly feel, and this is what I was trying to get across in the post, that if I had put in the hard work away from the table....if I had tried to truly define villains ranges and the associated equities in threads and session reviews, that as I think about villains ranges AT the table some of that fog would lift and I'd be a bit clearer in my decision making process.

Make any sense?

As to my motivations for playing the game, I like thinking games (even though I seem to have gotten intellectually lazy with age) and I like money. I can't discount the gambler that is in me as part of what draws me to the game. I like gambling but only when I have an edge so you won't find me betting on sports or other things. Once I realized that my mental faculties could help me make extra money by playing a game I enjoyed my poker addiction was in full bloom. Unfortunately the mental laziness got in the way of me being as good as I could have been after 8 years of play.

I keep saying that I view this period of my poker career as "training" for when the games come back post regulation in the US. I have simply decided to not waist that time. I am going to refocus and study the game in a way that I should have been doing all along.

Awesome job coming back. It's nice to know that my long winded trip reports during this run are helping someone other than myself. I have these visions of posting an epic graph the day that I pull back to even but it just seems so far off that I try not to think about it. Since bottoming out I was up 200BB's or so and then hit a -150BB downswing so I am only about 50BB's off my low. It's such a grind .....but I already feel like a better poker player

Nice post my friend. Congrats on the milestone. You and I have a lot in common. I think for me it wasn't so much laziness as indecision. I spent the first three years of my poker life trying to figure out what poker game to master. Ultimately I kept coming back to lhe.

Anyway I'm a live player and it's very easy to get the lazy bug. As soon as I stop copying my hands down I know that is a bad sign.

The other thing Id like to add is that I'm a musician and one of things about being a musician is you never stop practicing. The best musicians were practicing their instruments until the day they died. It's a life long endeavor. Poker is the same. Doyle said so himself. "I never stop learning." as long as I'm playing poker I will ALWAYS be studying the game.

GL

Nice Post, good job making yourself better.

nh sir!