Every time I say poker in this thread I mean NLHE strategy.


We draw a huge circle that represents everything there is to know about poker strategy.

So perfect knowledge and mastery of GTO (NE) and also of exploitative play and anything else known or unknown to me and the rest of us.

Poker strategy in it's entirety.

That circle represents 100% of obtainable poker skill.
(It probably wouldn't be a circle, but who cares right?)


If you had to draw a smaller circle inside of that circle representing your current skill.
How large would your circle be?

If you had to draw a 2nd circle, representing what you're aware of, but have not mastered, so things you're still learning, how big would that circle be?

And lastly, if you had to draw a 3rd circle that represents how far a human could go in poker, how large would that circle be?
This doesn't have to be you specifically, but let's say the best current poker players, how large would their circle be? Is there more room for improvement?


I really can't imagine how big the full 100% poker circle would be, I think it's probably bigger than any of us can imagine.

For myself, I'd say my poker mastery is probably below 10%, even more around 5%.

My awareness I think is much larger, but even harder to define, could be anywhere from 20-60%.

How good someone could actually become, again I'm purely guessing here, I'd say between 40-90%.

My 3 numbers:
Current mastery: 5%
Awareness: 25%
Max obtainable: 60%


I'm very interested in what others think about this.

Current mastery: 8%
Awareness: 25%
Max obtainable: 40%

Since you mentioned it didn't necessarily have to be a circle:
Current mastery: a dot
Awarness: 2-3 dots
Max obtainable: a very large circle

The point at which you learn enough about something to be humbled by it is a point of progress. I think the poker community at large can often be a bit arrogant, (myself included), but we need to step back and appreciate the complexity of the game once in a while.

The problem is this is a logically impossible question because you can't measure the third circle.

You're walking down a long tunnel with no end in sight. You don't know how long the tunnel is. You've walked 5km (this is what you know), you can see another ~1km in front of you (this is what you know about). What percentage of the tunnel have you walked down?

It's impossible to answer without knowing the total length of the tunnel.

Very true.
We can try though!

Knowing how complex GTO is goes a long way to estimating how big the circle is.
Even if we don't know exactly, I think we can at least make an educated guess.