Most of that is good advice, but I'm going to suggest something radically different: Play More Hands. Alot more.

In the short run, unless you're good, this is not profitable; at a good table, this is not profitable. But if you're playing LLSNL, you need experience postflop against live players; thats where the biggest leaks are.

Ways to get more hands?
--Find a cheap homegame. My game improved a ****load when I found a .25/.5cent %50 buyin game in NYC for 1/2 a year. I played about 80% of hands everytime I went (and won about 80% of sessions). My degen play changed the nature of the whole game--it went from a social game where losing 1 buyin was rare for anyone, to a game where most players bought in twice or more (including me). AND, my play got a ****load better because: 1) I got 4x the postflop experience and 2) I got that experience against crappy recreational players
--on analysis, most of my profits came from crushing the worst player or two at the table, while I was breakeven w/ high volatility against everyone else (due to paying to see every damn flop)
--Homegames are your friend, cheap homegames with thinking players is even better

Why does this help?
You need to learn to beat your opponents, as profitably as possible; you need to know when its the right time to play 45% of hands to crush the whole table, and when its time to play 10% of hands to crush the whole table. The days of single-style poker are ending.
--it will help you quickly learn who never folds top pair, who can be bluffed, and how they can be bluffed.
--it will teach you to spot bluffs and call light
--it will teach you how to appear to be a maniacal spewtard (which you DO NOT want to do at a game with real stakes)
--it will teach you when that is actually profitable.

Other advice: Learn to control your live tells. People who play me get the wrong physical read all the time; why? Because I feed it to them. That makes them play much worse. Live players are 10X worse at technicals than online players; but MANY of your villains will be talented at reading body language (unfortunately for them, you can learn to short-circuit their systems).

the more you read **** about poker strategy and the more you take advice from other people on how you should play, the worst you'll get

the more you play, the better you get, usually, the best players are those who put the most hours in it

^^^ Not this. I play against a crap-ton of regfish who put in an order of magnitude more hours than I do, and never get any better, never change, never adjust. I only play about 10 hrs/month, and I eat them alive.

Teh moors you study duh english, the worster you will talk it.

grunch

Is it possible that this is unquantifiable? That there is no way to formulate the pieces of "what it takes to become a winning player" into any useful configuration?

If the answer is yes, is this excercise in itself even useful? What purpose does it serve, other than perhaps giving people the opportunity to air their own opinions?

Are these opinions helpful? Or are they merely solipsisms? Who would benefit from this, and how?

This excercise seems to me to be a lot like people who have all driven great distances each giving a different description of what they see in their rear-view-mirrors. Or worse, people who have not driven very far looking in their rear-views and detailing what isnt actually there.

I have always thought that playing OTHER strategic based games assist with poker.

In accordance with the post by Fold4Once...(I downloaded the article just now but have yet to read it) I was thinking that playing other types of strategy-based games besides poker would then be able to tie-in to becoming an expert. So technically you could discount your actual hands/hours PLAYING poker.
My theory on this is to that of an athlete. A marathon runner runs...a lot. But they throw in sprints and longer runs to help their overall effort on race day. Additionally, they may lift weights, perform ab or leg exercises, or even dabble in swimming, cycling, or some other cardio workout to work less-used muscles. The same could be applied to poker. Playing games like Chess, Backgammon, or various forms of poker would additionally help. I don't think this was explicitly stated but more indirectly implied. I would take it a step further to say that playing even the smallest strategic, mathematical, logic, or other type game would benefit a poker player too. I am willing to make a leap here and say that a successful poker player could also be extremely good at scrabble, Sudoku, trading card games, or even monopoly. In fact I'm willing to bet that successful poker players are distinctly good at ALL games in general, provided they know the rules to the game.

More directly for this post...

personally, I think playing other types of strategy-based THINKING games will help. Additionally, reading certainly helps - whether online or in a book. Review of decisions/hands is another excellent decision. Lastly, analyzing poker, having discussions, etc. in groups is extremely beneficial.

Do you have any pre game routine? Specific thing you do to remain focused at the table and observing the action? i find myself getting bored at times or chatting it up a little to much to the point i quit focusing on what i came here to do which is play the best poker i can which means i need to not get caught up in conversation or play with my phone unless it involves typing something in my notepad regarding the game. My first couple session included iphone+earbuds but i quickly stopped that when i realized how ridiculous it was to be denying myself verbal information , on the flip side i payed a lot more attention to the actual action when i had them in (watching postflop action/showdowns) whereas some of the discussion tends to distract me. I think a mixture of both is prob optimal for me. Sit 1-2 hours , get the tabled analyzed and information on players and than zone off into the music.


Regarding saving hands , do you think it's better to jot it down fresh , so risking missing something important at the table or wait until you take a break (i take frequent short breaks , usually once every 1-1.5hr just for 5-10 min)

I just typed up what i guess you could call my pep talk reminder , which is just a notepad doc on my iphone where i listed a few things i should be finding outabout the table as soon as i sit down and than a sectioin with Seat 1 - , Seat 2 - , etc with a few lines in between each so i can quickly jot down some info & ill just restart it blank each session. Anyone else do anything similar?

This is horrible advice and pure donk think. Donks believe in their own special abilities that exempt them from needing to study.

Because of variance, you could literally play incorrectly for years thinking you are making +EV plays when you aren't...

Time away from the table: studying, analyzing your HHs, poker stoving, posting/arguing on 2+2, watching videos, podcasts, etc are vital components to getting better faster...

Of course we also need to be playing, that goes without saying....
But you are delusional if you think studying and time away from the table isn't vital to becoming better...

Seriously bad advice craps...

Hire a coach...
U can't learn bjj or piano without a coach...same goes for poker.

+1

It is likely you are not the exception but the rule. Studying away from the table and thinking is far more important than playing.

I don't believe dgiharris is seeking a magical formula for winning at poker; he's just looking for feedback on the best way of using the many resources available to poker players today, like you would in any other professional field. Other players providing their views on this matter ---or what sometimes amounts to their retrospective experience of the poker journey (to use your platitude)---is just one of these resources, that is, a forum. Don't you want to improve your game---or is it that you've already reached your peak and are merely waiting for the variance gods to deliver your pot of gold?

Imo dgi is the mvp of this forum in that i think more posters/lurkers benefit from his posts than anyone elses just by way of the amount of effort and care he puts into them. That said, I dunno about this one.

My point is: attempting to make concrete something that is intangible and very hard to take about (i.e. what it takes to become a winner at poker), when all is said and done, may not be a useful excercise.

viffer never read a poker book. captainzeebo has probly read them all. nanonoko has played several million hands. limon not so much. some players have watched training videos for years and cant stop breaking even. others never have, and crush. Its different for everybody. Everyone has to find what works for them, and that isnt something that can be "figured out" in this kind of a venue.

Except that a good solid teacher can take pretty much anybody and give them the ability to play, for instance, a musical instrument. Not that just anybody can end up playing for the Boston Symphony, or something similar, but pretty much anybody can be taught basic competence with rigorous practice and good instruction.

So, yeah, at either end of the bell curve there may be people who become expert through years of study or through only years of play, or there may be people who are prodigies who quickly master the game. But for the bulk of the people in the middle of the bell curve, there absolutely will be a course of study that could maximize whatever basic aptitude they have.

I don't think there is any mystery to it. If you actively read (take notes and highlight) all of the decent popular poker books in the approximate correct order (there are maybe 8, but reading PNLHE after NLHE TAP is a waste of time) interspersed with regular table time and an hour of pokerstoving for every hour of table time, and you actively conduct session reviews to compare the way you play to what is written in the books, yby the time you have finished the 8 books you'll be beating 1/2 or, and there is no shame in it, discovered that you don't have the aptitude to be a winner.

I taught university level political science for several years as an adjunct professor while practicing law.

In my intro to American Government class, you just built up their knowledge of the government step by step. First you start out with the three branches of government created by the constitution. Then you look at their basic powers granted by the constitution. Then you teach how those powers are exercised in theory. Then some of the practical complexity, such as interest groups and lobbyists. Then you start dealing with the content of the various important laws that have been passed, etc. etc. You start out very simple and then systematically add layers of complexity.

In poker, it is like moving from grinding pokerstove to grinding flopzilla. Pokerstove will tell you what your equity is against an identified range so you can tell whether you are a favorite or not and the extent to which you are. But flopzilla does that, and then adds a layer of complexity that tells you how many combos you are ahead of, how many you are behind, so you can start making complex decisions like calculating your fold equity more accurately.

Pokerstove: "You are a favorite, bet." OR "You are an underdog, don't bet"

This is good basic advice. But it's not convenient for doing intermediate thinking:

Flopzilla: "You are an underdog, but of the 44 combos you lose to, you can fold out 28 combos and only be called by 16--if you bet x, you make y."

So the key to learning poker is like the key to learning anything else: start out simple and add increasing layers of complexity while you keep practicing the basics.

I both agree and disagree with your statement,

which often happens when i'm dealing with something whose complexity is beyond my abilities...

In this case, trying to quantify an exact path to profitability in poker.

You are right, not everyone is the same, we all learn differently, we all start with various skillsets, etc. etc.

However, if you look at science and all that man has accomplished, everything appears complex at first until it is better understood.

Your argument could apply to several analgous professions like music or sports.

There are different paths and people begin at different starting points in their respective careers. But in the end, ever profession has quantifiable training procedures/methodologies that aid its members along the path of their development.

I do think there are quantifiable things we can do to become profitable just as there are quantifiable things one could do to become a better *insert profession*

I mean, I could sit here in maybe 4 or 5 hours and outline a bachelor's level curriculum in poker that could take anybody of above average intelligence and teach them enough to beat 1/2. I'm deadly serious; it wouldn't be hard to do at all.

You should work at MIT

I don't get it?

It's not rocket science, you could do it, too.

do it please haha

I'm actually sitting here thinking a few things.

One is that you could get essentially the broad outline I would work up in 4 or 5 hours just by going to the table of contents of sklansky's books and using them as a guide to working up your own homework assignments. Every poker book out there, after all, was written expressly for the purpose of teaching you how to become a winner.

The other thing I am thinking is that arranging it in the form of a bachelor's curriculum, with required readings, a syllabus and homework assignments would actually be a valuable way of structuring the learning process. THAT sounds like a lot of work, but something I am now considering working up and selling on my web site, lol.

Again your inability to read a post properly, I was talking strictly about reading books and reading stuff on how you should play, keep playing like others do, see where you end up. But of course you had to make up some stuff that I didn't say. But wait, you're digharris, the god of poker. I'm sorry.

of course analyzing your hand history is a good thing

Ah, the beauty of non-variant income ... who needs poker?

mpethybridge, MIT just had a for-credit 4-week course on poker. As far as anyone knows it's the first official for-credit university course on poker, like ever. Mike & Adam discussed the course with the instructors on this week's podcast.

lol, ok, ty for clarifying

Trying to come up with some standardized method of teaching that would make any non-imbecile a winner at LLSNL is interesting no question. Worthwhile? I dunno. Different people learn different ways. On paper maybe there is a solution to this puzzle. But IRL we're dealing with human beings who are complex and things just arent going to work out so neatly. Basic competency is one thing, winning is something else. Even at stakes as low as 200nl those two things dont equate. Not saying it isnt an intersting idea, but I doubt we're discovering fire here. I doubt theres any fire there to be discovered. I think wat we're all doing is having a good time making ourselves sound smart. Probably not a whole lot more than that.