Originally Posted by PokerRon247
I realised something about my game in December. I wasn’t the unluckiest player alive, I just wasn’t good enough anymore. It was a pretty horrible thing to realise, but at the same time an extremely important realisation, something that’s stopped me from crashing and burning, and bustoing my bankroll. Since then I’ve been on a mission to turn things around and get back to winning ways, and it’s working, slowly, but then this isn’t 2004 and there’s no quick answer to making tons of money at this game anymore. It’ll take time and a lot of hard work, but I’m positive I’ll get there.
I figured that I’d use my 4000th post to give something back to the community that’s given me so much, and try to put forward my thoughts on how I think you should go about improving your game.
First, a simple fact: The games are getting harder.
Just like in any competitive arena, the overall standard of the player pool is improving all the time. The one big thing that made poker so profitable for millions of people worldwide may also be the same thing that kills it. The Internet. What started off as a vehicle for bringing the game within the reach of millions of complete amateurs has served to educate the masses to the point where even many recreational players have a grasp of basic strategy. If the fish are getting good, then the serious players, even at the micros, have a level of competence that was unthinkable ten years ago, and they’re getting better all the time.
What does this mean for us? Well it means that if you do not improve at, or ahead of, the pace of improvement of the player pool as a whole, then you will get left behind, simple as that. You may well currently be the best player at your stakes, but if you do not improve, you can guarantee that you won’t hold that position for long. The speed and ease at which knowledge can travel over the internet is scary as we have seen since the Concept of the Week threads started on 2p2. COTW on 3betting goes up, suddenly 10nl reg gets this feeling that his steals are being played back at more and more. COTW on double barreling goes up, 25nl reg can’t work out why his floats aren’t having the same success as they were last week. Top level concepts are filtering down to the lower stakes at an ever increasing rate, and it’s up to us to decide whether to take advantage of this, or to ignore it and let the game pass us by.
So we’ve decided that in order to stay profitable, we have to constantly improve and evolve. Unfortunately it’s easier to understand that we have to improve, than to actually improve. There are so many different ways of going about learning new information. Coaching, reviews, peer sweats, videos etc. I’m going to try to cover the most common ways, but first a little discussion about win rates.
Win rates
As we all know, win rates are generally measured in big blinds (or ptbb which is 2x big blind) per 100 hands. Have you ever actually stopped to think about what this means? I would expect most 2p2’ers to have a win rate of between -1ptbb/100 to +5ptbb/100, which is a tiny margin (an entirely respectable 1ptbb/100 win rate at 100nl translates to 2 cents per hand), and it’s easy to see how a few large errors in each session can seriously affect that win rate. But it’s not just the large errors that have an impact on your win rate. Here’s an exercise for you: Go to your last session and review your last 100 hands. Not just the big pots, not even just the ones where you put money in the pot, check every single one of those last 100 hands. Did you find just one spot where you could have won or saved two big blinds? If so, and I highly suspect that will be the case, that means that one hand was a hit of 1ptbb/100 to your win rate over that sample of 100 hands. Now extrapolate that to each sample of 100 consecutive hands in your database... do you see what I’m getting at? With the thin margins that we’re working with, every single hand counts, every single big blind you put into the pot (or fail to put into the pot) counts. Most of the hands I see posted on the forum are turn or river spots in inflated pots. People only tend to focus on the big hands, and while I’m not disputing that making mistakes in large pots will have a big effect on your win rate, as I have just shown, it’s vital that you concentrate on every hand, not just the huge pots. It’s very common for a losing player to blame his losses on those big pots that he loses every session to suckouts and coolers, but the truth is that everybody suffers those suckouts and coolers. For the losing player however, those big pots tend to divert attention away from the smaller, much more standard spots. Are you calling too liberally out of position? Are you cbetting too much on the flop? Are you giving up to a flop cbet too easily? I chat to a wide range of other players on a daily basis, and like most we swap hand histories for review, but I can’t remember the last time that someone sent me a hh with the question “do I cbet this?” or “do I double barrel here?”. It’s nearly always a tough turn spot where he’s been raised, or a where he’s facing a third barrel on the river. While each of these kind of situations only contribute a small amount to your win rate each time, they are much more common than the 200bb pots, to the point where I would say that they are equally, if not more, important to concentrate on when reviewing your play and looking for spots to improve.
How to improve
With that out of the way, it’s time to start discussing how we actually go about improving our game. There are so many resources out there, where do we start? First of all, I think you need to be playing with the correct attitude. Most of us play with the intention of making money. I believe this is the wrong attitude. I think that if you play with the intention of making money, you lose sight of where the money actually comes from, which is by playing better than your opponents. I believe that you should instead take the attitude that you’re playing with the intention of improving your game, and you see the money as a side-effect of this. Due to the variable nature of results in poker, you cannot look at a session where you made 5 bi’s and tell yourself that you played well because of the results. In the same way you can’t look at a losing session and decide that you played badly because you lost. I think most people reading this will know that, but it still doesn’t stop us taking our short term results to heart. Once you get over this barrier and start to measure your success by how well you’ve played, and how much you’ve learned, then the money will take care of itself (after about 100k hands of course).
What you can do on your own
Ignoring all outside resources, and concentrating on only your own play, having the “play to learn” rather than “play to earn” attitude means several things, amongst others:
Question: So you made a continuation bet and it didn’t work... just move on to the next hand.... No! Why did it not work? Was it a bad texture to cbet? Was it against someone that calls too much? What was your plan for getting called? Every time you ask yourself these questions after making a play (whether it worked or not), you’re working on your knowledge. Every time you just move onto the next hand and forget about that cbet that didn’t work, you’re at best missing out on a learning opportunity, and at worst reinforcing a bad habit that will continue to lose you money.
Anticipate: Once you’ve got into the habit of questioning your plays after you’ve made them, you can start to anticipate the questions that you will be asking yourself. You might find that you’re constantly saying to yourself “were there REALLY enough bluffs in his range for me to call there?” when you’ve made incorrect calls. Instead of asking that question after the hand, start thinking BEFORE the hand “if I call this, is it going to be ANOTHER one of those calls where I realise he isn’t bluffing enough for me to call?”
Commentate: Many players find that talking to themselves while they’re playing, doing a running commentary of their thought process, helps to rationalise everything they’re doing. Rather than just fire that second barrel, say “I’m firing this second barrel because..........”. Talking aloud is often more effective than running the commentary internally.
Review: Many people review their sessions, but do they really review effectively? As I was talking about earlier, most people just go over a selection of big pots where they got in tough spots, but try running some filters and check the more standard spots. How did your cbets fare? If they didn’t do too well, then why? Did you think you responded well to being 3bet that session, and if so, what did you well? Most importantly, try to take at least one thing away from each session review in the form of one thing that you have learnt. If you learn one thing after every session, be it about your game, an opponent’s game, or about something else all together, all these things can’t help but add up and make you a better player.
External influences
Those are the kind of things that we can work on without even looking at anything outside of our immediate environment, but as we know, there are many other places we can look at to get help with our game and I’m going to discuss those now.
Forums: I’ll start off with the most basic and one everybody reading this will already participate in. Poker forums are simply an awesome way to improve your game, for free, but only if you use them correctly. If it weren’t for 2p2, I would still be depositing $50 every few weeks and playing with at least half my bankroll on the table at any one time. 2p2 is not the only forum though. There are dozens, if not hundreds of different forums around the net. If you think 2p2 isn’t your ideal environment to participate in, have a look around at what else is available. There are foreign language forums, forums attached to coaching sites, forums run by players (sometimes even at your stakes), private forums, and many others. There is however a lot of quality information right here on 2p2. The information in the COTW threads could have been compiled and sold as a cutting edge book if they had not been published in this forum for free. Many people have written milestone posts such as this one, with in depth analysis of certain concepts and the vast majority of these posts are pure gold. They usually take a bit of detective work to dig up from the past, but are well worth it.
This is all before we get on to the bulk of what makes up the forums, hand review posts. These are the bread and butter of any forum, but it takes a bit of work to get the best out of them. First of all you have to sift through the bad advice and the stupid levelling posts. You can just look at the hands, analyse them yourself and read the responses, but I think there is much more to be had from participating in strategy posts by getting involved in the discussion yourself. I’m a firm believer that if you actually write down your response in the thread rather than just think it to yourself. For a start you have to really think about what you’re saying and decide whether it makes sense or not, and then write it out in plain English so that it is comprehensible to others. This really helps to get your thoughts in order and makes the information you’re thinking of more memorable – you remember the reply you made to that KK hand yesterday, but can you remember what you thought about the 78s hand you skimmed through earlier? The second thing about participating in this way is that it is impossible for your thoughts do be disputed if you do not put them across to others. None of us are 100% right about everything, and one of the best ways to learn is to make mistakes. There is no shame in posting a reply to a hand and having it torn apart by another poster. If you had just kept that thought to yourself, you would continue to think the same way, but by having your opinions disputed, you continue to learn. A note of caution though, that I think we all know but has to be said anyway – not everything you read is correct or good advice. For example, if you put your thoughts down in reply to a hand and have another poster rip your analysis apart and tell you all the things you have said are wrong, don’t just blindly agree and change your opinion on the subject. Read the replies, does what he has said make sense? Do other posters agree with him or with you? I’ve had people say to me that they don’t like hand discussion threads, but the way I see it, thinking about, and discussing, how to play in a range of different spots several times every day cannot help but improve your game, or at the very least maintain it.
In summary – participate, do not be afraid to make mistakes, but question everything.
Peers: This is the 2nd totally free resource that we have at our disposal. Everybody should have as many poker buddies as possible. Make friends with people in the forums, find likeminded people who are playing similar stakes and work together to improve both your games. Working with a buddy is often similar to using the forums, you post a hand ---> you receive feedback ---> your buddy posts a hand ---> you give feedback. The advantage of doing this with a buddy is that you can receive instant advice, often while playing you can ask a buddy about a hand you just played while it is fresh in your mind. You can organise sweat sessions, hand review sessions, even make a group chat room made up of any number of your buddies. I’m personally in contact with a number of players from different stakes pretty much all the time that I’m online and playing and I believe that talking to all these people is the single most effective day-to-day thing that you can do for your game.
Tools: There is a lot of poker related software around that can help with your game. Some of it you have to pay for and some of it free. Luckily for us, probably the most helpful and important program is free and that is PokerStove. I won’t go into what it does because I’m sure we’re all familiar with it, but I will say that just messing around with stove for half an hour can really help you get a grasp of how to deal with different situations. Use it when reviewing a hand to estimate your equity and find whether you think you made the right call, but don’t stop there. Change a board card, change your hand, change your opponent’s stats (and therefore range). I won’t go into this anymore, as I think a whole thread could be written about using Stove. Most of us are aware of, and use, PokerStove, but a lot of people are unaware of other tools that are available. There are fold equity calculators, random flop generators, decision tree EV calculators and many more. Have a search around and see what you can find, decide what you think could be useful, and most importantly, use these things. There are there to help you, and help you they can, but only if you put the effort in to use them well.
Videos and books: I’m not going to talk too much about books and videos as they’re both fairly self explanatory. I think we all know how to read a book, but just be aware that the ratio of terrible poker books to good poker books is pretty high, so before you invest, read some reviews and make sure that the book you are buying is applicable to your game. As with using forums, you have to be critical while reading, question everything that you read and use the book to form your own theories about how the ideas you’re reading will translate into your game specifically rather than just taking on blindly everything that the author says. E-books are becoming much more popular these days, with the advantage that they are generally packed with the most up-to-date cutting edge material, written by players that are still at the top of their game. The disadvantage is that they are generally very expensive as the information included can be very valuable if used correctly. I know it’s pretty naive to believe that everyone that owns an e-book has actually paid for it, but I would just like to take this opportunity to ask you to think about how much time, effort and dedication that author has put into writing that book before you make a decision about whether you are going to buy or “acquire”.
Training videos are an extremely useful resource if used properly. You can get a chance to see a fully accomplished player doing what he does at the tables, or step into the classroom with an experienced tutor as he explains a vital concept to you. There are a bunch of video sites these days with videos on everything poker related, including off-the-table concepts, psychology and mindset issues as well as the traditional strategy videos. Have a look around to see which site(s) you think will suit you best, try out some of the free sample videos which most sites offer, try to find out which coaches you relate to best. Most importantly, once you’ve decided to sign up and pay your subscription fee, use the site. This may sound obvious, but I’m guilty of paying a certain site in the region of $300 over the time I’ve been subscribed, and have probably only watched ~10 videos. It can be debated that even just those 10 vids could be worth $300 to me so I haven’t really lost out, but I really could have got so much more value for my money.
Coaching: Coaching is probably the most contentious issue with regards to improving your game. Some people are believers that coaching is at best over-priced and an inefficient way to invest your money. Others cite coaching as the most important aspect of their development. I am personally somewhere in between these two opinions. If you stumble blindly into a coaching agreement with a guy you don’t know much about, hand over a ton of cash and then sit through some hastily organised sessions then it doesn’t take a genius to realise you’re not going to get maximum effect from the experience. The most important thing about taking on a coach is to research them first. “Poker coach” is not a protected term, anybody can call themselves a coach and get away with it. There are a lot of good coaches out there, however I think that for every good coach, there is at least one bad one. Here is a list of things I think you should look for when researching a coach:
References: See what other people are saying about your intended coach. Is there a long list of people queuing up to give him a glowing reference, backed up with evidence of how he’s improved their game? Talk to your buddies that play higher (or same stakes, but are better) than you. Have they used a coach, was he worth it? Personal references from somebody you know are so much more valuable than random forum posters.
Results: This is one of the more contentious issues where coaching is concerned. There are different views on this, but personally I would not want to hire a coach that is not capable of crushing the level he is teaching. This has to be backed up by a good sample of results, not just a 50k hand graph from the last 3 weeks where they went on a heater. If a coach was hesitant about providing me with evidence of his results then I would be extremely suspicious unless there was a very good reason. As already mentioned, this game is evolving at an incredible pace and a coach that is not constantly playing and adapting to the changing environment of the stakes he is coaching is unlikely to be able to teach effectively.
Professionalism: Poker coaches are generally relatively highly paid for their services. If I’m paying $100/hr for a service, I expect it to be extremely professionally presented. This may sound nitty, but if I make an enquiry about coaching and get a poorly worded reply back that looks like he’s written it in 10 seconds while playing 24 tables then that would really put me off from continuing further. If he can’t put any effort at all into writing a simple reply to someone that is enquiring about giving him some business, what kind of effort will he put into his coaching sessions? Alternatively if I get a reply that has been carefully put together, is personalised and feels like even a small amount of effort has gone into it, then I’m going to be much more inclined to believe that this guy will also be putting effort into his coaching. Many coaches offer a money-back guarantee after the first session and I believe that this is a good indicator of someone that is confident in their skills.
So you’ve decided on your coach and you’re going to start some sessions with him. What are the main things to consider? Well first of all I believe that you will get the most out of your coach if you book a block of sessions and try to develop a more long-term relationship with your coach rather than just having one or two sessions. There is no quick-fix in poker, and although a couple of sessions are probably just about long enough to fix a few leaks, it’s also just about long enough for your coach to get an idea of your game and really start helping you. A coach is going to be much more help for you once he has got a grasp of where your problems lie and what your strengths and weaknesses are.
Try to have a plan for your sessions. I have worked with coaches where at the start of each session they will just say to me “what do you want to do today?”. I feel it works much better if you have a coach that plans the sessions for you. A good coach should know what areas you need to work on and have something prepared rather than relying on you to dictate the session. A coach who charges you $60/hr or whatever to simply sweat you once a week is, imo, not fulfilling his role.
One final thing I want to say with regards to coaching may seem obvious, but is often not. The act of having someone coach you does not make you a better player. Listening to the coach, absorbing the lessons, making notes, applying the strategies to your game, asking questions wherever possible and basically immersing yourself in the session. These are the things that will eventually make you a better player.
Final Thoughts
There’s no longer free money in this game. We’ve come a long way from “flop set, take money” and the game is evolving all the time. This means it takes time, effort and dedication to improve yourself enough to keep ahead of the curve. As you improve, remember that everyone else is improving too. That new strategy you learnt today may be old news next month, but that doesn’t mean learning it has been useless. Find out why it’s not working any more, how people exploiting it. For every strategy there is a counter strategy, and for every counter, there is a counter. I’m sure at some point in the future there’ll be some kind of GTO theory that covers 100bb full-ring poker, but we’re far from that point now and no matter how hard the games seem, they are still going to be beatable for a long while yet.
Everything I’ve written about so far is the technical details of how to go about improving things, but none of it will work if you don’t have the right mindset. First of all I think you have to actually enjoy playing the game and enjoy learning about it. I see so many people that moan about how they get bored playing long sessions, about how tilted they get when things don’t go their way and how they find reading about the game boring. These people don’t usually last too long. The ones that really make it and are around for the long-run are the ones that truly have a passion for the game. This can’t be created, you either have it or you don’t. Trying to force yourself to apply yourself to something you don’t enjoy is never going to have a great outcome. Love the game and work hard. It’s not supposed to be easy, but you’ll never get anywhere if you just see the game as one long grind.
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) in the end ill be better for it.
