Nice how things always seems to derail to a non-sense discussion in NVG... I think this thread broke the record!

Time is far more dense in multitabling online poker than in just about everything else.

You guys are assuming that no matter how many tables you play the skill you are trying to gain is poker. I would say that 20 tabling online is different than playing 1 table live. Someone 20 tabling would need to put in 10,000 hours 20 tabling to meet that authors requirements.

Strange, because "÷" is what is taught in grade school... Americans are very familiar with the symbol, even if they tend to leave it behind as they enter into High School and college. Just like soccer.

As for the ,'s screwing Americans up, that I can see.

Depends if they are playing live or online... And who can adjust better.

The whole "x number of hours at online multi-tabling vs the same number of hours live single tabling" brings up a question of learning cognition. Does the human brain learn "faster" when it is receiving more data in a certain time period? I don't know the answer to that but that's the supposition of anyone who says that an hour of multi-tabling is worth more experience than an hour of single table play.

The "10,000 hour rule" isn't just about logging in said hours at a particular task to excel at it, it's also about all the downtime in between that you're brain is processing and working through that experience which is sharpening your talent at it, so to speak.

I think poker, like anything that we use our brains at, is something where the periods in between our sessions where we are actually thinking about how we've played and what we've experienced is completely important to the process of changing our game and improving it.

That's one reason why I'm not so sure that multi-tabling for one hour is indicative of more comprehension than one hour of single table play. I'm not sure our brains actually work like that in terms of "getting better" at something.

To derail the thread farther, that seems to show that aspiring american derivative traders can not think on their own, if not everything is according to the way they're used to. Wonder how they came up with all these creative derivatives that helped us into this economic mess.

Why can OP use this: "10,000 hour.." (implicitly 10,000.00) and go unnoticed. Then someone replies with European standard, which is very simply the opposite: 10.000,00 - and US brains melt down?

Both are pretty clear and simple.

Good post Bawookles. I suspect that you learn more poker while multitabling than you do while single tabling, but it is clearly not a per table multiplier.

Hand experience is valuable, but it isn't everything. I think you are right that the other form of thinking you do while not playing is equally important and not helped by multitabling. Also, I suspect that there is a cap on how much hand experience can help you. Someone with 1m hands is going to play better than someone with 1k hands, but someone with 2m hands might not have any advantage over someone with 1m hands.

The book specifies more than just "practice." If you sit around playing chopsticks on the piano for 10,000 hours you're not going to be much closer to Chopin than you were after the first 10 hours of it. And similarly for poker, 20 tabling small stakes for 10,000 hours isn't going to be bringing you any closer to being able to crush the high stakes.

I don't think the 10,000 Hour Rule is as paramount to a poker player's success as Peter's Principle is.

Basically, Peter's Principle states you will rise to the level of your own incompetence. Basically, you will continue to grow and improve until such a point as you cannot understand or relate to the next higher level. You have therefore reached your level of incompetence. Sometimes, you can break through this level, but more often than not, you can't.

If it takes 10,000 hours to reach this level or not is strictly dependant on the player/person themselves, and everyone will have a different level and different amount of time to reach it.

Pros have a much higher level than the average player. And I'm not talking just poker either, this relates to everything from gaming to work to social life.

lol @ completely butchering the peter principle, or trying to imply it means a person is incapable of reaching the 'next level'.

The peter principle relates exclusively to hierarchies and offers a rationale for why most people are terrible at their positions in a given hierarchy. It has nothing to do with inherent limitations on people's capacity for success: just limitations given their current skill set. Anybody can improve their abilities - most people just lack the motivation, or more frequently, the work ethic to do so.

Agreed, PP does allow for continually improvement IF the person is capable of improving through studying and practise the next level. However, each person is only able to take in so much of any particular subject, after which, they are unable, or incapable, of improving. If that weren't so, we would all be the best at whatever we undertook.

PP applies to real life situations just as much as it applies to hiearchal management. With the current level of understanding and capability, you will reach a level you cannot be competent at without doing something else to improve. To say its exclusive to hiearchies is short sighted imo.

You've must have come across hundreds of players that will never get past being donks. And you've must have come across players that continually get better and better and become much more difficult to beat every time you see them. That's pure Peter's Principle theory.

if you count both study and play, then yes, i would say almost all of the top HSNL players fit this. i know we discussed this topic once with krantz/et. al. and most of them thought they had played way more.

The Peter Principle would suggest that every poker player (except those at the top of the nosebleed games) would promote themselves until they were playing better players, and therefore all but a handful would end up bust.

It clearly doesn't apply well to poker since you don't get paid for doing the job badly, so many grinders stay at their level of optimum competence. That's the exact opposite of PP and that's why the previous poster said the above argument butchered it.

I think the appeal of poker among young people is partly because this "10,000 hour rule" doesn't apply -- a person who is intelligent and good at games can become very successful at poker much more rapidly than he or she could in most other fields, which require many years of training (or ass-kissing, depending on your point of view).

The author of this book really thinks that it takes the same amount of time to master all fields?

A 10 year-old could master tic-tac-toe in less than an hour. Some mathematical problems have never been solved in spite of people spending decades on them. etc, etc.

Because every single person unswervingly dedicates their lives to every single task they decide to undertake, right?

This so-called "rule" has some value, but is really too vague to apply to poker.

For example, do hours spent playing Magic count? Starcraft? Gin rummy? Backgammon? Video games?

Many, many top players (and even dimwit grinders like myself) spend countless teenage hours as gamers as one sort of another.

I was crushing poker very quickly after switching over, as were many others.

So, who knows. This "rule" is much more applicable to a highly specific field that involves both mental and physical mastery, such as playing an instrument, golf, tennis, gymnastics, etc. where there is very little crossover from other activities, and the only way to become the "best" or close to it is endless grinding.

I haven't read the book but he obviously gives examples and isn't generalizing to every field ever...

Just responding to the quote in OP:

If the book actually says that, that's really dumb.

The author does not really stat that as a matter of fact but rather as an example one of the many things that it takes to get to outlier status.

"Hours" is stupid when used in poker terms though.

If you're playing online poker is 10,000 hours comprised of someone 1-tabling or 4?

Surely the 4-tabler see and learn a great deal more.

What about live play? Is it someone who grinded 2/4 and 3/6 limit all his life and FINALLY reached a game like 25/50 or 50/100? Or did he start out crushing souls at 15/30 and played most of his hours at 20/40 or 25/50 etc.

It's all skewed.

Its greatly skewed and yes many people will play 10,000 hours, but its also what you do. my friend's dad is 50. Says he has been playing poker 25 years and in less than a year I was beating him down in sit n go's he host on friday nights. Its all how you apply yourself. There isn't a magical moment at the 10k hours mark but if someone shows me their HEM stats and it shows 10,000 hours and they do no have 10k+ in profit and actually care enough about their game to buy HEM and post on 2p2 I will be greatly suprised. I only have~ 500 hours played since I started.


Cliff: Someone post a graph/stats with 10k hours played.

Only people that are naturally good at some task are going to want to devote 10,000 hrs to it.