Hi zmicki:
You wrote:
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Originally Posted by zmicki
Poker is mainly a game of knowledge -- but the acquisition of such knowledge and quality of information gathered is absolutely relevant to speed, timing, and coordination. How is the acquisition and quality of information gathered on the felt unrelated to speed, timing, and coordination?
Well, you don't need speed, timing, and coordination to throw your chips into the pot. Poker is not an athletic sport.
One way of looking at this is that you can divide games into two components. A knowledge component and an execution component. And the following is an excerpt from the "It's Not What You Eat" chapter in
Real Poker Psychology.
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From Real Poker Psychology: To understand this better, let’s take another look at tennis. Suppose you’re a good tennis player, are on the court, and your opponent hits the ball over the net and now it’s your turn to hit it back. What do you do?
I believe that two things happen. First, you instantly know what you want to do. That is, you’ll decide what spot on the court you want to hit the ball to, how hard you’ll want to hit it, how much and what kind of spin you’ll want to put on it, and so on. Next you’ll have to do this, and that requires timing, speed, and coordination.
Now let’s look at poker. It’s your turn to act and you have a decision to make. Suppose your opponent has bet and you have to decide whether to fold, call, or raise, and if the game is no-limit how much to raise. Of course, a good player will know what to do in almost all situations quite quickly, and the remaining spots will take a little more time, but will he need timing, speed, and coordination to get it done? That answer is no.
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My only assertion was a professional nlhe player might be able to play at more the range of 50% peak performance when mentally fatigued (not 98%) as measured by dollar missed opportunities (domo) by merely satisfactory information gathering, incorrect interpretations, and contributing to disparity between maximum earning potential versus actualized earnings for any one given session.
I agree that if you were to stay awake for 72 hours you would be mentally fatigued and your poker would suffer. But don't confuse being mentally tired with being physically tired.
Suppose you're an expert poker player and have been playing all day and are now physically tired and perhaps a little hungry. But before you leave the poker room you notice and excellent game with an open seat and know that if you were fresh your expectation would be very high in this game. It's my contention that your expectation should still be quite good because you're only physically tired and not mentally tired.
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However, it very well may be more profitable to play live cash fatigued for 30 consecutive nights versus five A-game nights.
I'm not sure what you mean by five A-game nights. But generally when the poker psychologists talk about your A Game versus your C Game they imply that some days you show up at the cardroom and have left your A Game at home and now play poorly right from the get-go. This just doesn't happen because it would mean that you will make plays that you know are wrong, and if you understand poker well it's funny to read this stuff. Also, I'm not talking about certain states, such as tilt, that some poker players will sometimes enter into.
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When I wrote nlhe is still evolving I was referring to tournament structures,
I'm not an expert on tournament structures so I won't comment here.
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incorporations of shotclocks,
While I agree that tournaments can probably be improved by the use of "shot clocks," I doubt if many (or any) hands would be played differently. On the other hand, if players had to make all their decisions in two or three seconds, which is the unconscious competence silliness that Tendler emphasizes, then things would be a lot different
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increased/decreased popularity amongst demographics,
This is something that constantly occurs in all poker. Right now, at least where I live, poker is contracting and the games are getting tougher.
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and that certain exploitive opportunities may be closing while others opening.
I don't agree with this. No-limit hold 'em tournament poker has been around a long time, much longer than the current crop of no-limit hold 'em cash games, and I doubt if we'll be seeing much in the way of new exploitative techniques in the future. But perhaps you're right and I'm not.
Best wishes,
Mason