Poker Essays I Question for Mason

[Senhouse]

Mason,

I have a question about a statement you made in Poker
Essays I. You say that to become a good player, you need
to spend a lot of time thinking about poker away from the
table. Also, you say that to do this may require a lot of
boring hours. Could you tell me what some of those boring
things I should be doing to improve my play?

Thanks,
Chris Senhouse

[Dynasty]

Assuming you are relative new to the game, try reading every post made in the Small Stakes forum for the next 6 months.

[Senhouse]

No, I'm not relatively new to the game. I have worked my
way up to being a solid winner at 5-10, 10-20 level, about
0.7 big bets/hour online - which isn't great, but it's not
horrible either. I've read Theory of Poker and HPFAP
countless times, as well as SuperSystem, Middle Limit
Holdem, Improve Your Poker, and many others. I am currently
using Poker Tracker to help analyze my results. I was just
curious if there was some other discrete thing one could
do - review hand histories? learn more about probabilities?
get a poker coach? I want to maximize my game - I'm using it
as a tiny supplement to my tiny teacher's salary, so it's
still a hobby, but a hobby I am trying my best at. What
else can you do to improve other than read books, posts
online, and play play play?

Chris

[Styles]

Since you read Poker Essays I, I'll assume you still have it. Reread it. Mason talks about hands he played he often talks about calculations he makes and then says something like "of course I didn't do this right then, I had done it before hand". There are other examples of these throughout the book, there is not a list per se. Although PE2 and PE3 have some nice lists of skills, etc. to work on. You probably have most of them if you are at 5/10. I'm a lowly 1/2 and 2/4 player myself /images/graemlins/wink.gif

Also the Poker Mind has some nice lists of things to think about especially about other players and thinking about their play.

[bigpooch]

Preparation is part of the time spent away from the table.
To be honest, in order to multitable at the fastest pace, I
simply determined my hand selection baseline for each
position and in the most common situations to automate my
preflop play. Also, for the most common betting sequences,
my decisions are also quite mechanical; on the other hand,
there will be situations that will arise where you have to
do some hard thinking and hopefully my thinking was already
done before the situation arose!

[Schneids]

You might think Dynasty's post was in a sarcastic tone, but it really is not a bad idea.

The best thing you can do for yourself is to be prepared for as many situations as possible when you are at the table. By reading SS (or any other forum) hand posts, you'll often learn new or better approaches to the hands. So that, come game time, you can play confidently no matter how the cards fall and no matter what checks or bets you face (and oftentimes be like "oh hey I remember when XXX said when out of position, heads up, in a raised pot PF on an ace high flop to check/call the flop/turn and then bet the river, I may wanna try that here against this opponent."

Come to these forums frequently and it shouldn't take you too long to figure out who's posts are worth your time, and make sure to read as much of their posts as possible. When used correctly, these forums are an amazing tool, so soak in as much as you can.

[Dynasty]

[ QUOTE ]
No, I'm not relatively new to the game. I have worked my way up to being a solid winner at 5-10, 10-20 level

[/ QUOTE ]

Then try reading every post made in the Mid-, High- Stakes forum for the next 6 months.

You should also be posting your own hands and commenting on others. I don't think there's any better way to think about the game.