playing yourself in poker for practice...

[Willluck]

Bobby Fischer was said to practice chess by playing himself for hours a day. Now I suppose you could do the same with poker by being totally nonpartisan and just making the most +ev situations given the board and your hole cards. The only thing is that it doesn't help you recognize betting pattern of players, which is what a lot of HU play is.

Any thoughts?

[jba]

[ QUOTE ]
Bobby Fischer was said to practice chess by playing himself for hours a day. Now I suppose you could do the same with poker by being totally nonpartisan and just making the most +ev situations given the board and your hole cards. The only thing is that it doesn't help you recognize betting pattern of players, which is what a lot of HU play is.

Any thoughts?

[/ QUOTE ]

I used to be an avid (and admittedly poor) chess player, and I would often try to play against myself. Failed miserably every time -- found it way too difficult to keep two separate lines of strategy consistent and without bias from what the other half of me was doing.

Chess is a game with nearly complete information available to your opponents -- the only thing that is not available is your planned strategy. If I could not keep that out of my bias, there is no way I would be able to

one of the most important thing in holdem is to put your opponent on a range of hands, and I would never be able to do that in such a way as to limit my bias to make it worthwile.

plus, it's much more to play for money and the rake will kill you if you play yourself

[Willluck]

[ QUOTE ]
plus, it's much more to play for money and the rake will kill you if you play yourself


[/ QUOTE ] nice.

[KenProspero]

I was playing poker with myself the other day. Boy was I upset when I folded TPTK only to find that I was bluffing!!!

[Drunken Monkey]

What I like to do is step up a table with the players that I usually play with. Just deal every person's hand face up and make decisions as if you are actually them.

I think this improved my game against these certain opponents significantly, but my over all play was only helped slightly.

Being an overly tight player this "drill" helped me realized that players can bet with a wider range of hands than I would give them credit for. Just knowing that Player A would bet the turn with bottom pair is a lot differnet then seeing it done to me in my game. I finally relized some mistakes I was making that I thought I had fixed or was working on. Seeing makes a difference for me.

It might not be playing myself, but it is similar if you were trying a LAG style verses a TAG style or what not.

[Hextallin]

[ QUOTE ]
I was playing poker with myself the other day. Boy was I upset when I folded TPTK only to find that I was bluffing!!!

[/ QUOTE ]

haha, awesome.

As was already pointed out, I don't think this works very well in a game of incomplete information.

[MagicMan08]

The only way I could see this benefit anyone is seeing a lot of different starting hands and playing each one how you would play them from that hands perspective. Even then it is pushing it.

[Sniper]

Buy PokerAcedemyPro, setup a bot to emulate your starting hands selection and playing style.. have fun practicing!

Practice makes perfect!

[MagicMan08]

Sniper I was thinking of investing in that program, is it worth it, I mean you basically said so, but were you impressed?

[phish]

[ QUOTE ]
Bobby Fischer was said to practice chess by playing himself for hours a day. Now I suppose you could do the same with poker by being totally nonpartisan and just making the most +ev situations given the board and your hole cards. The only thing is that it doesn't help you recognize betting pattern of players, which is what a lot of HU play is.

Any thoughts?

[/ QUOTE ]

idiotic. why would you ever do this when you can play playmoney or micro-stakes for practice against other opponents. Much of the uniqueness of poker is that you don't know what your opponent has. Remove that and there is no poker.