Your Goals and Poker

[citanul]

A proviso before I begin: I rarely play limit poker at all, though I thoroughly troll this forum to attempt to keep/make that game sharp for when it's needed.

So lately I've been seeing a trend developing, especially w.r.t. responses from the people I consider likely to be the most skilled players in this forum, that I agree with wholeheartedly, and think probably deserves it's own thread. I doubt I can do it justice, but I'll try. Maybe someone more well versed can help me out later or something.

I think that there are a lot of people here who sort of are directionless in terms of where they want to go with their poker playing. Or rather, they have a direction, but it is an odd one -> beat the party 15/30 game for n tables, where n is increasingly large. I feel this is a dangerous trap, as I think do many of the top players around here. Players begin to rush their development instead of towards good to excellent solid poker playing to "yes! i can 12 table!" Particularly, players seem to get contented with their results, let their games stagnate when they think they can beat a game, take things for granted, and head for inevitable downswings. These downswings are more shocking/huge/depressing since the players are running themselves up to 8 and 12 tables of the highest limit game they can get their hands on that number of tables.

Before getting directionless as well, the point is that yes, if you're beating a game for a little bit, and not working on your game, and then playing always the maximum number of tables you "can handle," it's likely that you're going to get smoked every once in a while. Thus, the recent trend in advice of some posters to say "I stopped reading your downswing post when I got to the part where you said you play 8 tables." It doesn't matter who you are really, this advice has pertinence.

If you tax out your concentration, lose the ability to get good reads, wind up with misclicks, mis-board-reads, etc, ON TOP of not being a great player in the game, you're doing yourself a disservice. Just because you *can* get a positive winrate at n tables doesn't mean you're helping your long term results by playing that many tables. At some point, it seems a lot of people are stopping caring about learning.

If your goal is to crush as many tables of the party game as you can at once, fine, but don't get complacent with it. Do it in an intelligent fashion. If you have any aspirations of beating whatever comes next, you learn less about how to play poker by maxing out your tables than you do by trying to earn more by beating each table for more. I think also that the main purpose of this forum is purportedly to enhance poker knowledge and debate, not learn to 8 table, but learn to play poker well. Hence, justified frustration from top players who try to offer advice but see that all people are trying to do is rush to 8 tables of 15/30 instead of learning to crush one.

In short: there is life beyond beating the party 15/30 game. Paying the bills is nice, but this isn't 8 tabling and above therapy land, it's a poker strategy forum. Amongst things you should consider when you have a significant downswing is how many tables you are playing.

That's all from me, probably repetitious,

citanul