Becoming a better poker player

[Aaron W.]

I've been reflecting on my overall poker goals and progress recently, and I thought I would share with you some of my thoughts. I don't know if anything that I say here is going to be ground-breaking, but I'm certain that there are at least a few new micro posters who will see things here that they might have never considered before.

I'm a full time graduate student. I don't have visions of using poker as a full or part-time job at any point in my future. I don't have many hours to spend reading poker books and playing poker. I'm very clearly in this with entertainment as my primary goal. This outlook dramatically affects how I approach the game.

Even though I'm just a casual player, I'm still very interested in becoming better. I have a long term outlook of slow and steady development as a player. To give you a sense of how slow, I've moved all the way from $.50/$1 to $1/2 in the last 3.5 years. Mentally, I believe I'm ready for something like a $3/6 game, but the money isn't there (no time to whore for money) and the profit motive isn't there. So I'll just take my time and build up the safe 300 BB bankrolls I need to play within my limits (I'm a graduate student -- money is relatively scarce).

Another passion that I have is basketball. And from this sport which I've played my whole life, I've found an analogy to learning to develop into a solid poker player.

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Fundamentals: You can't play basketball unless you at least know the rules and can perform the basic skills (pass, dribble, shoot). In poker, these are knowing the basic game mechanics and a basic strategy. There are preflop tables all over the place, and most of them are good enough to get by. Basic postflop strategy is something along the lines of WLLH. Everyone who plays at a level above that knows it's a little weak-tight. But when you're starting out, you don't want to overwhelm yourself with the more difficult concepts such as aggressive blind defense and playing overcards.

Drills: Before you can move beyond the basics, you need to practice them so that they become more natural. I strongly advise that you go through your basic starting hand requirements often enough that you don't get anything wrong. I also advise that you have the odds charts memorized. The basketball analogy is that you can't play the game very well if you need to think about dribbling all the time. Your hands simply need to do their thing while your mind deals with the other information coming at you.

Simple Plays: In basketball, there are simple plays that most average players know. "Give and Go" and "Screen and roll" are two examples. In a pickup game, you don't do this every single possession, but you look out for opportunities in which to try them. With poker, there are specific types of plays you should know. Pot building raises, pumping draws, and not slowplaying are three basic plays that you should know.

Set Plays: If you watch basketball often, you begin to see patterns emerge for offenses and defenses. Lots of fans know they exist, but not many can actually describe them well. For example, the 2-3 zone is a defensive set, but not many fans can really say what it is in any detail.

When would you check-raise the flop and lead the turn? When would you just call a flop bet intending to raise on the turn? If you can't answer these questions and you're struggling at $1/2, it could be that you haven't spent enough time to learn about these set plays that give you an edge.

Practice: These set plays are easy to read somewhere, but actually putting them to work in a game is a completely different story. That's why there are practices. How can you practice these things? Posting here helps. Reading your hand histories and looking for places where you should be applying them is another useful thing to do. (Try this: Look at some of your hands where you see a flop. On the flop, how many different ways can you think of playing it? Is one always better than the other? What conditions change your line? What if you were in late/early position instead? By going through these questions, you will start to develop the pattern recognition that you need to be able to pull it off during live play.)

You should also be reviewing the SSH hand quizzes regularly here. You want to get to the point where you make no mistakes when you go through them. This includes giving all of the reasons, and not just giving the correct play.

Set Plays 2: There are more complicated offenses and defenses at college games than at high school games. Poker runs parallel to that. As you move up, you need to know how to handle more complex situations. Do you know WA/WB? Do you have a couple different overcard lines? Do you know when to use them? These set plays are at a higher level than the previous ones. They are much more specialized to specific game conditions. This is where higher level play starts to creep in. Are you just calling with AQ in position on the A97 board against a preflop capper? Why is this play better than raising? You should be seeing these lines from the flop, and anticipating possible adjustments you'll need to make depending on the turn and river cards BEFORE they come.

This is also where you should be taking off the training wheels and experimenting with plays. Notice how far down I put this relative to everything else. If you try this too soon, you'll find yourself in -EV land very quickly. I'm very serious about this one. If you can't figure out when it's generally better to check-raising the flop instead of leading out, then you shouldn't be toying with these other plays.

This is where I am right now. I feel that I've got a good foundation in the general situations, but I need to really work out these postflop lines in more detail. This is especially true of my overcard play and playing against more aggressive players.

Game Study: The part of basketball that fewer people know about are the hours spent watching game footage and reviewing notebooks of plays. This analysis continues to refine the mind even more so that it becomes faster and better at picking the right thing to do. You get this not only from studying your own plays, but the plays of thers. When you see a hand where the vets say "nice hand", do you know why it's a nice hand? Most often in those posts, Hero made 6-7 correct plays and EACH ONE needed to be correct. Can you justify every single step along the way? If not, ask questions. Try to know as many details about a specific hand as possible. Buy TOP and read it carefully. Buy HPFAP and start to consider the higher level game concepts, such as short-handed play. Practice hand reading when you review your hand histories by reading the hands you DIDN'T play and seeing if you can put your opponents on hands (hopefully they show down a few so you can check your work, but even if they don't you should think about it). Study specific players you've played with often. Learn their style and figure out how to beat them.

Beyond: Beyond this, I don't know what happens. Notice that "game study" is beyond where I am right now, so it's longer and more rambling. I don't even know what happens after that. A lot of it probably falls out from experience, as your instincts get honed and you start doing second-level/third-level thinking. I'm not even going to guess at what it takes to get there.
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I know that there are lots of posts here where people are trying to do things that are a level or two above where they are. If you're trying to do WA/WB and you can't give at least a few different situations where it *SHOULD* apply, do you think you have any chance of applying it correctly at the table? By having a sense of where you're at (either in my basketball analogy or whatever scale you think you're on... if you even have one at all), you'll have a better sense of the things you should focus on. If you're a newbie, don't be posting lots of overcard situations. Focus on playing your top pair and drawing hands correctly. Overcard play is tough; fix the easy things first.

Good luck and thanks for reading. I hope that you will find this helpful.