SSH broke my game!

[Monty Cantsin]

This is in response to Puck'n'Poker's post in Nate's tightness thread. Rather than unravelling yet another sub-thread out of that one I am replying to this here.

Puck sed:

[ QUOTE ]
The thing is, I did ok until I read SSH lol (well I think I was doing ok, sample size was pretty small). I have no doubt it is an excellent book, I am just trying to figure out which parts I am applying incorrectly or if I have just been running bad for the last 3k hands (doubtful).

[/ QUOTE ]

I see this comment a lot.

Here are a couple of thoughts in response:

It's not that doubtful that you are running bad for 3k hands. It's easy to run bad for 3k and much, much more.

First of all, get some goddamn confidence.

You are a winning player. Anyone with the desire and discipline to study the game and the basic intelligence to find the right table is capable of playing a winning game. Yes you have leaks, but if you don't start out with a solid belief that you have a positive expectation then don't bother playing.

Don't try to extrapolate your leaks from your results. The lag is just too great. Poring over your stats to tweak your game is actually something that is more appropriate to advanced players.

Guys like Nate and Peter_Rus are long-term winners with huge databases and the analytical skills needed to squeeze knowledge out of this data. Guys like us need to forget about results and focus on what's right in front of our faces.

That means finding your leaks in real-time. Are you in a hand without a plan? Leak. Are you feeling uncomfortable and out of your depth? Leak. Feel like someone at the table is playing sub-optimally but don't know how to exploit it? Leak. Are you caught by surprise by someone's bet or raise and not sure how to respond? Leak.

Are you making plays because you think you're supposed to instead of understanding why? Big, big leak.

I think you'll get a lot more value out of SSH, 2+2, and all other forms of strategy if you take the following approach:

The main lesson to learn from these tools is not "play loosely in large pots" or "don't call a raise with AQ" or "bet out on the river when the 4th card to a flush comes and you've been the aggressor the whole hand".

The main lesson to learn is how to think about the game.

I think a major disease for Poker novices is rule-of-thumb-itis. Our heads are stuffed with so many heuristics and guidelines that we become sloppy state machines. We get into a situation and check our look-up tables to see what the "expert" response is. We're like the guy in Searle's Chinese Room, just manipulating tokens.

When you read SSH, you shouldn't come away with a better set of rules to apply to your game you should come away with a deeper understanding of the process of Poker thinking.

Stop asking "what should I do with an unimproved AK?" And start asking how does Ed Miller, or David Sklansky, or Nate tha Great, or Tommy Angelo, or Izmet Fekali - or whomever you want - how do they think about the game? How do they analyze a situation in order to find the value in it? What conceptual tools are they using to break down complicated situations into understandable chunks? What skills are they using to develop their own rules of thumb and guidelines?

Because if you aren't creating your own strategy you aren't on the path to expert play.

Btw, don't take this personally. I'm a major offender in this respect and this rant is directed at myself as much as anyone else.

/mc

[medaugh]

[ QUOTE ]
The main lesson to learn is how to think about the game

[/ QUOTE ] You know I never thought of it that way but that is the exact reason that I like that book so much. Don't care if anyone else likes this topic but I think it is great. Thanks.

[Bluffoon]

Great Post Monty. Independent thinking is a skill all unto itself that can be developed and applied with great results in all areas of life.

I believe It is incorrect to consider SSH to be a complete guide to profitable play. It certainly doesn't purport itself to be.

SSH was the fourth of fifth Holdem book I read and I have a lot of practical experience to boot. After studying the concepts in SSH I was able to incorporate a couple of changes to my game with positive results. Without the information in the other four or five books and my playing experience, following the results in SSH would have been disastrous IMO.

If your game has suffered while trying to incorporate SSH concepts it may be that you need to further develop your fundamentals.

[KaiShin]

Good post, well deserving of a read.

[HopeydaFish]

I couldn't agree with you more. Many people try too hard to turn Hold'em into Blackjack in that they believe that there's a concrete "optimal" way to play, and that playing any differently is -EV. Hold'em is a great game because every time you play it is different -- you need to play your opponents at least as much or more so as you need to play your cards.

Many players see every situation in black and white. They're the same posters who will respond with the one line "Raise pre-flop" or whatever whenever anyone posts a hand on here for analysis. The reason their responses don't lack any depth is that they really don't know *why* you should fold pre-flop, or raise pre-flop, or what have you -- just that their handy Texas Hold'em chart that they've printed off tells them that this is how they were supposed to play.

[Greg J]

Awesome post!

[ QUOTE ]
I think a major disease for Poker novices is rule-of-thumb-itis.

[/ QUOTE ]
Excactly.

[ QUOTE ]
Because if you aren't creating your own strategy you aren't on the path to expert play.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes.

While I totally appreciate Nate tha Great's post about preflop play, and how we are missing opportunities passing up many profitable hands preflop, the biggest issue for my development is not bumping up my vpip a few points. It's taking how I think about the game to the next level. It's very cliche, but what most moderately good, but not great players here (I would like to consider myself one of those) need to to is learn to play "outside the box." (I can't beleive I used that term -- I need a shower now.)

[istewart]

I've got the disease.

[benfranklin]

[ QUOTE ]
It's very cliche, but what most moderately good, but not great players here (I would like to consider myself one of those) need to to is learn to play "outside the box." (I can't beleive I used that term -- I need a shower now.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Nobody plays outside the box. You just need to get a bigger box. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[bicyclekick]

great post monty. Keep em comin.

[tdarko]

excellent post monty [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

SSH helped me in a different way, a player (friend) at my home game read it and playing anything suited is what he got out of it (i know absurd huh?). needless to say he hates the book and has been donating for awhile, i won't let him read this post! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]