What´s most important in a NL-MTT? Preflop-system?

[splashpot]

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What i am aiming for, is to break down the "decision-process" into small pieces. And then try to estimate of how much importance every point is. And as you see i haven´t thought it true very deep yet, but with some brainstorming here we might end up with something valueful.

I want to see the whole decision-process as a blueprint or puzzle. And maybe numbers isn´t the way to this

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You're not going to like this answer, but the way to do this is the same way every seasoned pro does it. Play real poker. Just learn to process all these bits of info everytime, for every hand. That's the only way. It comes with experience.

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Have you read any books on this subject? Dan Harrington already created a system similar to what you are speaking of, although not as in-depth. Most posters here have read Harrington on Hold'em vols 1 and 2 already and know these concepts. If you haven't read either of his books (or the other recommended reading in the stickied anthology post) I strongly suggest you buy them ASAP. From reading your posts thusfar it doesn't appear that you have read any of them.

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I have read them both along with 20 other pokerbooks.
I´m aiming to get one step further. And the numbersystem was nothing i thought about very deep, execpt from that i wanted to rate the different things in the decisionprocess.

And now when I have recieved some really good responses, thank you very much for that, i would like to further discuss the decision-process.

To illustrate this. A golfplayer can break his swing down to small moves from diffrent parts of the body, that will determine how long and straight he will hit the ball. And the better his swing becomes, the better he will hit his targets in average. This is like the preflop-strategy, based on how good you are on making a decision based on many variables.

If you would break down the decision-process. how would it look like?

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What i am aiming for, is to break down the "decision-process" into small pieces. And then try to estimate of how much importance every point is. And as you see i haven´t thought it true very deep yet, but with some brainstorming here we might end up with something valueful.

I want to see the whole decision-process as a blueprint or puzzle. And maybe numbers isn´t the way to this

[/ QUOTE ]
You're not going to like this answer, but the way to do this is the same way every seasoned pro does it. Play real poker. Just learn to process all these bits of info everytime, for every hand. That's the only way. It comes with experience.

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It comes with experience and true knowledge, what i mean with true knowledge is that experience doesn´t allways make you better in the decision-process. You´ll have to analyze things things as we do right now, with discussion and reading, Along with practical knowledge and experince of course.

[gergery]

I think a better approach would be to use your system to get very good tourney players to elaborate on which of the multitude of factors are most important in a given situation. And use their comments to improve how you play poker.

The system becomes just a tool to force clarity and prioritization. Trying to actually play with a system is a horrible idea for your longer-term development as a player.

-g

[parappa]

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What i am aiming for, is to break down the "decision-process" into small pieces. And then try to estimate of how much importance every point is. And as you see i haven´t thought it true very deep yet, but with some brainstorming here we might end up with something valueful.

I want to see the whole decision-process as a blueprint or puzzle. And maybe numbers isn´t the way to this

[/ QUOTE ]
You're not going to like this answer, but the way to do this is the same way every seasoned pro does it. Play real poker. Just learn to process all these bits of info everytime, for every hand. That's the only way. It comes with experience.

[/ QUOTE ]

It comes with experience and true knowledge, what i mean with true knowledge is that experience doesn´t allways make you better in the decision-process. You´ll have to analyze things things as we do right now, with discussion and reading, Along with practical knowledge and experince of course.

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There is one point that you're sort of making that I generally agree with you on: the idea that some sort of routine for remembering to look at all the things you should be looking at each hand could be good for avoiding lazy or incorrect play.

There are, imo, two issues here. On the first one (that most posters in this thread are talking about), systematising the synthesis of all the variables that go into a poker hand is pretty pointless, because the system has to be so big and complex that it is essentially impossible to design such a system. The good news is that you don't need to: that's what your brain is for, to evaluate all these things.

However, there is a second sense in which (imo) a system can be useful--To remind yourself to take note of all the variables in a hand while you're playing. Everyone does this anyway but it could be helpful to make it explicit if you tend to do it haphazardly or not in the same way every time. You can ask questions like Harrington has in his "Elements of a Hand" section, stuff like "what's my position" "what's the status of the tournament?" ending in "what are my cards?"

In cash games, I have implemented some questions I ask myself every time I hit the HJ seat: Is this a table I should be playing at? What's the table VPIP/PFR? Am I tired? Am I tilting? What's my table image? I found that the HJ is a good spot for that analysis, since I can play around to my blinds while I'm thinking about it and I'm not quite as active with hands as I would be in the blinds or on the button.

So, anyway, I think a system to remind you to remember to look at everything you should look at in situations like preflop, analysing the texture of the flop (does it have a pair, does it have 2 suited cards, what cards have a straight draw, is it likely to have made 2-pair for someone, etc) is a good idea, and I'd go even further and say everyone uses one, whether they think of it that way or not.

But attempting systematically to evaluate the information into a play decision by assiging weights, codifying it, etc. is essentially unworkable except perhaps in push-or-fold type situations and, even then, you have so many subjective factors (what hand ranges your opponents will be playing, how they see you, how they play different stack sizes, etc) that your results will be much better to just come with answers on the fly each time.

[nath]

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The X factor that will separate who´s better in usin this system is the ability to read the other players.

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It already is.

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What i am aiming for, is to break down the "decision-process" into small pieces. And then try to estimate of how much importance every point is. And as you see i haven´t thought it true very deep yet, but with some brainstorming here we might end up with something valueful.

I want to see the whole decision-process as a blueprint or puzzle. And maybe numbers isn´t the way to this

[/ QUOTE ]
You're not going to like this answer, but the way to do this is the same way every seasoned pro does it. Play real poker. Just learn to process all these bits of info everytime, for every hand. That's the only way. It comes with experience.

[/ QUOTE ]

It comes with experience and true knowledge, what i mean with true knowledge is that experience doesn´t allways make you better in the decision-process. You´ll have to analyze things things as we do right now, with discussion and reading, Along with practical knowledge and experince of course.

[/ QUOTE ]

There is one point that you're sort of making that I generally agree with you on: the idea that some sort of routine for remembering to look at all the things you should be looking at each hand could be good for avoiding lazy or incorrect play.

There are, imo, two issues here. On the first one (that most posters in this thread are talking about), systematising the synthesis of all the variables that go into a poker hand is pretty pointless, because the system has to be so big and complex that it is essentially impossible to design such a system. The good news is that you don't need to: that's what your brain is for, to evaluate all these things.

However, there is a second sense in which (imo) a system can be useful--To remind yourself to take note of all the variables in a hand while you're playing. Everyone does this anyway but it could be helpful to make it explicit if you tend to do it haphazardly or not in the same way every time. You can ask questions like Harrington has in his "Elements of a Hand" section, stuff like "what's my position" "what's the status of the tournament?" ending in "what are my cards?"

In cash games, I have implemented some questions I ask myself every time I hit the HJ seat: Is this a table I should be playing at? What's the table VPIP/PFR? Am I tired? Am I tilting? What's my table image? I found that the HJ is a good spot for that analysis, since I can play around to my blinds while I'm thinking about it and I'm not quite as active with hands as I would be in the blinds or on the button.

So, anyway, I think a system to remind you to remember to look at everything you should look at in situations like preflop, analysing the texture of the flop (does it have a pair, does it have 2 suited cards, what cards have a straight draw, is it likely to have made 2-pair for someone, etc) is a good idea, and I'd go even further and say everyone uses one, whether they think of it that way or not.

But attempting systematically to evaluate the information into a play decision by assiging weights, codifying it, etc. is essentially unworkable except perhaps in push-or-fold type situations and, even then, you have so many subjective factors (what hand ranges your opponents will be playing, how they see you, how they play different stack sizes, etc) that your results will be much better to just come with answers on the fly each time.

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Great response. Thank you, this discussion really makes me brainstorm.

"The good news is that you don't need to: that's what your brain is for, to evaluate all these things."

Poker decision-making is cognitive thinking. It´s to many variables to consider and there are to many different situations. And based on our "poker-IQ" we´ll handle these situation good or bad.

But I still think it´s posible to take the discussion about decision-making to a higher level. Our goal must be to make a perfekt decision based on the information about the situation.

I think a list with every fraction of information would increase our poker-intelligence. Just like you said, to remember ourself to include every bit of information. And the more we train ourself on these point, the higher "poker-intelligence" we get.

Thoughts?