A Very Good Exercise

[ZootMurph]

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Lots of people have reccomended this in the past and I never understood the point. Why take away stats if you have them? If you aren't paying attention to stuff when stats are up then I think that's a seperate problem all together and i don't really see how this will change that. Is it supposed to show you that paying attention is important? I thought everyone knew that.

Now if you want to talk about playing fewer tables once in a while, I think that's a valid idea because it gives you more time to think about things. I just don't see what advantages come of depriving yourself of stats.

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My point is just that I tend to use the stats as a crutch and hence miss out on a lot of very valuable information. It's a training exercise, not a "maximize value" exercise. The idea is by forcing myself to not have stats now, I train myself to be more observant at the table, meaning my reads with stats included will be even sharper.

It's like when they put eye-patches on the eyes of young kids. By compromising vision in the short-run, you greatly increase acuity in the long-run.

Obviously there are many for whom this wouldn't be useful, because they're already good at this, but this seems to me a very rational way to deal with what I imagine is a pretty common problem.

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I agree with W Deranged here. I know when I was having a bad run, I started playing only 1 table to refocus myself. When I started doing that, I found some things which aren't reflected in the numbers. For example, there was one guy I played a lot of hands with. His PFR was 3%. You'd think that his raises were only AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK and AQ. But, he NEVER raised preflop with AA or KK, which I saw him show down 3 times. Maybe this is just because of sample size, but this is a pretty telling read. Another example is a LAG I was playing with that I'd played a LOT of hands with previously. His stats are 47%-31% and his showdown number was 53%. However, on this day, he seemed to be folding an awful lot on the flop. Probably having a bad day and compounding it with weak postflop play thinking he is beat all the time. It was useful information that the numbers alone couldn't give me.

So, anyway, I agree that the stats should only be part of your read, not the whole thing.

[Mister Z]

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It's like when they put eye-patches on the eyes of young kids.

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Something about this sentence is still cracking me up.

[Evan]

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It's like when they put eye-patches on the eyes of young kids.

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So if I play without stats I can be a pirate? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[W. Deranged]

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It's like when they put eye-patches on the eyes of young kids.

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So if I play without stats I can be a pirate? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

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Yarrrrrgghhh....

[B Dids]

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Lots of people have reccomended this in the past and I never understood the point. Why take away stats if you have them? If you aren't paying attention to stuff when stats are up then I think that's a seperate problem all together and i don't really see how this will change that. Is it supposed to show you that paying attention is important? I thought everyone knew that.

Now if you want to talk about playing fewer tables once in a while, I think that's a valid idea because it gives you more time to think about things. I just don't see what advantages come of depriving yourself of stats.

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I basically agree.

This is like tiltblocker. Instead of just fixing a problem, you're avoiding it. If playing with a HUD means you're not actually watching the play, then start effing watching the play.

Of course, I also come from the school that says more than 2 tables is bad for your soul, so ignore more.

[Evan]

I think tiltblocker is pretty useful for some people. Personally I don't really understand it, but I guess some people have a real problem with seeing their stack decrease.

Thsi no stats thing just doesn't make any sense to me though. If you know that you should pay more attention, why don't you? I don't see how playing without stats is going to make you concentrate more with stats if you're currently not concentrating with stats. It's not like you're JUST fidnign out that paying attention is good.

Basically it just sounds like a bunch of BS to me. If it makes you more confident though, that's a good thing. I just don't understand why you have to go through time of giving up money to realize that paying attention is important.

[B Dids]

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I think tiltblocker is pretty useful for some people. Personally I don't really understand it, but I guess some people have a real problem with seeing their stack decrease.


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I am one of these people. It's just that I think the better way to get past this is to like... get past it instead of just pretending I can totally ignore my results.

I understand it's utility, it's just a short term solution to a long term problem.

[Harv72b]

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I was amazed at how different it felt. I was watching betting patterns more closely, I was looking more carefully at results, I was noticing things like small stack size, early position posters, etc. I was forcing myself to think in terms of "what does this guy play this way" instead of "how often does he do this" and so on. I was making careful points every time I saw a turn bluff raise and so on. I managed to get good notes on almost every player at the table, and soon settled into a rhythm where I felt comfortable playing. Getting reads on new players became easy. I found I could get a handle on a new table in 10-15 minutes.

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This is precisely why I haven't made a serious effort at increasing to 4 tables. When I 3-table, with stats, I can generally achieve the kind of attention to detail that you're talking about. When/if I can get to that point while 4-tabling, that's when I'll get serious about adding that fourth table.

I really don't think that playing without your PT stats (when you have a choice, I mean) is a good exercise. Rather, I think that cutting down on the number of tables you play and using the extra "free time" to focus on your hand-reading abilities is a good idea for multi-tablers. Say, at least a few hours every week. Whether or not you have PT stats displayed while you do it is incidental, but I'd just as soon voluntarily take them out of the picture as I would intentionally delete my notes.