"Playing Poker": Theory and Practice

[W. Deranged]

So I decided it was about time to make a long-winded, musing type post about poker that didn't involve any specific hands or anything like that. Three things have inspired this post. The first was the really gut-wrenching online session I just played, where I played horribly from start to finish, never felt comfortable at any table, and seemed to be making unsatisfactory decisions every fifth hand or so. The second was my lengthy live poker playing experience in Vegas this weekend, which reminded me why I prefer playing live so much more than playing online (and the answer is not simply free Yager shots). The last is my new, and apropos, title of "posts better than he plays."

While started kind of as a joke this weekend, the title is basically true. I post much better than I play. Not that I think I "play bad," but simply that I think my general ability to break down, analyze, and articulate poker concepts after the fact or divorced from actual playing situations is much better than my ability to apply the same methods of analysis to real-time situations and hence play sound poker. I am constantly feeling, particularly when playing online, that I am making bad decisions; sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not. The important thing is that many times while playing I just feel like I have no idea what's going on. I sometimes feel like I just lose the analytical poker skills on which my game is based and start to shoot from the hip.

What I've come to realize is that playing poker is very much a two-part endeavor, at least for me. To put it in Aristotelian terms, there's a "theory" and "practice," which, in my opinion, are separate things.

The theory behind poker is what we do every day on these and the other forums here. We talk about pot equity and odds and relative position and value-betting and so on and so forth. This theory can be removed from it's context and applied to abstracted poker situations, which we can talk about slowly and deliberately without the pressure of making decisions. We can run spreadsheets and go to Pokerstove and do Bayesian analysis and argue about reads and so forth. Even seemingly momentary poker skills like hand-reading have a theoretical component, one which is becoming increasingly technical and increasingly abstract with the growing sophistication of statistical poker software. (Can you ever imagine, for example, Johnny Moss talking to Amarillo Slim about how a player's post-flop aggression factor needs to be calibrated to his VPIP?)

Personally, I love the theory behind poker. I would almost find it a fascinating thing if I never got to play it, and could actually only discuss it in forums like this. This is part of the reason I "post better than I play." But, to put it crudely, musing about theory and speaking in poker abstractions alone can't make us any money. We need to put the theory into practice.

And this is really the point of my post: the practice of poker. Every day when we all play poker we are forced to integrate a ton of concepts into very quick decisions, analyzing many different factors (hopefully correctly) and ultimately coming up with a decision. The kind of analysis that we all do at the table is in some sense fundamentally different from that which we do on these forums. We have no recourse to statements like "well, it's very read-dependent" or "meh" at the table. We have to make decisions immediately and hopefully correctly. Those of us who multi-table have an even greater challenge on our hands.

So what I've determined is that, as confident as I am in my grasp of the theory behind poker, I often feel like I'm a total fish when it comes to the practice of it. Part of this is experience. I don't doubt that by number of hands I'm one of the least experienced among us. I play many fewer hands than many of you probably do (I think my Pokertracker has less than 50,000 hands for me over the past 6 months or something). Poker is not my job or my primary interest, so the experience part is just something I'll have to take care of on my own.

But there's more to this discussion. And I'll offer it as a challenge to my beloved Small Stakes Forum:

How can I (and everyone else) become better at the practice of poker ? How can we get better at making decisions at the table? At prioritizing the various data we must deal with? At having confidence in our decisions? At screening our emotions from our reason? At paying attention to the most important things (a particularly important consideration for multi-tablers)? At feeling comfortable while playing?

Just a few thoughts. I'd love to hear any comments from anyone about times that they felt they started to play the game better, which is a very different thing from understanding the game better.

[sweetjazz]

Sounds to me like you need to slow down the pace of the game and force yourself to spend more time thinking about your decisions. Obviously, you can't spend 10 seconds on every action, so it sounds like you should work on focusing all of your attention on the hand in question.

I don't know if you are multitabling, but playing one table at a time would be a start if you do multitable. Work on keeping track of all the available data in your head and consciously force yourself to think of the action in terms of a 2+2 hand post. If it helps, try visualizing the action so far as it would appear in a converted hand history.

Putting theory into practice is supposed to be the easy part, though I think there are many people whose play is significantly worse than what their theoretical understanding of the game would lead you to believe. So there must be something to it.

[newhizzle]

very good post

i actually feel the same way, and i dont think i come near to posting or thinking about the game as good as you do

i think i play a bit to LAGgy in actual practice, i generally always think i can knock my opponents off their hands and make too many questionable call-downs because i think they play the same way, ive gotten better about it though

i also dont tend to think very much about the theoretical value of my options or my opponents possible holdings at the table, or at least not nearly as much as i would think before making a post, it would be nice to find a way to have a bit more discipline at the table and actually think things through in each hand, like if i were replying to someones post

[sweetjazz]

just curious...how many tables do you usually play at a time online? how often, if ever, do you 1-table?

[newhizzle]

i play 4 usually, i probably should play less, but i got a 2001FP coming in the mail soon, so that should help

[sweetjazz]

my hypothesis is that the people most affected by deranged's gap between theory and practice are those who multitable all the time. it's hard to make good decisions multitabling. i multitabled a lot at the lower limits and have done so a bit in the mid-limits trying to build bankroll. but i also do a lot of 1-tabling and 2-tabling. i find my game improves from playing 1 table significantly more than 2 tables and exponentially more than 3 or 4 tables. i get better reads and incorporate betting pattern reads into my decision-making if i am just playing a single table. sometimes i can have one or two of the live ones down like a book (though i probably overestimate that a bit...since i usually only seem to have the fish down when i am running good)

i think that playing one table for a prolonged period of time is vastly underrated on these boards. basically the cut in your current hourly rate has the potential to be completely dwarfed by an increase in your future hourly rates. and besides, it really is more fun to play one table well than to make slightly more going through the motions at four tables.

that's just my opinion.

[shant]

I was just joking. And might've been drunk. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[newhizzle]

this is definately something to consider, i dont know if this is could be part of deranged's problem also because he was also talking about playing live i believe

but i think you make a good point, every now and then ill start a session by 1 tabling a 3-handed or so game and i think i play pretty well in these games and i get my some of my opponents actions and betting patterns down almost perfectly, then when the table fills up ill open some more full games and start the grind, by the way, if i try to multitable these games it just dosent work

i should also probly stop posting while playing too

[newhizzle]

so are you changing your avatar every 5 minutes or so now?

[Alex/Mugaaz]

Seriously some people with no card sense, intuitive ability, or talent (me) can only circumvent this by my work away from the table. You need to know everything so cold that you don't have to make irregular decisions on a regular basis. This takes a lot of time, but so what, you use what you're born with. The only benefit from my absolute zero talent is I can play almost any poker variation at an intermediate level within an hour or two of picking up the rules due solely to my understanding of theory. Intuitive players have no chance of that. Also my game selection abilities own because of this.

Realize what your talents are and tailor your poker around them.