Thinking out loud

[Ocho]

My 2 cents:

I won't go into the negatives about thinking out loud... there are pleanty, and they have already been discussed.

You should probably ask yourself WHY you think out loud. It does absolutly nothing for your thinking process, so why do you do it? If you look closely at the personality types of the think out loud type, most (not all) of them seem to talk as an ego prop:

"Ok everyone, I know what I'm doing and I'm going to walk you through my thinking process. That way even if i make a mistake, you will will all see that I have very good reasons for doing what I'm about to do."

I believe that's why many of the personalities on TV do the "talk-through"... they feel as though they must justify their play incase they make a mistake.

I'm not saying you are one of these people, but it would certianly help to be honest with yourself about why you do this.

And yes, I've been guilty of this and I constantly work on it myself. It's hard. But now that I've been honest with myself about why I do it, I am getting much better at correcting the problem.

This isn't to say that you should never talk. There are definitly times where talking can give you a huge edge. But I think most experienced players will agree that 90% of the time, it's best to keep your mouth shut.

If after some introspection, you realize that this is the reason you think out loud, it will help you to be aware of other aspects of your game that your ego may be effecting.

Good luck.

[wattsman]

Talking at the table seems to me to be a skill that is dangerous if you are poor at it and valuable if you are good at it. I talk a lot, mainly in humorous terms so that any other talk I do is washed into the middle of nonsense. HOWEVER, I do think it's likely I have a leak or two in my talking. Most pros that talk at the table will tell you that it really is dangerous, you have to be good at it not to get burned.