12k Post: Learning and Laziness

[MrWookie]

I submitted this article to the magazine a few months ago, but I never heard back. I guess it couldn't have been all that good, but I think there's something worth reading in here. I wasn't planning on making many more land mark posts, but I hit 12k, and I had this lying around waiting to get posted. I hope you enjoy it.

"Learning and Laziness"

I think that lately, my poker playing has felt a little stagnant. It's not a simple case of running bad that's behind it, either. It's that I don't feel like I'm going anywhere. I feel like I've seen it all, and even the accursed turn check-raises don't get my blood pressure up. Winning money is great, but some of the magical enjoyment for the game I had when I had just started was great. I think what's happened is that I haven't been learning much.

As a beginner, it's easy to learn something new. All one has to do is crack open a book or play a few hundred hands or read a few threads in their preferred forum. As one progresses, though, he or she will have already read the most important books multiple times, playing three thousand hands doesn't reveal anything new, and all the posts in their home forum look like they can be answered with "Fold preflop" (or perhaps that home forum has become OOT).

This got me thinking about how I prioritize my poker time, given that I'm one for whom poker is a nice side income, but it's not my primary vocation nor my sole hobby. I had been prioritizing outright making money, a pretty common goal amongst poker players, and it's certainly not a bad one. Consequently, my poker time would involve playing a bunch of hands until I was too tired, I had no more time, or perhaps I started tilting, and then maybe I'd post on the forums until I was totally done. What if, though, I restructured myself a little bit to focus on learning, rather than profit? I might wind up playing a little less, but the time I did take to play would be more enjoyable, and almost certainly more profitable.

Let's take students at the metaphorical Poker University. They have three things they can do: play more hands, post (discuss the play of hands with others, usually on the forums), and study (often reading, usually more abstract, deeper, and mathematical than just posting). Playing, posting, and studying can all be instructive, but depending on where one is as a player, one may not be as beneficial as another (again, we're thinking strictly about learning more about the game of poker). If I were to tell my peers at PU how to budget their time with the goal of maximizing their own learning, I'd tell them to do it like this (from highest to lowest priority):

Freshman: Studying, Playing, Posting
I say this because, knowing very little, the easy and obvious sources for studying, books, contain a wealth of information for them, basics that they need to get down. After that, they need to get out there and try it. It's impossible to absorb it all by just reading. Going back and forth between a book and the tables will get them up to speed quickly. Posting is last because they may not know a whole lot about what makes a good post or a good reply yet, so they won't get as much out of it compared to what they'll get from a reread or another few thousand hands.

Sophomores: Posting, Playing, Studying

We'll assume that they've done the obvious reading, so it's time to start posting and replying much more to test their understanding. With the experience and abstract understanding they picked up as freshman, they'll be better equipped to find a good hand of their own to post and to explain how they'd play a hand someone else posts. They may not always get it right, but they'll be speaking the language of people who correct them, the language of EV, equity, odds, etc., and they can start rapidly filling in the gaps in the concepts they didn't totally follow from the books. Then, they go out and apply it,
or reapply what they got wrong.

Juniors: Playing, Posting, Studying

At this stage, it's time to go out and log a bunch of hands. Not only is it presumably quite profitable at this point, but you also just need to start encountering more unusual or marginal situations if you're going to find things to post about and keep learning. Juniors should have a good eye for a hand that would make a good post. Keep your eyes on the boards, though, because you'll get to see even more stuff than you could ever encounter in your playing career. Some of the posts may be basic, but thoroughly explaining something to a freshman or sophomore also goes a long way towards solidifying one's
own understanding.

Seniors: Studying, Playing, Posting

And it seems we've come full circle, in that oddly enough, freshman and seniors have the same priorities. If a senior is going to keep learning, he needs to work a lot harder at it than just reading the freshmen literature, however. He's probably played so many hands at this point and read so many books and posts that he can go weeks without seeing a hand that gives him pause. A lot of this is experience, but some is just getting lazy and not really thinking about some of them. Most senior poker players are conditioned to rattle on to the freshman at the tinkle of a bell about how poker is deep, complex game that takes a lot of hard work to learn, but I'd be amazed if even half of those seniors are themselves putting in that same effort to keep learning it. It's time to hunker down. The studying I'm talking about is not just reading the usual books again. It's time to seek out some unusual sources. Some of them might be a little out on a limb, but they might have a little glimmer of something new. Some of them might also be dead wrong, and proving them as such is also valuable. It's also good to start dig in and really get into examining some hands, either posts on the board, one's own histories, or hypothetical ones, in greater detail, with more rigor, with more math, etc. When was the last time you actually used an EV calculation to justify your answer to a hand post? You still remember how to do one? It's time to snap out of being lazy if a senior is going to keep learning, and the only way to do that is with a little hard work. Berating some new student for an ill-advised open limp on the button doesn't cut it.

I think that lately, I've been doing too little studying and too much playing and posting relative to my current needs for continued learning as a senior. Consequently, I've been feeling myself slide into that senior slump: too lazy to learn something new, sometimes too lazy to log some more hands, sometimes too lazy to play well. I think that this intellectual laziness with respect to poker can be an extremely subtle form of tilt. When we get lazy, easing up the depth of analysis of our play because we have seen it all before or are too confident in our supreme understanding of the game, it's pretty easy for an A game to slide to A- or B+. It's easy to miss out on a bet here and there if one has gotten lazy with hand reading and not taken into account all the available information because so much of it looks like what happened in your last 20,000 hands. It may not be as bad as steaming after a bad beat, but a slight slip can go a long ways towards exacerbating a downswing.

So my challenge to everyone is this: go out and learn something new about poker this next week. I know that you know it all already, but just take a couple hours and get your brain chewing on something it hasn't ground through dozens of times before. And if you know you don't know it all already, then I'd hope you know the first place to start looking!

Best of luck at the tables, and may I only be caught playing with you when your brain isn't absorbing something new.

[Poker Plan]

Another great post. Many thanks. What I'm interested in is (very) roughly how many hands played equate to each of the "stages" you mention?

Ian

[drzen]

Well, I'm learning mostly how to lose.

But I want to take the opportunity to thank Mr Wookie for the time he spends here and the effort he puts into answering stupid questions and beraducating those of us who thoroughly need it. If I ever do become a decent poker player, posts like this will have been milestones on my road to it.

[Poker Plan]

[ QUOTE ]


But I want to take the opportunity to thank Mr Wookie for the time he spends here

[/ QUOTE ]

Seconded.

You must see lots of people arrive at these boards with big dreams- only to dissappear after weeks / months. Your longevity is an inspiration and a motivation to those of us who are here for the long haul.

Ian

[Shillx]

Seniors: Studying, Playing, Posting

Heh yeah this really is the case. I haven't really spent too much time thinking about LHE and when I have it has been 6-max related. It is such a people/hand reading related game that it is tough to get better simply though analysis.

Full ring is much more about pre-calculated EV decisions. In 6-max you have to adjust to conditions because stealing is the critical factor and the players at the table should dictate how often you steal/re-steal. But in ring play stealing becomes less important and pot size manipulation takes center stage. I actually think that there is some progression for a thinking LHE ring player and it goes something like: PF is tough --> Post-flop is tough ------> PF is tough. The length of time during the 1st gap is much smaller then the time between the 2nd.

As an analogy, there is a concept in Sit And Go's called ICM that is widely accepted as the model for calculating equity. When you 1st get into SNG's you spend all of your time learning it inside and out. You then accept it and learn to develop other parts of your game (deep stack play, reads, etc.) Then you get so good that you notice the holes in the model and you re-learn it inside and out so you can patch up its weakest traits. This is kinda where I'm at in my SNG journey so it seemes appropriate to post a few ideas here.

Since ring play is such a math orriented game it seems like attacking the EV of various situation would be a good place to start. The problem is that EV-calcs are long, boring and tough to compute when people aren't all-in. There are things that the Seniors tell the Freshmen like

Raise AJo UTG

We know that it is +EV just from experience and pass it down. But there were things that people told me that I'm not sure are true. I think that it would be very helpful to do a number of PF simulations (if it is possible and if not maybe I'll just do it the old fashioned way). One of the *myths* that I never fully believed in was that you needed a very good hand to call a 3-bet. Say for example that you have 7 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 6 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] in the BB. UTG raises, UTG+1 3-bets and you have no reason to believe that they don't have legit holdings. How many coldcallers (n) do you need to call with the 76s? I would always just fold but there has to be a point where calling is +EV and I think n is much less then people suspect. If we can find that point (both odds and # of players) for a variety of different hands it might be of a huge help to this fourm.

Brad

[Str8Fish]

Wookie, I respect your posts more than anyone on 2+2. You're my poker idol. I can't wait till I've saved up enough to get you to coach me. I will be your apprentice.

I don't know where I'm at on your list. I don't review hands as much as I ought to, nor do I play much at the moment. I do grunch a ton and I do get things wrong a lot of the time, but I still learn from my mistakes. I ask a lot of the more experienced players if I can sweat them and I do learn things that I do that are wrong when I do play. I also like the math challenges that poker offers. I'm always up for doing math-related calculations on hands and such, especially when I'm less busy in the lab. I think I am learning the fundamentals from the ground up and it helps.

I am getting to the point, though, that I think I've looked at nearly every major aspect of FR LHE poker theory and am getting bored. I've made the switch to 6-max for the time being and it is a different spin on things, but when you break it down, it's the same stuff.

I don't know why this turned out to be so long. My bad.

Nice post, please keep 'em comin. Oh, and please write a damn book so I can buy it. I think you have a ton of potential to really open up new areas of thought to the poker world. The ultimate book would probably include you, Shillx and Aaron as authors in terms of complete understanding of the fundamentals and beyond.

Mucho respecto por todos las personas.

[ESKiMO-SiCKNE5S]

[ QUOTE ]
or perhaps that home forum has become OOT

[/ QUOTE ]

BBV is the new OOT, you might want to fix that if you resubmit

[Bilgefisher]

I think this post was good timing for me. I'm trying to find that balance. I have very little time to play <1k hands a week. For me the priority is playing. I'm learning 6-max, and as others stated its important to read your opponents. That requires play time and experience. Good post Wookie, tons of stuff to reflect on.

[Bona]

Interesting and thought provoking post Your analogy might be useful for further development if writing is of interest to you

1) What are the basic building blocks needed before and during the "freshman" period to enable readiness to learn at the "sophomore" level. (EX:maybe not an accurate one) Hand reading skills need to be learned at some level. Hand reading is a basic skill that is needed for how many other skills to develop? Is it freshman curriculum then and a building block for blind defense at the sophomore level? In other words how many hands would I typically have needed to play while focusing on hand selection before I moved my focus to hand reading?

Where does learning six max fit on the curve? After mastering what? Before attempting what?

What levels of skill should be demonstrated to proceed? How many hands should be played at each level to assure practical experience supports the theory notions?

You could expand your analogy and flesh in a book that defines learning to play poker in the most logical and efficient way possible. Even though the concepts are well defined and presented in other books, they are not organized by learning curve chronology anywhere I have seen.

Write it for us Wookie. We'll by it.

[ottsville]

NH sir!