WHAT MAKES A GREAT CARD PLAYER
Well I read an insatiable amount. As a result of this I come across tons of great content that if aggregated appropriately would probably make for some great material. Well this page attempts to aggregate and highlight all that I have read and written about what makes a great card player.
GAME SELECTION:
I have developed a way to emphasize this point to help those better understand the significance of the idea. Many people use as an example, and may believe, if you are the 10th best poker player in the world, one would logically assume that you would be a profitable poker player. However, if you took the hypothetical scenario that you ONLY played with the nine other best players, well then that would make you a loser! While this example may seem obvious to most and unpractical to others, I have developed an analogy that I hope will better illustrate my point. Let’s imagine you are an NBA basketball team. One morning, while you are reviewing tapes from a horrific loss that you suffered the night before, you receive a phone call from the commissioner of the league.
“Hello Jim!“
“Guess what Jim?!?!”
“What?”
Jim hung up the phone, astonished at the news he ha
d
just heard.
What kind of system is that
, he wondered
?
He couldn’t help but think how lucky he was to be the team selected
for this exclusive right
.
After a very mediocre 12 – 23 start, he could sure use whatever help he could get.
He sat back in his chair and began to look at the competition.
It took him a whole thirty second
s, and
he
decided he
was going to play the Denver Nuggets for the rest of the season.
He could already see the headlines.
Now, who can count the parallels this story has to game selection in poker?
What we often miss
,
and even more frequently take for granted, is our freedom to choose whom we are going to play!
This would be a dream situation for any o
ther
sport (assuming poker is a sport for purposes of this article).
Now let’s imagine the alternative. Jim decides to play the best NBA team in the league for the duration of the NBA season. What would people think? What would happen to his job? What would be the most probable outcome for his NBA team and the franchise as a whole? Obviously if he came out on record saying, “well everyone, I wanted to play the Celtics because I wanted a challenge and prepare myself for the toughest opponents the league has to offer.” He would be fired on the spot! Okay, so maybe it would be acceptable to play them once or twice out of the remaining 54 games to prepare for the finals, grow as a team, and learn something. So in poker, I will very seldom play someone whom I know is of equal, or slightly greater skill level, than me to keep myself sharp. I would also like to note that I would NEVER do this if it meant risking a significant part of my net worth (just like Jim would be a moron to do the same if he was one game away from clinching a playoff spot, and selected the Celtics to play that game.)
In the story above, Jim, in reality, is still limited to the given teams in the NBA. However in poker, we are free to play in any game, which may include players with the high skills (like the NBA) to a lower level game with less skilled players (like high school basketball). One can equate this freedom to moving down in stakes in poker. Surely we all want to play in the NBA, and once we have a taste of the big leagues, nobody wants to move down to college basketball. But sometimes, we have to make sacrifices and takes steps down to accomplish great things.
Another interesting point to note is that although Jim’s Wizards were a huge favorite over the Nuggets, they still lost several games. Well guess what? The same is true for poker although on a different scale. The only difference is in poker, the variance is higher. So instead of winning 50 out of 54, you would expect to win fewer times than in the basketball example I used. All of the parallels are there and when we put into context, the immense edge we create by choosing those whom we play against - well that my friends can and will make all the difference.
Written by:
Alec Torelli for:
www.cardplayer.com
alectorelli@gmail.com
PLAYING TIME MANAGEMENT:
The thing about playing poker full time is that an eight hour day is not the same as an eight hour day at most other jobs. The swings, the highs, and the lows make it so that I can’t (shouldn’t) play for more than two hours. Even Tommy Angelo says this in his book:
“A set is the amount of time between sitting down and standing up. Think of your poker life as a series of sets. A set is typically an hour long. Shorter than an hour is fine. Longer than a hour might be fine. But longer than two hours is never fine.
A session is one or more sets groups in time. Long sessions are fine, but only for as long as you are fine, and only if done in sets.
A break is the time between sets. To take a break, remove yourself physically from the game, and also mentally. What’s critical is that you stop the poker thinking, even if it’s only for a few seconds. “ (EOP, p. 34)
