Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Nu Zuland bru
Posts: 939
|
|
Haven't played the last three days, had some uni stuff to do, etc. etc.
Have however been studying, and have also been thinking about my game.
I believe this to be something that a bunch of aspiring players don't do enough (to be fair, it's quite difficult): step back and ask themselves what areas they need to focus on in their game, what they need to be doing to improve on them. It's very easy to look for new betting plays (as a random example, identify good spots to 3-bet bluff) and read a whole raft of material on things that you've never before heard of, gathering a bunch of new concepts and ideas, and familiarising yourself with them, but I don't think this is the only thing that should be done.
The above is great, but I think what is hugely beneficial is trying to examine, based on what you already know, the weaknesses in your own game, and the things you're doing wrong. This is obviously hugely personal, and can be something along the lines of "there are a bunch of spots on the turn that I don't know what I should be doing, and I just make arbitrary plays" or entirely different, like, "lately I've been getting frustrated and often making plays that I know to be incorrect, but I keep doing it before I catch myself". I would be surprised if there wasn't a ton of stuff in everybody's game that they could work on without going outside of what they already know.
I would also argue that considering and identifying these sorts of problems is way harder than studying about new things. About three days ago I decided to sit down for an hour and come up with some things for me to work on before playing my next session, and it's taken me, as I say, about three days. I'm just guessing, but the reason this is hard is quite probably ego- we're confronted with admitting that there are things within our control that we're doing poorly, and with the prospect of having to put in hard work to fix that. In poker especially, it's very easy in this kind of situation to just say, "fuck it," and continue playing, because in the near future you are going to have sessions in which you run good, at which point you can go back to telling yourself that you are playing well, and that clearly your problems must stem from a lack of knowledge about the game, not a lack of putting the effort in to apply the knowledge you've already gained. When, of course, I'm arguing that exactly the opposite is true.
So a lot of my thinking over the last three days has just been acknowledging the above, which I think is a helpful step in and of itself and why I'm writing it down here, and it's also come up with a few more specific things which I would like to focus on over my mid-semester break (this week) and beyond.
1. Value bet larger. I feel like I'm missing a bunch of value by telling myself "make it a dollar or two smaller so he'll call," when really villain doesn't care, and the only thing that this kind of bet-sizing affects is my bottom line, and not in a good way.
2. Focus on this hand as being in the present, rather than letting results from hands past or results from the future of this hand influence my judgement. However, also make sure the decisions I'm making are the most EV. When I get into the mindset of being less results-oriented, I sometimes also seem to slip into making plays which are less than optimal because I'm not worried about losing the dollars, as ridiculous as that sounds.
There're some other small things, but the above is mainly what I've brought to the forefront. I'm now on mid-semester break, so after tomorrow expect a ton of volume from me, and hands to review, hopefully both here and in the BC.
|