1)Superior preparation
2)Lots of experience under correct knowledge... meaning following their plan made during preparation.
3)Constant tracking performance, superior analytics.
4)Constant slight tweaking of results
5)Constant RE-evaluation of performance given the tweaks.
6)Constant and never ending improvement. (superior management)
In other words, they prepare, they execute, they review, they adjust and they see if their adjustments were positive or negative. You can get it done with or without books, with or without mentors, and with or without some particular style but certainly in many cases that can give you a huge shortcut so you can avoid making the mistakes.
Think about it, authors and membership programs have teachers who have spent their lifetimes making money and studying poker. Rather than go through your lifetime, why not leverage SEVERAL lifetimes of work by reviewing a proven working system? Also, why not do even better and use mathematics, statistics and even computer simulations to help solve a decision on "which is better" and then in a limited sample size go about seeing if you can test it and get proven results?
Look, 1% of the people in ANY field are probably going to have over 90% of the money. The top 10% will probably have 90% actually and the top 1% could have 99%. In many cases the top 20% have 80% of the money. In poker because of "the rake" I would imagine that only 10% of poker players are winning players in the long run. I estimate that some of these players are barely break even but the top half of them make several times more than the rest.
In many cases although the top 20% of those profitable might make several times more per year earnings than the rest, they are not proportionally several times better, nor do they spend several times more hours at it. A CEO who makes 1M a year does not work 10 times more hours than someone who makes 100k a year. Instead, he has just enough skill set to have an edge over the rest and the field is willing to pay him.
In horse races the difference between 1st (who perhaps makes 10 times the money as last) is not being 10 times faster, but only "just enough" to get ahead. In sales, the difference between getting 100% of the sale and zero% is only the minimum required to surpass the threshold of the best salesman who fails to get the sale.
The point I am trying to make is if you can make small improvements and work just a little bit harder and do the work that no one else is willing to do, that is how you will get superior results as a poker player.
1)Superior Preparation.
- I would say spending 2-6 hours to complete an entire book, and perhaps a few more to review it will get you enough knowledge that will in many cases be worth hundreds of hours of experience. In other words, someone that reads a lot rather than practicing will be about 10 times ahead of the person who plays poker during that time period. HOWEVER, it only works if that player also is able to go in and apply what he's learn and evaluate the effectiveness of it. I would say that spending a few hours on a forum and 10 hours on a training membership site is worth far more than hundreds of hours as well.
- Superior preparation is also about doing the work that no one else want to do. That means coming up with hand ranges that give you a 40% chance of being the best, a 50% chance of being best and a 60% chance of being best from each position in the poker table and theorizing GIVEN each particular hand range how you will have to act postflop. That means evaluating a simplified set of permutations of all possible flops facing various bet sizes and also coming up with various "equilibrium" pushing strategies for a potsized push, 2x pot size, 3x pot sized and 4x potsize shoves. That means leaning to evaluate given opponent calls with X% of hands and continuation bets Y% of flops and assuming his continuation bets represent the strongest Y% of flops given those hands, which flops can you shove for 1x,2x,3x and 4x all in to yield a positive chip expectation? Also given those same flops and YOUR hand ranges, what represents a hand that exists in the top 50% of flops and thus in equilibrium solution can call a pot sized bet to force opponent to break even on bluffs? What's the top 67% that can call a half pot sized bet and the top 33% that can call a 2x pot sized bet.
- What's the chances that a certain set of cards given a certain set of hand ranges will represent a "bluff out" and thus in some situations allow you to call or minraise with a gutshot when you don't have the pot odds to make your hand, but because of the additional equity from a bluff out makes it worth it? Please note that the odds of the card hitting is not your only concern, but you have to discount the odds that opponent HITS that card and thus gives you no chance of being successful. From the extra "bluff out" equity times the likelihood that opponent will fold and equity in such a bluff you can also add in implied odds if you hit your draw and factor in these decisions strategically, rather than waste 400 hours of poker play before you even come close to understanding a correct strategy and even then, be unaware of the adjustments players can make to neutralize the strategy and how to respond.
- Another MAJOR component of preparation means "scouting" poker rooms, then "scouting" opponents and identifying the right table selection and seat selection after spending plenty of time developing the notes on players before you even sit in and play yourself. This way you come in with a huge advantage of knowing how opponent will play and how capable he is of adjusting and you can go to work immediately exploiting them, developing a loose image (since you know exactly which spots it's profitable to bluff) and then against the smarter players staying away from them unless you have a hand, and thus getting paid off.
- Another MAJOR component of preparation means BUYING and using software that helps keeps detailed notes and puts them on display. Using such a software to prepare your heads up display or HUD to quickly assess the player for maximum exploitation, or even coming up with a spreadsheet using such information along with a formula to determine the best way to exploit and the widest hand range you can use and still be profitable with a given strategy.
- Having "equilibrium" or even swinging back the other way and being "tighter" than equilibrium and thus a tighter strategy to revert back to after a few steals may be a good idea in the event that players adjust to COUNTER exploit. If they don't, then you can go back to exploiting them to the max again and then revert back to tight for awhile until you get a feel for how much you can get away with it. Or perhaps you want to start somewhere that is less obvious that you are exploiting them. Either way you need to get yourself prepared at a very high level if you want to be an elite poker player.
2)Lots of experience under correct knowledge:
- Preparing isn't enough. You probably want to run through a few theoretical examples of players, perhaps even after watching some online play and tracking them to theorize how best to exploit them. This is a good way to SIMULATE experience but isn't going to be as good as the real thing. Step up to play money and test it and then the micro stakes. You need to EARN your way up the latter and PROVE that you can do it WHILE developing the experience to be absolutely great.
- It has been estimated and mentioned by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers that you need at least 10,000 hours to acheive "mastery" in any field. That does NOT mean that 10,000 hours in itself is enough. There are plenty of people with OVER 10,000 hours of experience that are still chronically losing gamblers. If you have 10,000 hours of experience playing incorrectly, you may just "master" poor play. THAT is why preparation is key and the experience GIVEN correct knowledge. 10,000 hours seems to be the amount of time the brain needs in order to fully emmerse themselves in the topic long enough and focused enough for the brain to simulate all past experience and construct a "knowing" of the game at a high level. In most cases in the fields given , it was early success that got people superior coaching and I believe some of those hours can be short cut through faster play, calculations and mathematics which can determine the exact expected results that someone with 10,000 hours won't even know with certainty without doing. Additionally, mastery represents the elite of the field. If you don't play against the elite, but instead are just a very good "peewee" poker player, you can still be among the best at that level I believe. There are plenty of allstar teams in baseball that certainly haven't mastered their craft, but given the level of competition still have a substantial edge. I think the same thing is true in poker. Don't expect to shoot up to high stakes without risking going bust and dont even suspect that it will be worth the higher stakes. There are plenty of people who make more money in the 5/10 level where the play is still considerably more exploitable than the nosebleed 50/100 levels and high stakes poker games.
- LABOR UNDER CORRECT KNOWLEDGE: L.U.C.K. is an acronym for labor under correct knowledge. Do the work to prepare and then gain the experience, and although from hand to hand you may get unlucky, over a long enough period of "labor" you will reap the benefits.
- There are pleny of erroneous assumptions that for years have been made at poker. Statements like, "since a fold is an unseen hand we can only calculate the odds given the known information" In fact, that causes the assumptions that "opponents fold randomly with no regard for their cards. Although it may be an erroneous assumption to assume they play 22+,AJ+,and any suited broadway, it CLEARLY is a better assumption than "they play 0% of hands or fold all cards randomly. What really happens is the low cards are folded and thus less likely to be available while the high cards usually are not, increasing the likelihood that ACE KING will be a favorite over small and middle pairs as more and more people fold. As such an assumption that "I got my money in with 99 over AK or over a particular hand range that included AJ+,KT+ therefore I had a positive expectancy and made a profitable decision" may actually be incorrect.
- The above shows why you must track performance. Over a long enough period of time, if you are a net loser with pocket pairs in late position, it may not just be "luck". If you are a net loser with particular hands, and they are not theoretically VERY strong, just remove them from your playbook, or in the case of AA and KK, you might have to consider folding postflop more, playing more cautiously or just shoving all in preflop if you can't manage to develop your ability to make money with it. Performance by particular hand, by particular strategy, and by position can help you make adjustments
- Performance tracking can also help you determine which hours of the day aren't worth your time, and which hours of the day should always be spent playing because of the results you get from them.
- The human mind has far too many biases for an unscientific approach to tracking. You must track your results and thus begin to see more subtletees in what works and what doesn't. In the short run it may not tell you much, but over a few months of play a particular way you will start to see differences.
- So your performance is good, so what, it can always be better. Tweaking your behavior and seeing how your results change is a great way to constantly improve. You tweak the results and you monitor the behavior. Perhaps one style of play does better on friday nights when the play is looser. Perhaps another style does better on Tuesday afternoon when only the pros and gambling degenerates without a job are playing. Or perhaps there is a certain time of day when college students are on more often then not. Track as much detail as you can and try doing something significantly or perhaps a handful of small adjustments. If you can't tell if it improved or not or only marginally changed, tweak it so it is only slightly different, or only one adjustment.
- Did the tweaks help certain hands and hurt others? Perhaps playing more hands lost you money on some hands, but gained you money on others. Perhaps showing bluffs turned some of your worse hands to go from marginally profitable to unprofitable but also improved the results when you did get a hand. Perhaps you can re-evalute your performance. If the tweak didn't help overall results, perhaps it still will improve if you tweak the performance some more. For example, show a few bluffs but take away a few cards from the hand range that become unprofitable because opponent's are more likely to play back. Does playing fewer hands but getting more action from your good hands improve your performance, or is it better not showing and keeping more hands profitable?
- By seeing if the tweaks help you are able to continue to adjust as the rest of the poker world does as well and stay ahead of them.
6)Constant and never ending improvement. (superior management)
- Ultimately all of this is done for constant and never ending improvement. You may take 3 steps backwards and ultimately eventually take 4 forward, but the overall trend is towards better, more profitable play. Once you have already created a very winning style your adjustments will be more subtle, but you will still seek to learn more and possibly learn to make the required adjustments to beating higher stakes even.
- Superior Management is extremely important. Managing your money so that you eliminate the risk of ruin completely becomes more and more necessary the better you get and the more dependent you become on poker for a larger and larger percentage of your income. Even reducing and minimizing the volatility to make a certain goal of X per year with less and less bankroll volatility as you increase your ability and bankroll becomes incredibly important towards being able to emotionally handle the streaks.
- Superior management is not just about money management, but managing your time more effectively and managing your ability. But also EMOTIONAL management. You should work very hard to eliminate making mistake. A mistake in this case is defined as doing something other than the profitable system you have developed without a particular and specific PREDETERMINED reason before you even sat down. If you are not disciplined, all this work is not worth it and you cannot win anyways. I estimate there are a lot of pro poker players that are extremely talented, but still go broke way too often because they can't manage themselves, their emotions, etc. Some lose all the money they win sports betting and play at far too high of stakes rather than just grinding out a comfortable living in the mid limits.
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