I didn't start to get good at this until after reading the
Psychology of Poker by Shoonmaker. One of his key pieces
of advice is to "sub-vocalize all of your reasoning". The idea is
that you should say in your head to yourself, "I am doing this because
of X, and I think he has Y or Z," rather than taking a gut feeling and
going with it. Once you start saying things word-by-word in your head
on every hand, you get to doing it quickly. After all, if the
thoughts are coming to you anyway, the only hard part is turn them
into words in your head quickly. If you are generally a quick
thinking in other areas, that's a skill that you can develop by sheer
practice.
Indeed, the practice is key. I developed the ability to do it quickly
by watching the action of each and every hand, and
sub-vocalizing the thoughts every time, no matter who was playing and
no matter whether they were calling, raising or folding. Remember,
it's a common misconception that you aren't "playing poker" once you
folded; you have a job to do after folding, which is the very one I'm
describing here. Once you do that over and over, these thoughts just
come to you quickly. Obviously, they don't occur in my head in proper
English and readable as they do above — I do post processing on
the thoughts before posting. But, the basic ideas are there within
seconds at game time (except, when as I point out with the KQs in this
example, I revise my thinking in at post mortem time). And, the only
reason I can do it quickly is thanks to tons and tons of practice over
thousands of hands.
If I'd had infinite time online, I would have been able to eliminate
KQs and probably been more able to fold. OTOH, I'd also have realized
something I realized on the subway about this hand this morning
— that it was even less likely Mikechike held AA because I read
one of the A's as dead in Quyzzie's hand. So, thinking fast can be a
burden, but it can also save you from considering tangents that are
best left for the subway, and keep you focused on "just the
facts".
In my experience, every time the action is to me, I only need three
sentences in my head to choose the (typically) correct play. If you
notice my reports of hand analysis, there are usually only three
sentences that summarize why I made the act I did. Those are usually
the three sentences that were in my head at the actual moment. The
rest is fluff to make the thing more nice to read in the blog. :)
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Date: 2006-02-24 19:25 (UTC)I didn't start to get good at this until after reading the Psychology of Poker by Shoonmaker. One of his key pieces of advice is to "sub-vocalize all of your reasoning". The idea is that you should say in your head to yourself, "I am doing this because of X, and I think he has Y or Z," rather than taking a gut feeling and going with it. Once you start saying things word-by-word in your head on every hand, you get to doing it quickly. After all, if the thoughts are coming to you anyway, the only hard part is turn them into words in your head quickly. If you are generally a quick thinking in other areas, that's a skill that you can develop by sheer practice.
Indeed, the practice is key. I developed the ability to do it quickly by watching the action of each and every hand, and sub-vocalizing the thoughts every time, no matter who was playing and no matter whether they were calling, raising or folding. Remember, it's a common misconception that you aren't "playing poker" once you folded; you have a job to do after folding, which is the very one I'm describing here. Once you do that over and over, these thoughts just come to you quickly. Obviously, they don't occur in my head in proper English and readable as they do above — I do post processing on the thoughts before posting. But, the basic ideas are there within seconds at game time (except, when as I point out with the KQs in this example, I revise my thinking in at post mortem time). And, the only reason I can do it quickly is thanks to tons and tons of practice over thousands of hands.
If I'd had infinite time online, I would have been able to eliminate KQs and probably been more able to fold. OTOH, I'd also have realized something I realized on the subway about this hand this morning — that it was even less likely Mikechike held AA because I read one of the A's as dead in Quyzzie's hand. So, thinking fast can be a burden, but it can also save you from considering tangents that are best left for the subway, and keep you focused on "just the facts".
In my experience, every time the action is to me, I only need three sentences in my head to choose the (typically) correct play. If you notice my reports of hand analysis, there are usually only three sentences that summarize why I made the act I did. Those are usually the three sentences that were in my head at the actual moment. The rest is fluff to make the thing more nice to read in the blog. :)