Study Your Way to a Better Poker Game

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If you want to know what the biggest piece of hogwash ever uttered by a poker player is it is this doozy of a line that is so unfortunately repeated: “Poker is a hard way to make an easy living.”

The reason I despise this quote is that the general gist of the saying implies that the ups and downs of the game and the mental anguish these swings cause are the reason poker is a “hard” game. Well, I’m here to tell you that this is nonsense; the reason poker is a “hard” game is because it takes a hell of a lot of hard work to get good at it! And once you do get good at poker you need to put in even more long hours to maintain your edge. Poker is a hard way to make living period, there is nothing easy about it.

If you’re serious about poker than you have to understand that the “hard” part of poker isn’t isolated to your time at a poker table and the trials you will face as you sweat a river-card on the bubble, or try to decide if now is the time to use your 18 Big Blind stack to three-bet shove. The “hard” part of the game is what you do when you’re not playing cards, and this is the part of the game that causes oh so many people fail as poker players.

Like everything else in life, nothing comes easy in poker. If you think poker is some shortcut to wealth and fame than someone has sold you a lemon. Like school, athletics, and virtually every other pursuit, with poker you get out of it precisely what you put into it, and studying is an extremely important part of that equation.

The 5 reasons studying should be a priority

Boning up on your poker game can do a plethora of different things, but there are five main reasons why dedicating yourself to being a student of the game will make you a better player:

• Confirming or denying your theories and strategies
• Finding leaks in your own game
• Taking your thinking and understanding of poker to a higher level
• Developing strategies against different types of opponents
• Finding the weaknesses in your frequent opponents’ games

With that said, too much studying (and not enough actual competition) can be a detriment to your game, making you a wunderkind when it comes to analysis but an absolute novice when it comes to application –picture a basketball player who shoots 200 three-pointers, alone in the gym, every day, but struggles mightily when a defender puts a hand in his face. Practice is important, but it’s not an alternative to actually playing. Which leads into the next part of this article: How much study-time do you need?

How much time should you devote to studying?

As I mentioned above, devoting too much time to studying can actually hinder your progress, so it’s vitally important to strike the right balance between the amount of time you spend playing poker and the amount of time you spend reading, running sims, and poring over hand histories. Poker requires a player to be mentally sharp and “in-practice”, so playing should always outweigh studying, but you still have to find time to work on your game and increase your knowledge base.

This is an extremely difficult balancing act, and the answer will vary for each player on a case by case basis; not to mention that the amount of time you spend working on your game can vary based on your recent results as well –usually players who are struggling tend to devote more time, while players on hot-streaks devote less. Furthermore, you have to avoid falling into the trap of thinking you “already know everything”.

Obviously, every hour you spend studying is an hour’s worth of expected value you can never regain, or a tournament you cannot enter, but at the same time devoting the right amount of study-time to your game will increase your hourly expectation in the future, and below you will find a few rules of thumb you can use to determine how much time you should spend working on your game.

Beginners

When you are a new player, and not relying on poker as a source of income you should devote as much time to studying as is humanly possible, as you’ll never get this opportunity back in the future. Because of this, I would recommend beginners (as well as losing players) incorporate a ratio of study time to playing closer to 1:1 for a couple of reasons:

1. The foremost reason is that you need the practice and study, since you are uninformed at this point in their poker careers.
2. Secondly, the stakes you are playing should be low enough that losing a couple of hours of playing time won’t affect your bottom line the way it would for a player trying to earn a living at the poker tables, playing higher stakes games and tournaments –there is always another $120 tourney at the local casino but the WPT only comes around once a year.

Aspiring Grinders

For players that are further along in their poker careers the amount of time you spend working on your game can gradually decrease over time, usually to the point where you are spending a mere one out of ten hours studying. I have two suggestions for players in this category:

1. Your win-rate can be used to determine the amount of time you spend studying: Players with a high win-rate can spend less time, while players who are barely beating the game need to spend more hours working on their game.
2. As you prepare to move up to a new level (higher buy-in events) you should increase your study time, and continue this increase after you do make the move, as you will have a whole new crop of players and playing styles to become familiar with.

Pros

For high-stakes players the amount of time they set aside for studying should start to increase, as there are less “fish” they can plunder, and success is predicated upon outworking and outthinking really good players. You’ll also find the player pool consists of a closed pool of players that you will constantly be battling.

Maximizing your time

One of the keys to finding the right balance between playing time and study time is to maximize your preparation and study material so you’re not wasting any of this precious time. This is especially important if you’re only going to devote one out of ten hours to studying, since you better be doing a bang-up job during that hour! Always remember, one good hour of study time crushes five hours of wasted time.

The first thing you’ll need to do is find out what works for you. Not everyone learns by talking to a trusted poker friend about a particular poker hand, some need to see their thoughts written out on a forum with multiple players chiming in, while others do better through self-reflection and crunching numbers on their own.

The same holds true for coming up with a system for your storing and perusing your notes, and the material you want to review. The overall goal is to pick out the important bits of information (there is no sense in poring over 200 hand histories of a player you faced once eight months ago in the Sunday Million and looking for a specific weakness) and staying organized and scheduled with your time.

Personally I like to go over important hands immediately after a tournament. Whether this means noting them for my next study period or posting them immediately on a forum and waiting for feedback usually depends on my state of mind, but the key for me is to separate these important hands from the hundreds of uninteresting ones: As Nate Silver would say, you need to find the signal amidst the noise. Every day you wait to separate important hands, or write down your thoughts, things get blurrier and blurrier and you may forget many of the specifics.

I also set aside specific time for going over hand histories, tinkering with Sharkscope and SitnGo Wizard, and so on. My study time is as structured as my playing time, and by keeping to the schedule I have set has allowed me to get the most work done in the shortest amount of time.

Resources

There are a number of outlets, software, and aids you can take advantage when you are working on improving your game away from the tables. Below I have listed some of the more common methods (aside from reading books and articles, or watching training videos) and how they can be utilized during your study time.

• Forums

Forums are great for posting hand histories, and also for just talking shop with other poker enthusiasts. One piece of advice I would give is to listen to the good players, but also pay attention to the bad ones, as you’ll start to understand what s going on in their heads.

• Poker Stove

PokerStove is perfect for crunching numbers.

• ICM Calculators (Sit & Go Wizard)

S&G Wizard is a tournament player’s best friend, giving you ICM calculations, and allowing you to run simulations for different tournament situations.

• Study Groups and/or 1-on-1 talks

Study groups work in much the same way as a forum does, with the only difference being that the people responding are hand-picked.

• Coaching

The best (but most expensive) way to improve your game is by hiring a legitimate coach.