Why ‘No Man is an Island’ in Poker

Save for Later

That might seem like a strange title for an article, and to some extent it is. But what I’d like to talk about is something that’s very relevant to a lot of people out there who are doing their best to improve their poker skills. It relates to the process of improvement and growth, and why ‘no man is an island’ is always more true than you think.

Let’s start outside of poker. Let’s think about anybody out there in the world who wants to get something done. Take an entrepreneur, for example. He wants to be the CEO of his own multi-million-dollar company. He founds the company with his own money, he’s the sole employee, and for all intents and purposes, he is the company. He starts out doing whatever he wants his company to do, he makes a little money, and then he starts thinking about how to make more. He wants to expand, so he works harder and harder, longer and longer hours.

The first thing on his mind after a certain point is, I can’t do all this myself. So he hires another person. And another person, and another. Eventually he has five people working for him, each with a different job. Soon after that, the company grows even further, and each of those five people he hired has five people working for them. The company grows, its profits multiply, and eventually it gets to the point where the company is making money without the CEO even being directly involved. He’s working hard, but by the time he reaches that multi-million-dollar status he wanted in the first place, he’s not even doing the same thing he was doing before. He’s doing big-picture thinking, managing people, hiring and firing. He couldn’t possibly have done all that work, and made all that money, if he didn’t use the resources available to him to help him out.

To take a more creative and smaller-scale example, imagine a writer who wants to self-publish a novel. Self-publishing is all the rage these days, and it’s surprisingly easy to do. So this novelist, she’s written a book, and she wants to get it out there to people. She’s self-publishing, so she should be able to do it all on her own, right? Wrong! She needs to write the book herself using what’s in her head, sure, but before she can even think about doing that, she needs all kinds of other things.

She needs a computer to write it on, so she needs the company that made the computer. She needs the company that built the writing software she uses. She needs the company that provides the online platform for self-publishing. She needs the company that makes the portable reading devices that have contributed to the growth in self-publishing in recent years. She needs friends and contacts to read the novel, provide feedback and editing notes, and help her improve it. She needs an artist to provide attractive cover art, and she needs all kinds of different social media and promotional platforms to help her get the word out about her book. Even something like self-publishing, a system created to help people do things themselves instead of relying on ‘the system’, requires all kinds of different ingredients to give someone the freedom to self-publish.

So how is this relevant to poker? Well, poker is a little like a combination of entrepreneurship and self-publishing. It requires building a business from the ground up, starting small and continuing until you’re dealing with big numbers. It also requires the use of various resources, both human and technological, in order to succeed, and this is where many players fall down. If you’re looking to step outside ‘the system’ by which the majority of people make their money – a system of long-term employment and subsequent compensation, otherwise known as ‘jobs’ – and start making money through poker, you need to recognise that you cannot achieve this on your own. You can’t be off on your own little island, separate from the rest of the poker world.

Many people are attracted to poker because of the freedom and independence of the poker lifestyle. It’s true, most poker players live a life free of alarm clocks and commuter travel, so there’s definitely an appeal to that. But what few realise before getting into the game seriously – perhaps because so many of today’s poker players get into the game at the age of 18 or 19, before they have any real life experience to speak of – is that doing things on your own is only possible up to a point, no matter what field you’re in. There’s no such thing as true independence from the system, and embracing this will only help improve your poker game and make you more profitable over time.

For example, when you first started learning poker, you probably liked to play ‘your own way’, and do whatever the heck you liked with the cards you were dealt. This may have worked out for you in the short term, but the overwhelming likelihood is that you were pretty bad at poker. But then you started doing your research, and you realised that there were ways you could learn to improve – there were books, and websites, and other resources. You started to use the tools at your disposal in order to increase your chances of success. You didn’t do this alone – you needed the people who wrote these books and designed these websites to help you.

After some time, maybe you became a winning player – maybe all the hard work paid off. You were finally making consistent money at poker. But did you do this alone? No, not at all. You needed the poker sites you play on to provide a consistent array of games you enjoyed, you needed the company that made your laptop or the casino that runs your live game. You may have needed the backers or investors that gave you a bankroll to play with. You were surrounded by an environment that gave you optimal conditions to succeed – you weren’t on your own little island.

You probably also needed some other resources – human resources like your poker friends, the people you talk to on poker forums, the guys you discuss hands with on Skype. Technological resources like Holdem Manager, PokerStove, or SharkScope. Financial resources like the money that gave you your starting bankroll, wherever it came from. Heck, maybe you even needed biological resources, like that third Red Bull you drank when you made the final table of the Big $109 that helped you pull the victory out of the bag.

Now let’s think about the guys (and girls) who are ahead of where you are right now. Do you think they got there on their own? It may seem that way, but it’s absolutely not true. Most of them have supportive friends and family to help them through the tougher times. They have a circle of poker friends to talk about hands with. They use every technological tool they can get their hands on in order to improve their game. Many of them use complex mathematical techniques to analyse poker hands in ways that haven’t become widely used yet. They’re the pioneers of poker learning, because they use their brains and their resources to improve their game beyond the levels of those who came before them.

So what I’d encourage you to think about, is whether you’re using the resources available to you as best you can. Whether you’re integrating yourself into the poker world, and using the human and technological resources at your fingertips to help you improve your game and grow as a player. Are you posting on poker forums and discussing hands in detail, or watching coaching videos? Are you analysing your game using PokerStove, ICMIZER, Flopzilla or another mathematical tool? Are you reviewing hands you’ve played recently and marking them for further analysis? Have you thought about getting a coach yourself?

If you’re not doing any of these things, then you’re probably not a TPE member. But if you’re only doing a few of them, or not doing them often, or doing them half-heartedly, then you’re probably doing yourself a disservice. No matter how good you are at poker, you can’t make it to the top on your own. The game changes. So buckle down and focus on making the most of the resources you have at your disposal and immersing yourself in your poker surroundings, because if you’re not, someone else is, and in today’s competitive poker environment, it’s easy to get left behind.