Think Fast! Or Better Yet, Don’t Think At All!

This article is aimed at the serious poker player. For casual players, the best way to improve your game is just to gain comfort at the table by playing, and read some strategy articles (like the ones at the BetUS poker school!). However, for more serious players, there are a whole range of important subjects that don’t fall into the category of strategy advice. These are things like bankroll management, game selection, note taking, multitabling, and tilt control.

One of the questions I get asked most often, both by poker players and people with no poker experience, is how I can make decisions so quickly. How I can remember what’s happening on four tables at once? If poker is a skill game like you say, how could possibly play 400 hands/hour well? First, it’s possible. Second, it’s not easy. In this article I’ll try to outline the process that I went through in order to be able to recognize situations and react correctly very quickly, and while multitabling.

The easy answer is experience, and it’s not wrong, either. You absolutely have to play at least 100 000 hands before you will be able make decisions quickly and well. The real number of necessary hands for most players is between 250 000 and 1 000 000. However, experience in and of itself is no guarantee. You must be able to capitalize on that experience by internalizing the lessons you have learned.

In certain ways, training to be a pro poker player is like training to be an athlete. For every round of golf they play, a pro golfer has spent countless hours on the range, and the majority of the swings he or she takes are without even contacting a ball. I did the same sort of thing my first few years playing cards seriously. During my sessions I would take a note of any hands where I was unsure of the correct play. After my session I would go back and look at the hand history for those hands. Then I’d go through each hand, trying to think about what else I could have done, or why what I did was correct, if I come to the conclusion that it was. Often that would just mean thinking the hand through at my leisure, asking myself, what did he have? What else could he have had? If he had hand “x,” was my play correct? Stuff like that. But I also spent a lot of time doing EV calculations, pot odds and implied pot odds calculations. I would also talk to friends and other poker players to get their opinions. Then I’d test out my new strategies and adopt them if they worked. If not, back to the drawing board.

I would also try to analyze my hand reading skills. If I guessed my opponent’s hand or hand range incorrectly, why was I wrong? Was he playing out of character or was there a hint that I missed somewhere in the play of the hand? The more work you can do away from the table, where there’s no time limit or other pressure, the less work you have to do at the table, where it counts. That’s why this article is called “Think Fast! Or Better Yet, Don’t Think At All.” It’s great to be a smart guy with poker savvy and be able to figure things out at the table, but you’re bound to still make a lot of mistakes, especially if multitabling. It’s better to already know, to have put in the work.