You Are Bad At Poker... Yes, You! (Part 1+2)

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by Phil Galfond I hate to be the one to break it to you, but I’m only doing this because I love you. You are not good at poker. You have a ton of huge leaks in your game. You occasionally make good plays and you know some basic strategy, but your thought process is bad and causes you to make a lot of mistakes. A great player would absolutely destroy you in the long run. Are you still reading? Good. Maybe there’s hope for you. The fact of the matter is, the above paragraph is true for about 95% of the people reading this article. Probably around 75% of readers are saying to themselves, “Well, that’s not me.” (So, if you said that, you’re still favored to be bad.) That’s your biggest leak: your ego. Don’t worry, though. I’m here to help. Let’s get started. As is the case with many self-improvement programs, the first step is admitting you have a problem. Why do you think there’s so much money to be made in poker? It’s because of people like you who think they’re good. They don’t bother to improve themselves or to be careful about the games they play in. Think about it. When a 300/600NL game is going on between two very good players, one of them is favored to win in the long run, and the other is favored to lose. Now people don’t get to playing 300/600NL without a lot of money, experience, talent, and intelligence (besides the occasional rich, untalented gambler). That means that many of the smartest, most talented poker players in the world overestimate their ability. And it happens all the time. Since the smartest and best in the world routinely overestimate their ability, I’m urging you to consider the fact that you might do the same. Just say to yourself, “Maybe I’m not as good as I think I am. Maybe I have something to learn.” If it turns out that I’m wrong and you’re one of the best poker players in the world, no harm done. You’re so good that it doesn’t matter what I tell you. But, if it turns out that you have missed opportunities to improve yourself as a player because you thought you didn’t need it, maybe you’ll take this as a wakeup call. If you’re serious about poker — or anything else in life — you should constantly be searching for your mistakes. When you catch yourself making a bad play, you should be happy. Now you can fix it and become a better player tomorrow than you were today. So, hopefully you’ve come to terms with the fact that you may not be a flawless poker player. What’s the next step? The best way to become a better player, for most people, is to search for leaks and fix them. How do you find those leaks? Well, it’s not always easy to find them on your own, so I have a few recommendations: • You can make some good poker-playing friends, or talk to the ones you already have. Even if you are both average players, having indepth discussions or arguments about your thought process can help a ton. • Join an internet message board/forum. There are dozens of places online where poker players talk about how to play poker. If you take this route, I suggest reading the forum avidly for a week or two before posting anything. (Just trust me on that.) • Review your play. You can save all your big hand histories and go over them later. If you play live, you can document the action in a notebook. There are plenty of programs that track results online; Poker Tracker is the most popular, but there are others. Look back at all of your biggest hands and see how well you got your money in. See if there were better ways to play the hand. Sometimes you lose a big pot but played perfectly, and sometimes you win a huge pot although you played it terribly. Keep that in mind.

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Re: You Are Bad At Poker... Yes, You! (Part 1) Part 2 Since I can’t be there to coach each one of you individually, I’m going to go over some of the most common leaks amongst mid-stakes players. If you have none of these leaks, perhaps you are more advanced than the average reader, but I assure you: You have leaks. Don’t give up on looking for them. The first leak, and one of the most important amongst even very successful players, is simply the lack of a thought process. Maybe I should say the lack of a sophisticated thought process. This is far and away the biggest leak amongst winning players. “What? Winning players? Must not be a very serious problem then,” you might think. However you’d be wrong. The fact that they are winning players makes it worse because they assume nothing is wrong. I should get more specific before I continue. The problem is that these players play in a way that makes money in their regular game, say $5/$10, six-handed No Limit. However, they have no idea why they make the plays they make. They learned from a book, or from watching a friend play, or maybe they just happened upon a good strategy. They raise a good range of hands pre-flop. They bet a good number of flops, check-raise bluff a good amount of the time, etc. But they don’t really know why they do it. They just know that it works for them (so far). I was playing in a 25/50NL game at the Wynn. At first it seemed like the play was okay. It was clearly a soft game, but I thought a few of the players seemed solid, from observing them the first hour or so. Then this hand came up: Some Guy (SG) opened to $200 in late position. I had no read on him. He was new to the table. Older Guy (OG), who seemed to play well, called in the SB. Flop is Q-J-3, rainbow. OG checks, SG checks. Turn 4s, bringing two spades. OG bets $300 into the $450 pot. SG calls. As an observer, at this point, I’m putting OG on some kind of pair or draw. He hasn’t really taken enough action for me to put him on a narrow range of hands. I’m putting SG on something like A-K to A-10 or something midpairish. Occasionally he might have a flush draw, too. River is the 9s, for a board of Qs Jh 3d 4s 9s. OG bets $900 into the $1,050 pot. A big bet for most live games. I put him on either a set, a straight, a bluff, or a flush — with flushes and bluffs having the most weight. SG thinks for a while, maybe 45 seconds, and then calls. Now OG makes a very disappointed face, and is reluctant to turn over his hand. “I guess he was bluffing,” I think to myself. OG takes a few more seconds and hesitantly turns over Q-10 of hearts as if he’s embarrassed. SG looks surprised and mucks his hand. This is the point where I realize that the players I thought were decent had no idea what they were doing. A man in the three seat (3S), who had been playing fairly well and made it clear to everyone how good he was, says to OG, “Wow. I bet you didn’t like that call.” OG shakes his head no, in agreement. WHAT!?!? ARE YOU GUYS SERIOUS? YOU DIDN’T WANT TO BE CALLED!?!?!? AM I PLAYING 25/50? DO YOU GUYS REALLY HAVE $15,000 ON THE TABLE? THIS IS A JOKE, RIGHT? WHERE’S ASHTON? I couldn’t believe that these guys had fooled me for so long. I really thought they knew how to play. I realized then why I was fooled. They made plays that were correct most of the time. They had experience in this live 25/50 9-handed game, and they’ve been winners in it for a while. The problem was, I couldn’t tell why they were making seemingly good decisions. I couldn’t hear the thought process behind each decision.