So I've said I think I have two major leaks in my game. I've now decided to expand that to three because, well, three is a good number, and frankly I'd be kidding myself if I ignored the third one.

So my leaks are:
1) Hand Reading
2) Thought Process
3) Mindset

There, done. Simple, eh?

Not really. Just saying those three terms isn't really very helpful. The real questions are what do I mean by these, and what am I going to do about them?

Hand Reading

This to me is the number one fundamental skill in poker. Without a good grounding in this you simply can't move past a certain level (and that level is probably 50NL!).

Given the time to sit down with a hand history and think through it, I actually think I am OK at nutting out a villain's range. I have now played enough hands – 180K or so all up – that I have a reasonable idea what a lot of guys are playing. But I'm certainly not great at it, especially compared with winning MSNL/HSNL regs, so I have a lot of room to improve.

A possibly bigger problem for me, though, is the time it takes me to do it. At the table, in the heat of battle and with little time to make my decisions, I'm pretty terrible. Which leads on to my second major leak ...

Thought Processes

What should I be thinking about at the table?

I think that there are two broad parts to any decision: ranges (mine and villain's) and strategy (ie. how to maximise my expected winnings and minimise my expected losses given the respective ranges).

There are a lot of sub-headings under both of those – for example, to put villain on a range I need to take into account stats, history, previous actions in the hand, board texture, stacks, etc, etc. And here strategy includes predicting how villain will play his range and react to mine, understanding how to combat/exploit that, and being on top of the maths – equity, pot odds, drawing odds, etc But I think you can group them generally under the two main headings.

I think I'm not actually that bad at the strategy part. There's always plenty of room for improvement of course, but relatively speaking its less of a problem. I have read f***loads of material on poker – this and other forums, blogs, strategy sites, books. I know a fair bit about how to play strong hands, weak hands, draws, etc. I know the odds of hitting my draw or villain hitting his, and my stats are generally fine. My weakest aspect here is probably predicting how villain is likely to play/react, but I take some comfort from the fact that its extremely hard to do that when you are not really thinking about ranges effectively to start with.

As I said above, I think my issue with ranges is primarily my ability to execute at the table. I think the main problem is that I don't even get my head into the right space to give myself a chance to nail my opponent's range, let alone think about what range he might be putting me on. I'm just not thinking about the right things. There are a lot of reasons for this, including not getting my mindset right (see below) and, away from the table, not properly thinking through what I should be doing. Hence this process.

Mindset

Mindset is one of those unhelpfully general terms that can mean a lot of things or can mean nothing. In my case, I have identified four particular areas that I need to improve. If I can effectively address these areas, I think it will help get me into the “zone” far more often.

Distraction

When will I learn? Don't watch TV, surf the net, chat in IRC, or do ANYTHING else when I should be focusing on the tables. Focus on the action. If its my decision, take my time and focus on that. If its not my decision, watch what the other players do, put them on hands, make notes, try to understand why they're doing what they're doing.

Tiredness

With a pretty full-on full-time job, a wife, two young kids and plenty of stuff going on, it can be tough to find time to play poker. So I end up playing late at night, or early in the morning before going to work ... which are not ideal times for focus and alertness. And because I have very limited time, I'm very reluctant not to use the time I have no matter how tired, sick or generally bad I feel.

Focus on Results

At the end of the day we measure our performance by our winrate, but we know that when we're playing we should always try to make the right decision in each situation regardless of results. I am as conscious of this as anyone, but I probably struggle more than most to put it into practice – I think way too much about how much I have won or lost in a session or over a period of time.

Tilt

I think more than anything this is a consequence of the last two – I play when I'm tired, I start losing and know how far down I am, and I lose the plot and lose more trying to get out of the hole. Even worse, I can often recognise that it is happening, but can't seem to do anything to stop myself because I am too tired to think properly and blinded by the overwhelming desire to recoup my losses as quickly as possible.

Conclusion

So there you have it. Hand reading,thought processes and mindset. Three pretty damn fundamental pieces of the puzzle – its pretty hard to play winning poker when you don't have any one of those things in place, let alone all three.

So what am I going to do about it? I have a pretty good idea, and will set it out in my next post in a few days' time.

In the meantime, if there is anyone actually reading this, I would be happy to hear if you have any thoughts as well.