breakthrough's

[will641]

so in golf when you are trying to get better, you put in a lot of time, and eventually have a breakthrough in your game. like you are stuck shooting 42-45 and occasionally you break 40. its just a small thing that keeps you from consistently shooting under 40, and eventually it just comes together and you "breakthrough", a big improvement in your game.

it is my experience in poker that these kind of breakthroughs do not happen. you go on an occasional heater and it makes you think you had a breakthrough. and then occasionally you go on a horrible cooler and you think you just regressed. it seems that the road to being a good poker player is very long and arduous, and no such "breakthrough" ever occurs. i mean sure every once in a while you read a really good theory post (like ISF theorem) and you think you should be able to get it down in a month, but it takes a really long time to get the hang of and apply it to your benefit. idk if this is other players' experience as well, but my skill level seems to be improving at a snails pace.

[ProZachNation]

Well I think it is because you can do everything right and still lose money and do everything wrong and win money(short term) when you get rewarded for doing the wrong thing sometimes and punished for doing the right thing sometimes it slows the learning process down.

[jyms]

I have found every step of improvement for me comes from AHA moments. Sure they take a little time to improve and implement properly and I have regressions where bad habits creep back in, but it's mostly one big difference in my play. They almost always come from lengthy study, not playing. To improve, you need to dig, and find that next step. Most of my AHA moments come from hours or days of studying, reading and/or watching, when on downswings, since when winning we all have problems with shutting down the tables an analyzing our play.

I can probably isolate 5 or 6 huge moments in my "career" that I had one of these.

[Genitruc]

it s really really hard to gauge your progress in poker all by yourself

coming from a competitive golf background, I'd say that there are many similarities between it and poker.

Lots of valuable concepts you think you've assimilated don't become truly valuable to you until you've suceeded under the stress of performance situations; situations with so much inherent variance that it's hard to tell where the variance ends and your performance begins.

I'd say the most important thing is giving yourself a chance at building confidence through your work ethic, patience and discipline.

[Numbr2intheWorld]

yeah you might be right for the most part.

Although i have a friend who talked to a highstakes online pro, and the pro said some small thing to him that for some reason sparked a huge breakthrough for him, and his play changed drastically.

[Genitruc]

yeah you might be right for the most part.

Although i have a friend who talked to a highstakes online pro, and the pro said some small thing to him that for some reason sparked a huge breakthrough for him, and his play changed drastically.

OMG WAT WUZ IT

[IowaSkinsFan]

Yeah when I wrote ISF theorem that was a really huge breakthrough for me, and then the thing Max was talking about was similar, so Idk that I agree.

[sauce123]

its all about ur mindset imo

[IowaSkinsFan]

its all about ur mindset imo

I get what your saying but expand please with examples.

[Jager]

Yeah when I wrote ISF theorem that was a really huge breakthrough for me, and then the thing Max was talking about was similar, so Idk that I agree.

I get what your saying but could you elaborate please?

[swiggidy]

How many hands do you play?

I've recently realized 99% of the reason I'm not a successful poker player is lack of hands. If you can't see outside the swings then this sounds like your problem.

[IowaSkinsFan]

Yeah when I wrote ISF theorem that was a really huge breakthrough for me, and then the thing Max was talking about was similar, so Idk that I agree.

I get what your saying but could you elaborate please?

if this isn't a joke....

When i realized ISF theorem it made me realize so much about the game, and helped me realize millions of other concepts. It kind of opened the floodgates. Same thing with Max's friend.

[EzDuzIt]

so what was the thing with max's friend?

[bjsaust]

I think he just means that the thing with Max's friend is another example of making a couple of realizations opening the floodgates to a whole new level of play.

[Jager]

ISF: All I was saying was that it seemed that you where asking for advice, while holding some back. It seemed a little odd from someone who always seems to be helping.


Will: I don't think I ever really had any real aha moments. I played forever as a marginal winner at 1/2(~2.0 ptbb/100). I then had that unreal downswing, and dedicated myself to make sure that it doesn't happen again. After this 'learning' phase I felt that several minor adjustments were greater than any single big adjustment I had made.

Don't get too frustrated while you are trying to move up. The regs at 1/2, eventhough they are not that good, can still be tough to play against. They also have learned to not give their chips away, which is part of the reason they are still at 1/2...

[MuddyWicket]

sadly my first aha moment was reading HH1 and realising that even tho I will lose most of the time it is correct for me to call due to pot odds. Long time ago in sng land that was.

My most recent was summed up nicely in a Massimo thread by himself:

Poker is about predicting and exploiting. You must predict what your opponent has and how he will play as best you can, and from that analysis exploit that opponent (raising, calling, folding, sizing a bet a certain way) in the best possible way, the most +EV way.