Poker Strategy With Roy Cooke: Designing A Thought Train

Detecting and exploiting weaknesses in your opponents’ play is where the money is made. It’s why set ABC strategies aren’t optimum, and the best live players are very good people/hand readers.

Accurately defining what your opponents think and how they react emotionally to differing circumstances will allow you to design positive expectation plays that aren’t available to your less intuitive opponents. Of course, you need to design a thought process that will habitually come to mind in the course of poker battle. That way your thinking will be more consistent, deeper, and won’t require as much mental energy.

Many players approach this issue by trying to remember what hands their opponents played in any given circumstances. That’s a hell of a lot to remember, inefficient, and too mentally cumbersome. At least it is for me! I approach my poker analysis process from a different perspective. I envision how my opponents thought to arrive at their conclusions. With some players, their strategies are drawn from knowledge and logical conclusions; with others their play is defined by their emotional reactions. You must learn how to read both, differentiate between the two, and learn how each requires different adaptations.

Part of becoming a skillful poker player is to train your brain to analyze and calculate poker circumstances. I think of my brain as similar to a computer. I have so much “processing ability” and a fixed amount of “memory space.” And just like a computer programmer would strive to do, the more efficient I can make my mental processing, the deeper I can think through the circumstances and draw quicker and more accurate conclusions. Along similar lines, the less I have to remember, the less information I have to process, the more “disk space” for additional can be used information.

By systemizing a thought process and compartmentalizing my applicable data, I make it as efficient and require as little memorization as possible without compromising quality. That way, I’m more consistent in my thoughts, less mentally strained, and can draw overall better conclusions.

I find it’s easier to define the situation by deciphering my opponent’s thought process. Trying to memorize all the factors of a given situation is just too much for my poor little brain. I’d rather utilize that available “disk space” for other poker components and keep my thought process as simple as possible. Once you can accurately define how your opponents think, you’ll be able to effectively read their ranges. And when you can do both those, you’ll own them at the poker table!

I use my own thought process as a baseline for how others think. Over the years, I’ve learned and systemized a flowcharting thought procedure to process poker problems. It’s something I developed that started out on a somewhat simple level, and as my poker knowledge progressed, expanded into more complex thinking. But, with experience, I habituated my earlier thought process to the point it became automatic. After which, I could utilize my “processing” capabilities for more complex issues. By continuously utilizing this same method over time, thought levels become habituated. This deepens my automated thoughts, and once again, allows for mental expansion into more complex thinking, continuously growing my poker game.

I think in terms of asking questions. First, I see an action which I would have played differently. Maybe they played a suited connector differently than I would. I define their reasoning. Was it a thought, an automated reaction, an emotional reaction? What is different in their thinking from mine that caused them to play it differently? By defining their thought process, you’ll get insights into how they’ll play other situations. And once you know how they play given situations, you can design plays to exploit their thinking.

By utilizing my own knowledge level as my guideline, I don’t have to memorize another guideline. I already know how I play; I only have to note when opponents do something differently than I would. There’s less processing, less memorization, a less stressed and more consistent method of thinking. Winning at poker is hard enough without complicating things more than you have to!

Poker is an intellectual game. Training your brain to focus efficiently and maximizing your intellectual resources will expand your awareness and knowledge. Compartmentalize, utilize, and habituate flowcharting routines. Free up your mental processing and recall as much as you can without sacrificing your processing of the available data.
You’ll be way more consistent, make the game much less mentally demanding, and get significantly less mentally fatigued.

And most importantly, you’ll grow your game and win more money! ♠

Roy Cooke played poker professionally for 16 years prior to becoming a successful Las Vegas Real Estate Broker/Salesman. Should you wish any information about Real Estate matters-including purchase, sale or mortgage his office number is 702-376-1515 or Roy’s e-mail is [email protected]. His website is www.RoyCooke.com. Roy’s blogs and poker tips are at www.RoyCookePokerlv.com. You can also find him on Facebook or Twitter @RealRoyCooke

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