Working on Your Game - Part I

Herbert O. Yardley's classic, The Education of a Poker Player, was an influential book in the careers of many poker players. Many players took various lessons from the book, although they ran along a common theme: In poker, as in life, knowledgeable players win at the expense of those less knowledgeable.

I've always thought the most interesting parts of Yardley's book were the glimpses into his role in the American intelligence community, during and after World War I. The poker bits always seemed a bit simplistic. But that's what comes from reading the literature backward. Yardley's wasn't the first serious book on poker for me, as it was for so many other (mostly older) players. By the time I got around to filling in some historical perspective, it seemed dated alongside the more modern classics Super/System and Theory of Poker.

One of the reasons Yardley's book seems dated is that since its publication (in 1957), poker literature has expanded dramatically. The most important books on most players' shelves were all written in the past 30 years. Another reason is that Yardley's book portrays a world in which the best way to learn the secrets of winning poker is at the feet of a learned master. While some might argue this is still the case, there are many more avenues for improvement available to today's player than there may have been in the '50s. Most of these are technology related, owing to the explosive growth in the Internet and in the availability of cheap computing.

The growth of the public sector Internet has contributed in several ways. First, newsgroups like rec.gambling.poker and some web-based discussion boards (notably that of publisher Two Plus Two) have hosted many productive discussions (as well as a lot of junk, alas). E-mail has made it possible for numerous private poker discussion groups to form, from the extremely informal (I have a few friends I E-mail about poker every now and then) to the more organized (some groups have started using mailing list management software). And the availability of online poker, at first mainly for fun (via Todd Mummert's IRC server) and more recently for both fun and money (via numerous online poker outfits), has made it easy to amass practice rapidly and at low cost (although not practice at live poker, exactly). The Internet is also a rich source for lots of terrific poker writing.

The increasing availability of cheap computing over the past 20 years has also made a huge difference. Monte Carlo simulations that would have required mainframe access in the mid-'70s are now manageable by handheld devices (and we may presume that today's burdensome calculations will seem similarly trivial in 20 more years). Wilson Software's Turbo Texas Hold'em continues to improve as a simulator of live poker, as well as an analytical tool. Spreadsheets and poker analysis software tools make it easy to crunch your numbers, the more detailed the better.

The great thing about having all of these tools available – books and magazines, discussion groups, E-mail, simulators, analysis tools, online poker for play or money, live poker, and live tutors – is that few interested players should be at a loss for some way to improve. In this column and the next few, I'd like to discuss some of the pros and cons of the various avenues for improvement at poker. It's worth thinking about these issues from time to time because, in today's hectic world, it's important to make considered decisions about how to allocate your time, even if poker is just a hobby.

I'll start off with my favorite way to improve, and also one of the simplest: reading. Some folks have an aversion to learning things like poker by reading, and take pride in being able to figure things out for themselves. There's nothing wrong with that, and there's reason to believe that lessons you teach yourself may stick better than those you're spoon-fed (as long as you don't waste too much time pursuing dead ends helplessly). On the other hand, poker provides many challenges, so why reinvent the wheel when you can move on to more engaging problems? At worst, you'll have an easier time figuring out what your more literate opponents are thinking about. At best, reading will not only provide you with knowledge directly, it will also stimulate your own thinking.

Books (and articles) have lots of built-in advantages. They're portable, relatively inexpensive, available around-the-clock, and in many cases are worth reading multiple times or using as reference. When they work well, they're the single most direct way to learn something useful. The idea is that rather than running simulations, putting in hours of practice, doing analyses, or meditating until you have some insight, just find someone who's already done the hard work and let him tell you the results. Of course, if you haven't done all that work yourself, it can be challenging to tell genuine insight from the counterfeit variety. Reading is itself a skill that takes practice and judgment, but careful readers should find the poker literature a vast and rewarding shortcut to useful knowledge.

Chances are, you're already sold on the advantages of reading about poker, or you wouldn't be here. But books and articles do come up short in a few areas. First, many of the challenges of poker, especially for the beginner, have less to do with knowledge than with execution. Cognitive psychologists distinguish between declarative knowledge ("knowing that") and procedural knowledge ("knowing how"). It's much easier to know that you shouldn't play certain hands than it is, often, to actually keep yourself from playing them. Many if not all poker players have the experience, even after many years of playing, of making a bad call for reasons that, upon more sober reflection, have little to do with profit. Books can support learning to avoid these kinds of mistakes, but they can't confer this ability directly in the same way they can tell you how often your flushes should come in.

Books are also hampered by the fact that some kinds of knowledge are difficult to organize and/or to render in coherent text. I may have a perfectly workable preflop hold'em strategy in my head, as well as multiplication tables for single-digit numbers. I feel confident that I can provide the latter in text form without any errors. But if challenged to describe my preflop hold'em strategy, it's unlikely I could put more than a fraction of it into print without tremendous effort. And with the most difficult poker decisions sometimes requiring the integration of numerous sources of information, the most a poker author can reasonably hope to do is foster better intuitive decision-making.

Finally, there are gaps in the poker literature that will make it difficult to rely on them exclusively. Despite a few worthwhile entries, the definitive book on tournament poker has yet to be written. For ring games, limit hold'em is well represented, but fewer choices are available for other games.

We've come a long way since Yardley. Reading about poker is virtually indispensable to anyone who wants to improve at poker. But it's only one of the many pieces it takes to work on your game. Next time I'll consider some of the tools intended to fill in the gaps.