The Path to Poker Mastery

The path to mastery is a path of knowing. When you know something, you no longer just believe it. You've lived it, and the speculation is replaced by knowledge. In truth, it will be very rare for you to find more than the odd few in your middle-limit hold'em games who have made it through the rigors of this path and can boast a profit after thousands of hours of ring-game play.

Many begin the path but few can persist through the countless obstacles and setbacks that undermine great talent and brilliant analytical ability. It's hard, and it takes a long time – but it can be done.

When mastery is achieved, you are freer to break certain guiding principles because your intuition is very developed; you can sense where you are at and what your best course of action is. Before achieving mastery, most decent players step outside of established "correct poker" behavior and are rewarded with misery and loss, with occasional windfalls. In psychology, this is known as a "partial reinforcement schedule." These behaviors are the hardest to overcome.

Call it a rite of passage. I still make some of these mistakes, believing I am operating as a master when I am achieving this state only periodically. A simple example is when you are in the big blind and are holding K-Q when facing a raise from a tight player in early position and everyone else has folded. Most players generally won't hesitate to play the hand, and will often consider three-betting depending on their image or how much control they have over the opponent.

Let's say the flop comes K Q 7. You get all juiced up because you're trying to figure out how to make the most money. You've already decided it's your pot. You flopped top two pair!

At the showdown of the hand, in which you managed to check-raise the turn and get called down, your opponent reveals the A K. You got real lucky with the flop and managed to slither away from the flush. But did you realize that before the flop, your hand was a 3-1 underdog? Did you remember that this particular opponent had limped in an hour and a half ago with pocket jacks from early position? How much grief would you have earned if he had raised you on the end and flipped over his pocket kings?

His raise meant one of four hands; queens, kings, aces, or A-K. You're a significant underdog to all of these hands. And even though the odds may justify playing the hand, that is not the assessment of a strong player. Those preflop odds are hot-and-cold simulations. They don't account for the action that would result if the flop hits both of you – or hits you but you're still trailing.

A master seeks to be in control of the situation, and knowing that his opponent was holding one of those four hands would make it almost impossible to lead the hand confidently. In other words, the loss/reward potential of this situation doesn't justify taking the risk. David Sklansky could probably take you through the scenarios and show you how much you would stand to lose on this hand over 100 trials. But I believe he walks the path of advanced probabilities, and has the knowledge to play according to that wisdom.

I'm not that type of player. I understand probability, but play strategies according to how I've categorized my opposition, and what my intuition is telling me and mathematics combined.

A tactic that is used in most disciplines on the path to mastery is creating certain restrictive conditions and adhering to them for a period of time. By doing this, one comes to know his own tendencies better and can make small adjustments that slowly convert leaks to tight seals.

Here are a few examples. I suggest trying them out for at least two or three sessions in order to overcome the temptation to make quick, convenient conclusions.

• No matter what odds you are getting in the blinds, never defend with hands worse than J-10 for big cards or 9-8 for connectors. That is, you would muck J-9 or 6-5 even if getting 10-to-1, and even if they're suited!

• Play the entire session without calling any preflop bets when holding A-X suited.

• Never play pairs lower than 6-6 unless you are on the button, one off the button, or two off the button.

• Play the entire session without making a single bluff.

• End your session after exactly three hours of play, no matter what your results are.

By limiting your behavior in these ways, you may miss profit opportunities, obviously. But, the point is to see the costs and benefits in practical terms by observing what would have happened instead of actually doing it and not having the emotional (and financial) distance to evaluate it.

Do you really have any idea of what your blind-defending strategy is? Do you know if your play in the blinds is profitable? Do you truly know how much ace-rag suited is costing you? At what point in your session do you slip from an A game to a B game? Two hours? Five hours? After suffering two drawouts in one round? How much pride is wrapped up in your tendency to make hopeless bluffs? These questions and many more will be answered when the price is right. For those with the undying will to be a long-term winner, and not just someone who claims to be a winner, this exercise will hurt at first, but will pay off huge in the end. I know – I still use it.