Planning Your Personal Development Part IV

After setting your goals, you should evaluate the assets that will help you to reach them and the liabilities that will hold you back. State both in comparison to your opponents. If you have more of a favorable quality (such as knowledge or discipline), you have an asset. A liability is exactly the opposite: less of a good quality or more of a bad one (for example, a tendency to tilt).



Because of these comparisons, your assets and liabilities change as you move upward. For example, you may read cards better than the $5-$10 players, but more poorly than the $20-$40 players. Card-reading skill would be an asset while playing $5-$10, but a liability when you move up.



Many people dislike evaluating themselves, and they especially dislike this comparative process. They say, essentially, "I am good at bluffing, reading cards, or whatever, and I don't want to compare myself to other people." That attitude is destructive because you must objectively compare yourself to the competition. Your results depend not upon your absolute abilities, but upon that comparison. If you are a better player than they are, you win. If they are better, you lose. It really is that simple.



The Critical Problem is Objectivity

You must be brutally realistic about this comparison. Don't remember only your great plays and think they are typical. A tennis coach once said that his students' image of their game is a composite of the best shots they have ever hit: the great backhand winner against Charlie, the topspin lob that beat Harry, the service ace against the club champion. In fact, they hit very few great shots and make far more unforced errors.



Students do the same thing on exams. They remember their fine answers to a few questions, but ignore their bad answers. Employees overemphasize the few things they do well, but overlook their mistakes.



Poker players are less objective than tennis players, students, or employees. Luck has such huge effects that players generally take credit for their wins and blame bad luck for their losses. They remember their great plays and forget their mistakes. Hence, "Almost all players put themselves closer to the front of the pack than they deserve to be." (Roy Cooke, "A Great Game?" Card Player, May 10, 2002) They overestimate not just their overall game, but almost everything about themselves.



Types of Assets and Liabilities
Barry Tanenbaum, Roy Cooke, Mason Malmuth, Lou Krieger, Barry Greenstein, and many others have written about the characteristics of winning players. They agree on some points, but disagree on others. To get a fairly complete list, I have borrowed from all of them, but will not discuss the differences between them. You should read their works to understand why they emphasize various qualities. For the exact references, just send me an e-mail.



Assets and liabilities can be divided into at least five categories:

1. Knowledge

2. Skills

3. Personal traits

4. Mental abilities

5. Situational factors



Nearly all poker writers focus on knowledge and skills and ignore or minimize the others, even though they can have huge effects. These categories sometimes overlap or conflict. For example, different writers have called the ability to adjust to changing conditions a skill, a trait, and a mental ability.



Knowledge is the amount of poker information that you understand. It has two dimensions, breadth (the number of subjects you understand) and depth. You need several types of knowledge, including poker theory, strategy, statistical principles, game theory, probabilities, and psychology (of yourself and other people).



Skills are the ability to apply knowledge to get the desired results. Some people understand theory, but can't apply it well. They either act at the wrong time or execute their plays poorly. You need many skills, and their importance changes as you move upward. At the lowest levels, the most important skill is selecting hands, followed closely by folding early. Because so many players play too loosely, these skills will be enough to beat many games.



As you move upward, fewer people play bad hands and chase foolishly. You therefore need other skills: raising, check-raising, bluffing, stealing blinds, defending your blinds, semibluffing, snapping off bluffs, inducing calls and bluffs, avoiding traps, isolating weak players, manipulating pot size, betting for value, deceiving opponents, reading tells, reading cards from betting patterns, reading opponents' minds (what do they think you have?), adjusting to different types of players and games, shifting gears, slow-playing, betting and raising the right amount in pot-limit and no-limit, buying a free card, projecting the right image, isolating weak players, manipulating opponents into making mistakes, playing shorthanded, understanding and using position, and selecting good games.



Although this list is long, it is far from complete. For many skills, there is a counterskill that I haven't mentioned. For example, if you suspect that someone is trying to buy a free card, you should take certain steps. Some advanced skills were omitted because they can't be described in only a few words. However, this list does contain most of the important skills.



Personal traits are not as clearly defined as knowledge and skills, and their effects are much greater than you may believe. If you work only on your knowledge and skills, you will probably be disappointed. Most players do not get the results their knowledge and skill should produce because they lack important personal traits (and mental abilities).



For example, if you aren't honest with yourself, you will play against players who are better than you. If you lack discipline, you won't use your skills well. If you can't control your emotions, you will make some terrible decisions.



Barry Greenstein's Ace on the River contains a list of personal traits of winning players. All of them are included in this column, but a few were put into the "mental abilities" category.



In ascending importance, he listed sense of humor, prideful, generous, outgoing, insensitive, optimistic, independent, manipulative, greedy, persistent, self-centered, trustworthy, aggressive, competitive, survivors, empathic, fearless, motivated, in control of their emotions, honest with themselves, and psychologically tough.



Some traits are socially acceptable (optimistic and trustworthy), while others are condemned (manipulative and greedy). His picture of winning players is more subtle and complicated than the one most people have.



Some other important traits are patience, discipline, accepting responsibility for results, stamina, a detached attitude toward chips, accepting losses, admitting mistakes quickly, depersonalizing conflicts, adjusting to changes, confidence in your judgment, decisiveness, and a strong work ethic.



Some traits are "two-edged swords." They help you to become a winning player, but too much of them can be harmful. Fearlessness helps you to attack aggressively, but if you are too fearless, you will take foolish chances. You have to be intensely competitive, but "supercompetitors" can't accept their limitations or handle bad beats and losing streaks.



Mental abilities are absolutely essential, and some writers' recommendations can be implemented only by gifted people. For example, if you don't have great intuition, don't rely on your first impressions.



Some mental abilities overlap. General intelligence (IQ) tests also measure memory and attention to detail.



Others conflict with each other. Intuitive people can quickly see the big picture, but are usually poor at details.



Some important mental abilities are general intelligence, analytic capacity, math proficiency, long-term memory, short-term memory, thinking under pressure, attention to detail, seeing the big picture, handling many variables, deduction, induction, learning from mistakes, alertness, concentration, mental speed, logic, and intuition.



Situational factors can be critically important. For example, if you have to work long hours or are committed to another hobby, you don't have much time to develop your game.



Some important situational factors are your bankroll, living expenses, free time, family's and friends' attitudes toward poker, whether you are married or single, availability of live games in your area, and the reliability and speed of your computer and Internet connection.



This list of assets and liabilities could be expanded, but it includes most of the important ones. If you can accurately compare yourself to your competition on all of them, you will understand your poker potential far better than most people do.



Your Poker Balance Sheet

Just evaluating yourself on all of them will be useful, but an organized Poker Balance Sheet (PBS) will help you to see the picture more clearly. My next column will tell you how to prepare your own PBS.

Dr. Schoonmaker ([email protected]) coaches only on psychology issues, such as controlling impulses, coping with losing streaks, going on tilt, and planning your poker career. Parts I through III of this series can be found at www.CardPlayer.com.