Mind Over Poker: Founder’s Advice

I was inspired to write this column based on the words of one of our country’s founding fathers. I came across the following quote from none other than Ben Franklin: “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”

In poker, there is only one way to measure success. You are either up or down. You are either making money or losing money. Now, as anyone who has played the game for many years knows, there is a ton of variance in poker. You cannot measure success over one session, one week, or even one month. Depending on how often you play and the level at which you play, you probably will need a longer period of time to measure how well you are really playing.

Conversely, you cannot measure success based on past performance. A good year or a substantial tourney payout is nice, and something to be proud of, but success is not guaranteed going forward. In fact, I would argue that poker is so dynamic right now that it is extremely difficult to have continued success without consistent improvement.

However, what I believe Franklin was saying is that improvement, achievement, and success don’t happen in a vacuum. Don’t be fooled by results. Don’t let some measure of success mask your shortcomings. Poker is hard work; rather, playing poker successfully is hard work. It requires discipline, patience, cunning, experience, focus, reflection, insight, empathy, and a multitude of other qualities. It is very easy to win a poker tournament or have a winning session and think you have the game all figured out. It’s very easy to attribute our successes to our tremendous play, and our failures on the felt to the capriciousness of the cards.

So, how do we know if we are really improving? In the words of Mr. Franklin, by “continual growth and progress.” Every time I play, I try to learn at least one new thing about my play and at least one new thing about the game. The permutations in no-limit hold’em are so vast that learning truly is never-ending. Think about your overall knowledge today compared to 10 years ago, five years ago, one year ago, or even a few months ago. What have you learned? How did you come by that knowledge? And how can you ensure that you will consistently progress on your learning curve going forward? Answer those questions and your future improvement, achievement, and success will have meaning. ♠