Discipline: Part VI

This is the sixth of a series of columns on discipline, which is essential for anyone who wants to be a professional poker player. There are many elements to discipline. Here is a list of some of the most important ones for a poker player:

1. Avoiding tilt
2. Finding games or situations where you have an edge
3. Physical conditioning
4. Mental conditioning
5. Maintaining a bankroll

I have already covered the first three. The fourth, and in some ways, the most important is mental conditioning. There is general conditioning of the mind, which will be the subject of this column, and poker-related conditioning which will be the subject of the next. Poker is, like chess and bridge, a mind game. If you mind isn’t in good shape, you are unlikely to do well, and you certainly won’t do well in the long run. It helps to be smart, quick, and psychologically balanced.

Recent scientific advances have revealed some unexpected facts about intelligence and the brain. Most important is the fact that nothing is fixed. The brain is plastic. You can develop new neurons and more importantly new connections between existing neurons. By focusing your attention on something and by practicing it for around 10,000 hours, most people can become competent in virtually anything. I recently watched a documentary on the Polgar sisters. Their teacher-parents had the theory that by focusing the efforts of a child into a specific endeavor, they would excel. Living in communist Budapest, they decided to teach their daughters chess. From an early age these women focused on chess.

The three sisters quickly developed into three of the top female chess players in the world, and one eventually ranked among the top ten men. Or think of Tiger Woods and his devotion to golf at an early age. Stu Ungar with his concentration on gin and poker is another example. Even though we are trying to improve later in life, the fact that the brain is plastic means there is plenty of room for us to develop into very good, perhaps even great players, at a later stage in our lives.

We must work hard to keep our brain in good shape. I have already touched on diet and exercise in a previous column. These are crucial for maintaining a healthy brain. It is also useful to keep your brain active is a variety of ways. Current thinking is that one of the best ways to avoid or delay dementia and Alzheimer’s is to learn and play games, learn new languages, learn to play an instrument, or learn some other new skill. Other than learning games, these won’t directly help your poker, but might help your brain.

There are two areas of mental practice that might help your poker game. One is to practice mental arithmetic. There are many books that provide tips for doing this. As your proficiency develops, you will find that calculating pot odds, stack to pot ratios, M (cost per round), and counting outs becomes much easier. The other is memory practice.

Anyone who plays any of the stud games, triple-draw games, gin or open-faced Chinese need a good memory for the cards played, but are no longer showing. If you play a lot of live poker, it becomes important to remember a lot about your opponents’ tendencies, patterns, and tells. Again there are many books on developing memory skills. Thus, you are improving your math and memory skills, (useful for game players,) and you are performing mental exercises that are beneficial to your brain.

Another important way to keep your brain active (use it or lose it!) is by studying anything that interests you. Clearly psychology and probability are fields with a lot of application to poker. Acting and improvisation might also be useful. Not only are they are enjoyable, but also they might help boost your skills at reading opponents and conveying false information to opponents. They are also a big help if you ever become successful enough to worry about marketing yourself or doing commentary. Philosophy or art might provide you with solace or escape when you need to get away from poker for a while.

The other part of mental conditioning is specifically related to poker. You must continually study and improve. The quality of poker being played is constantly improving. A skill level that would have made you a big winner twenty years ago, may not be enough to break even today. There are always young, improving players coming up. Each generation plays better than the one before. You must keep improving or they will pass you by. In the next column, I’ll discuss studying poker. ♠

Steve ‘Zee’ Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful gamesplayer. He has been a full-time gambler for over 35 years. With two WSOP bracelets and few million in tournament cashes, he is easing into retirement. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. He can be found at some major tournaments and playing in cash games in Vegas. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A in New York City -The Library near Houston and Doc Holliday’s on 9th St. are his favorites.