Discipline: Summary & Review

This is the last of a long series of columns on discipline. Discipline is essential for anyone who wants to be a professional poker player. Discipline has many elements. Here is my list of the five most important ones:

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

I defined tilt as something that causes you to make a bad play that you wouldn’t make if you weren’t on tilt. Virtually no one is completely immune to tilt. By this, I mean that almost everyone plays worse when losing than they do when winning. I looked at several techniques for avoiding tilt. The simplest solution is to quit, or at least to take a break; unfortunately this is not a very satisfactory one. It is temporary and will often result in your leaving good games. I also mentioned several other techniques based on modern psychology, including the one with which I’ve had good results called future pacing. Basically, this entails imagining a tilt-creating situation, then imagining that you suffer through this situation and play even better.

Finding games or situations where you have an edge may seem very obvious, yet I have seen numerous good poker players destroy their bankrolls betting on sports or playing casino games. I have also seen competent medium-stakes players who are gradually improving have a big tournament win. Somehow this convinces them they are much better than they are, and they proceed to lose everything to players who are better than they are, and whom they would never have considered playing against before their win. Be disciplined, and only play when you have an advantage. If you’re not sure if you have an advantage, then you should try to figure out what you are doing better than your opponents. If you can’t list things you do right and they don’t, you may not have an advantage, so be careful.

The third component of discipline is physical conditioning. This consists of exercise, a healthful diet, and developing a sleeping schedule that will enable to you to be awake and alert during the times you are normally playing. For example, in preparing for the WSOP, try to wake between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. after seven or eight hours of sleep. You will normally be playing from noon until around 2 a.m. the next morning. Since stakes are constantly rising, your most important decisions will occur near the end of these long playing days. If you have prepared yourself, you will have the stamina you need.

Mental conditioning can be divided into general and poker specific categories. Modern brain science tells us that the brain remains plastic and can develop throughout our life. It also tells us that areas and skills that aren’t used tend to degrade. This means you want to do things to keep your brain sharp. Learning new skills, such as speaking a foreign language, playing a musical instrument, or playing games are considered useful for cognitive function. Mental math, probability and statistics are all beneficial for a gambler. Poker specific conditioning focuses on improving your skills. It has two components; studying and practicing. Books, videos, web sites, magazines, and discussion with other players are all good ways to learn poker. Practicing involves playing sessions devoted to something specific. Examples of this type are to try a session of loose play, tight play, small ball, or big ball. Try bluffing a lot or never bluffing. Try to improve your ability to read your opponents by devoting one session to focusing on one physical characteristic like posture or tone of voice.

The final element of discipline is to create and maintain a bankroll. Here are my three rules:

Steve Zee’s Bankroll Rules:

1. The Larger Your Bankroll Is, The Less Risk You Should Take
2. Always Know How Much You Can Risk
3. The More Unlikely Winning Is, The Less You Should Risk
4. If you have any doubt what these rules mean or why you should follow them, refer to my last few columns.

It may be impossible for me to instill the overwhelming importance of discipline on my readers, but in this series of columns I have made a valiant attempt. Over the years, I have seen incredibly talented players who lacked discipline fade away from the scene or hang around the edges, frequently broke and always trying to get staked. I have also seen players who everyone considered mediocre, earn a comfortable living playing only when they had an edge and slowly build a large bankroll without ever taking much risk. In the next column, I’ll return to discussing some hands and situations from recent cash games and tournaments. ♠

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.