Hardware, Software, Data Mining and Poker

If you want to be really good at poker, you need to develop your habits and mental powers. Poker is an intellectual game. You obtain edges by making superior decisions than your opponents. And it’s not enough to know what to do; you must also do it. That’s obvious, of course, but a connection many fail to make.

Your brain is similar to a computer. You have memory (hardware), information processing (data mining) and thought processes (software) that all go into analyzing any poker situation. The accuracy of your analyses will determine your poker success.
Your hardware remembers data and past analyses and utilizes that information to analyze a decision. The better your memory and your mental processing skills, the better poker decisions you’ll make. Your brain will have good and bad days, some natural, some induced by you! You can utilize good sleep habits, physical exercise, no drug and alcohol use, mental exercises, a healthy diet, meditation, stimulants (that mentally react differently from other drugs), intensity development, stress reduction, emotional control, and other mental enhancement techniques to keep at the top of its game.

The good news is that poker, played with focus and thought, should help develop and keep your mind sharp through the mental exercises it provides. Studies show that stimulating your mind can grow new neurons and help maintain existing ones through the aging process. A healthier brain thinks better, learns quicker, has better recall, and can maintain focus longer, all great attributes to your poker game!

Your software is a combination of your poker knowledge and your thought process, how you train your mind to think through your poker decisions. Creating a habitual system of a thought process will improve the quality and consistency of your thinking. Write down a thought process you want to go through with every poker decision, utilizing a flowcharting format. If you don’t know what a flowcharting format is, google flowcharting and learn it. Come up with a format for every situation, starting with the most common ones. Adapt it as you go. It’s best to keep it on a computer for ease of adaption. You’ll learn a LOT doing this. Memorize it until it becomes habitual. This will become a never ending project. And you’ll never totally perfect it!

This flowchart needs to be conceptually correct strategically. If you feel you don’t understand poker’s basic concepts, read David Sklansky’s The Theory of Poker. You’ll need to think through each poker situation. What’s important? What’s different in this situation from similar situations? Is the answer different if the pot is big or small? Is the opponent(s) aggressive or passive? Does the answer change based on your relative position? What criteria change the answer to this specific situation? As you build this flowchart, you’ll develop thought trains, thinking skills, and poker knowledge. Once you utilize the same thought process over and over, it will become habitual, your subconscious mind will activate it, and you’ll automatically adapt it to any non-standard situations. Once it becomes habitual, your conscious mind will be freed up for other poker related thoughts. Design your thought process, consistently utilize it. Both depth of analysis and consistency of decisions will grow incrementally day by day.

Of course, you need to collect data to process. In poker, the data is from collecting information from past events from which you can associate to your thought process and formulate your best decisions. No two poker situations are identical and those that can differentiate the differences and adapt to them are going to construct better decisions than those that can’t.

How did your opponent(s) play similar situations in the past? How can you define their thought process from those past events? What factors were involved in their thoughts? Did their emotions affect their decision? Or was it logically derived? The better the information that you assign into the flowchart, the better your final decisions will be. Collecting this data involves paying attention to details, thinking about your how your opponent(s) thought process concluded previous decisions, how their emotions affect their judgement, and all the other details that go into a person’s decision-making. The deeper the level of information, the more accurate the output will be.

Categorize, compartmentalize, and systemize your thinking. Just knowing how to play well won’t make you a great player unless you can consistently actualize that knowledge. A huge number of very knowledgeable players struggle at the game due to inconsistencies. Creating a methodology to utilize your knowledge will make playing mentally and physically less taxing, create superior consistency, and you’ll formulate better decisions. And that translates into higher edge.

The good news is this is a great foundation to grow your game; the bad news is it’s a lot of effort. But if you like poker, it will be worth it, both in terms of personal fulfillment and financial rewards. ♠