Gavin Griffin: Poker Questions Asked And Answered

People in the poker community often come up to me and ask about whatever is on their mind. Some of these questions are good questions, and some are bad beat stories in disguise. I’ve been through quite a few things in my poker career and I like to help whenever possible, and in this new Card Player series, I’d like to share my experiences and knowledge. Feel free to ask any poker-related question, and I’ll do my best to answer it in the space below.

Question: Do you have a pre-session and post-session routine? If so, what does it encompass? – Mike

My pre and post-session routines are a little bit lacking but I’m working on them right now. Here’s what I do before a session right now: First of all, I have a 35-45 minute drive to the casino during which I try to listen to something that puts me in a good mood or relaxes me. Occasionally there is traffic on the drive, in which case I will sometimes stop someplace on my way just to get out of the stressful situation. I like to take this time in the car to clear my head of any negativity that’s been going on that day or, much more often, clear out the super happy feelings in my head. I like to go into a session at my baseline level of happiness, which I’ll admit, is pretty high. I feel that if I start my session too low or too high, it will have an adverse effect on my play at the outset. I try to come into each session with a clean slate towards poker. In other words, I don’t think about the previous session’s results so that I don’t have any performance expectations, positive or negative.

My post-session routine is almost non-existent. If there is a hand that I played that is nagging at me, I think about it on my way home. If it’s still nagging me when I get home, I’ll run some numbers on it. That’s it. Boo.

I feel like I’m on a good trajectory with my pre-session routine and it just needs a little tweaking. I should definitely have a list of the things that I want to improve on both technically and mentally. This way I can go over that list in my head for a little while to make sure those things are at the front of my mind as I play. If I can concentrate on those things on my 40-minute drive before the session, or at least the last 15 minutes or so, I feel like I’ll be better prepared to make each day playing a productive one and prevent myself from staying stagnant as a poker player.

The post-session stuff is truly atrocious. I don’t do any real critical thinking during my drive home. Instead I either beat myself up about a hand I played or don’t do anything at all. Instead, what I should do is spend a few minutes after my session, before I get in the car writing a journal about that individual session. Writing is a cathartic experience and can really go a long way towards making sure that I don’t bring any of the bad feelings from a bad poker session home with me or even into the car with me while I’m driving. Since I sometimes play a tournament and then cash games when I bust out if I bust quickly, or play a cash game before jumping into a tournament, I need to make sure I do journaling between those sessions as well since I don’t want to start bringing the bad or good feelings from my tournament or cash session into the other. I’ll try to focus a bit more in the post session journal on how I did at the things I’m trying to work on so that I get a feel for how much things are absorbing from the early prep session.

I definitely think there is value to having a pre and post-game routine and I hope that improving them will go a ways towards making my sessions more productive. If you stop learning in poker, you’ll get passed by pretty quickly and you can’t learn unless you study with intention. These pre and post-game sessions will be a good focus and practice on having that intention.

I have a tough time remembering hands that I played after a session is over. Do you have any tips on how to improve in that area? – Chris

Writing the hands down right after they happen really helps with everything. It makes it easier to analyze the hand later and is important for getting the detail right. The further away from the hand you are before writing it down, the harder it will be to remember the details. Having an efficient notation system is important so you can get the most information down in the least amount of time. I have a shorthand language I use that I’m sure can be improved. In fact, the last time I shared it with someone he suggested an improvement. In my system, I always note position relative to the button. This works better because UTG can be anything from 7 spots off the button to the button itself. The button is always constant and a better marker for relative position. K means check, f means fold, and c means call.

This action: 5 off the button raises to 75, 3 off the button calls, I call on the button with 88, the small blind and big blind both call. The flop is 1073. SB checks, BB bets 350, preflop raiser folds, 3 off the button calls, everyone else folds. The turn is the J BB bets 800, 3 off the button makes it 2500, BB folds…..

Results in this shorthand: -5 75, -3c, I c otb 8s8d, sb, bb c. Th7h3s k/350/fcfff. Jh 800/2500/f

My friend suggested if I can’t remember who each player is in the hand (which I usually do since I played the hand and it’s basically a trigger for my memory) I should assign each player a nickname that is a physical descriptor of them like Red Sox Hat.

There might be some tweaks that could make things quicker but it feels pretty good to me. Find me on Twitter @nhgg if you have any suggestions on how I could improve it!

If you have a question for Gavin, send it to [email protected].

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