Poker Forum > General Discussion
Mental Game - The Process Model
Fatcatstu:
No no no, you haven"t, I was the one being hostile and for no good reason. I need to sit down and give all this a good read as I probably have the potential to be a good online player, but for some reason it fails to capture my imagination and attention like live poker does, my attention span when playing online is horrendous!!!
AAroddersAA:
--- Quote from: Fatcatstu on November 06, 2012, 12:44:44 PM ---
Quick question. How much time is dedicated to actually enjoying playing?
--- End quote ---
Actually Stu your question and point is a good one. You do have to enjoy poker in some way otherwise all of this is pointless and you will see better results if you actually enjoy the game as well and all of the work you do on it will be easier. If you have two players of equal skill but one is enjoying the game and the other one isn"t the one who honestly enjoys themselves playing will do better.
When you take an outdraw or a cooler, it will have less effect on your mental state than if you are enjoying playing. If you are actually bored and just playing because you kind of sat down and logged on and started playing because it is what you do then you are likely to get annoyed more easily by the game and start making the less effective plays that I assume would make up part of the B and C games.
So yes asking how much time is devoted to enjoying the game is a good and important question that we should be considering and if it is not enough that should be corrected if possible. This is probably the reason I have been so inconsistent in the last couple of years as I have definitely lost the love for the game and I have become a worse player because of it. Anybody come across this and know what to do about this *lol*?
Bigfella42:
I reckon the best way to improve your poker game is to find players who are better than you and to talk hands through with them regularly. Also, if you play a certain way find people who play differently and get their input into why they do what they do. Personally I really enjoy strategy discussions with some of the internet kids who have helped me see things differently in certain situations and I believe my game is better as a result.
I think different approaches work for different personalities. I"m not one for graphs, lists, or writing down my goals every time. But that doesnt mean I won"t want to improve or think about and discuss what I could have done differently. At the end of the day we"re dealing with a game where we have incomplete information, and we have a mix of playing styles. I think there is a danger of putting too much emphasis on preparation and the like, but it depends what we mean by preparation. To one, writing down aims and reviewing them with a score will work, to another a good chat with a respected mate would work better.
I do believe your mental state does determine an awful lot, so this is a good discussion thread. I know that sometimes I sit down "in the mood to gamble" and other times I"m ready to knuckle down and really focus on making the right decision on every hand. I expect a mental coach would try to kill off that first personality, but personally I quite like it ;D ;D
Swinebag:
--- Quote from: Bigfella42 on November 08, 2012, 21:55:01 PM ---
I reckon the best way to improve your poker game is to find players who are better than you and to talk hands through with them regularly. Also, if you play a certain way find people who play differently and get their input into why they do what they do. Personally I really enjoy strategy discussions with some of the internet kids who have helped me see things differently in certain situations and I believe my game is better as a result.
I think different approaches work for different personalities. I"m not one for graphs, lists, or writing down my goals every time. But that doesnt mean I won"t want to improve or think about and discuss what I could have done differently. At the end of the day we"re dealing with a game where we have incomplete information, and we have a mix of playing styles. I think there is a danger of putting too much emphasis on preparation and the like, but it depends what we mean by preparation. To one, writing down aims and reviewing them with a score will work, to another a good chat with a respected mate would work better.
I do believe your mental state does determine an awful lot, so this is a good discussion thread. I know that sometimes I sit down "in the mood to gamble" and other times I"m ready to knuckle down and really focus on making the right decision on every hand. I expect a mental coach would try to kill off that first personality, but personally I quite like it ;D ;D
--- End quote ---
Good post Glenn. I think I pretty much agree with this
VBlue:
--- Quote from: mporter123 on November 01, 2012, 14:25:43 PM ---
Rather than improving your B and C game, why don't we just play A game all the time? :)
--- End quote ---
I wanted to come back to you on this Mark as I think some further explanation may help you to understand what Jared means when he talks about Inchworm - here is my intepretation.
The concept of an A game, B game, and C game is built around a bell curve shape. At the front-end is your A game and at the rear-end ::) your C game. Everything in-between is your B game. (A bell curve looks a little like a D laid on its wide with the two ends tapered.
What is your A game now, will become your B game later, as you learn and improve. It is likely that you only play your A game a small percentage of the time and your C game, hopefully, too. The rest is your B game.
Because new information has to go through the four stages of learning I described earlier under the Adult Learning Model, it is only when new information is learned to either Concious Competence or Unconcious Competence that you can include it in your A game, and also your B game. If you are Unconciously Incompetent (your not even aware of a strategy - let"s say set-mining - then it is not in your game at all so will autmatically form part of your C game as you are just playing pocket pairs poorly mostly and only ocassionaly by luck playing them better). Once someone tells you about set-mining or you figure it out yourself you become Conciously Incompetent until you start to understand the whys and wherefores of how to do it.
Back to A Game - you go and watch a video/read a strategy article or just become aware of 3-betting and 4-betting (you are new to poker and only know about limping, raising, and calling raises pre-flop) but you have not mastered how it works, why, when to pull the trigger and when not to, etc. It takes time to work this into your game and to become proficient at it. You might start with 3-betting and 4-betting in position 100% of the time, and the refine your strategy from there, or you may only 3-bet your value range and not understand when to bluff or semi-bluff. You might stick to some "rules" you learnt from the strategy you read/watched. This new information when applied correctly pushes your play into - A game, but as it is all new most of the time you are making some good moves and some mistakes - B game, and sometimes you apply it poorly and just get all confused when to and when not to - C game. Eventually, you get so good at it your A game now includes this new strategy and you mostly get it right. So, you cannot always play your A game, or even 80% of the time, as new concepts take time to become proficient at.
Your old A game, with no 3-betting or 4-betting in it as you didn"t know about them (you were Unconciously Incompetent), is now your B game or even C game. In your new A game you instincitively know how to react so you 3-bet bluff those high VPIP players and pick up lots of uncontested pots, you start flatting medium strength hands against opening ranges you dominate, and you 3-bet for value only when those rocks open (you are now Concsiously Competent and becoming Unconciously Competent as it becomes instinctive). But now you start to learn about targetting weak players and how to deal with them. You learn about different player types, how to isolate, and which players you can value bet to death, when players will not give up and you have to give up the bluff you are running, etc. (a new skill that you have become aware of so Conciously Incompetent, but have just started to learn about hoping to become Concisously Competent and then Unconciously Competent) This new skill is added to your game but you are very new to it so your A game now includes this but you don"t do it well very often so you play only your B game most of the time again. Occasionally, you make a mess of it and you get distracted by applying new skills and your 3-betting and 4-betting suffers so you play your C game sometimes.
Also, you game is suffering as you make some mistakes set-mining and sometimes flat in position when you could raise and sometimes set-mine when it is not profitable due to effective stack sizes. If you do not work on this mistake and concentrate instead on learning more new strategies the gap between your A game and C game gets wider - so you work on the poor parts of your current game as well as adding new skills.
Imagine charting all your poker skills - there are some that you do very well, some you do well most of the time but sometimes you get spot on and other times make a mess of, and there are other parts of your game that you are very poor at - A game, B Game, and C game. Everytime you learn something new you moved your A Game forward (stretching the front end of the bell curve) but your C game stays rooted until you improve those mistakes. Everything inbetween is your B game.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page
Go to full version