A thread caught my eye the other day, where gjshand asked what it takes to make a good poker player into a great one. What I thought was interesting was how the question was interpretted differently: Is a great poker player one who makes a lot of money, or one who has great skill?

That’s a loaded question, and it begs the question “What is skill?” Isn’t it skillful to make the most money? Poker, after all, is about winning money, therefore the player who makes the most money is the most skilled one. This argument has merit, but points out a major difference in how people may think of the skill of the game, and what it all boils down to is wisely selecting the games in which you play.

Let’s for a minute pretend that there is an absolute scale of poker skill and that we all belong somewhere on that scale. It’s likely that we can be out of shape some days, so our skill is probably different if we’re tired, hungry, alert, distracted, etc, but it probably has some sort of average that we can assign ourselves. Let’s furthermore say that this scale goes from 1 to 10,000, where the lowest value makes the wrong move exactly always, and the highest value exactly never. Neither of these two players are likely to actually exist, but you get the idea of the scale anyway.

So let’s for the sake of argument say that I’m in the middle on this scale, a 5k-player on average; I make about as many mistakes as I make correct moves. Now let’s say that I sit down at a table where the average opponent is a 4k-player. Some are better than me, perhaps, but most are worse. The Fundamental Theorem of Poker states that I should be able to make money at this table, because my opponents make on average more mistakes than I do (this is not necessarily true, of course, because if there’s a real shark at the table he may be able to make all the money off of their mistakes, but play along for now).

I sit there and play the hands I’m dealt. I pick up some reads on players, and I grind away my (relatively) small average profit per hour. But what if I found a better table, one where the average skill was 3k? My relative skill compared to my opponents is now much higher, and my profits will go up accordingly. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Finding a table where the competition is bad means a very big difference in how much money you make from poker.

Sometimes you’ll see players talking about their “winrate at 1/2″. They talk about how they’ve played 50k hands and they’ve made on average 1.2BB/100 hands (1.2 big bets per 100 hands played). Sometimes you’ll hear someone refer to that player as a “1.2BB/100 player at 1/2″, as if it’s somehow a measurement of skill. It isn’t. The absolute scale I mention here does not translate into profit like that, it only shows profit if you find tables where the competition is worse than you are. An 8k-player at a table full of 7k-players will show a smaller profit than a 5k-player a table full of 3k-players. This is essential to understand.

Many people have the basic idea of this down pat; they look for tables with high see-flop-percentages when they look for available seats, hoping to find some loose opposition - playing loose poker is a good measurement of low skill. But do you get up and leave when the loose players have gone bust at the table, and all that remain are the tight players? Do you even notice when this happens?

I suggest an exercise: Find the biggest fish at the table. This should not take many hands, unless there are two huge fish at the table competing for the throne (if that’s the case, congratulations, you’re at a very good table and you should be happy about it). Anyway, once you’ve spotted the big fish, make a mental note of who that player is. Now, if this person leaves and there are no other really fishy players at the table, you get up and leave too. Find a new table, spot the sucker, and stay until he or she leaves.

If you after 30 or so hands haven’t spotted any truly awful players, leave. Find a table where such players exist.

This exercise will serve two purposes:

1. You will show a considerably larger profit. Not kidding.
2. If you’ve never done this before, you will learn a very important skill in picking up reads on people. The second level of this exercise involves finding the GOOD players at the table as well, but that’s much more difficult.

In closing, you do not make money off of skill alone. It’s the relative difference in skill between you and your opponents that will be the deciding factor for your profit, and it’s important that you realize this. If your aim is to be a better poker player (and by better, you mean more “absolute skill”) you should try to find tougher competition and study vigorously. If your aim is to win more money, you should improve your table selection and discipline in leaving when the fish are gone.

But find the middle ground, and you will be a very successful player.

Happy hunting.

/Fredrik