Has self-improvement ever backfired for you?

So I was just in Vegas for a few days, and came across a grinder, and we got to talking about different ways that people try to improve their game.

We discussed some books that we had read, and found that we both concluded after reading T.J. Cloutier's Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold'em, that our games immediately suffered.

We talked about how we thought that many of the ideas in his book were out-of-date, and based on playing fields that are a lot more passive than the average modern player. He went so far as to add "that is why TJ will never win another tournament." I'm sure TJ is an excellent player, and this thread isn't intended as a slight to him; I only used it as an example of how implementing ideas learned from a book in an effort to improve my game seemed to make it suffer.

I was wondering if anyone else had similar experiences, where you tried to change your game to emulate someone else, and you ended up hurting your game instead of improving it?

When I saw the title of this post, the first thing I thought of was "The 7 habits of highly effective people" self-improvement course that I FLUNKED!

Well, that's a good book too (also 'the eight habit' from Covey where he assembles these 7 habits) but I read a couple of good poker books that surely improved my playing by just practice the theory step by step. Don't try to do it all again. You have to start somewhere and do it however it will take some time!

But looking at the changing times in poker and the spot in the world you're playing (e.g. scandinavian poker players are really agressive) it's good to know the basic roles in the pokergame (Helmuth compares them with animals). Based on these roles you can determine your play but it takes a long way to understand it... Glad to have internet so that you can shorten the learning cycle!!! When you had to learn all this in live games it would take years......

The pitfall however is that online play differs from live play. So read a book about 'poker tells' before you start playing live. It helped me a lot. REMEMBER: poker is no rocket sience but it takes a lifetime to master it yourselve and it's easier to learn it from a book..... and then practice, practice and practice. and yes the styles and environments will change but that's your learning curve!

Good luck and c u at the tables

I wasn't impressed with Cloutier's book either. Luckily, it wasn't the first I read, so I immediately began discounting some of the information, as I'm playing exclusively online, and his style just doesn't suit the current online game.

But, I'm glad I read the book, as I did get something out of it. Most poker books are valuable, but more up-to-date information, such as the posts on this forum, are much more relevant to my game.

Yeah I think I have read a couple of harringtons tourney books...

Id say it helps with learning the about what u "SHOULD" or could do in certain situations....but once you can recognize and learn this you vary your play around it and also notice when the villian is trying to do the same thing....

Once you know the basics and some strategy...I justthink that is all about the feel of the table....and your stack size...

My penis once backfired on me. Needless to say, I didn't need to use shaving cream that day .

*Takes a moment to recover from Van's post*

Right, away we go.

I had very similar thoughts when I read the NLHE section of Super System - it's just not relevant to any game any of us are likely to play in. Don't get me wrong, I've got mad respect for Doyle and his game, but applying that book to a live $1-2 game would be disastrous. The people you'll be playing there won't be anything like the players he talks about being in a game with.

I had the same thing happen to me. Me and my friend both started playing roughly around the same time he started winning right away. I wasn't doing bad myself but not as good as him so i tried to like he did. Well yeah I'm not him so it didn't really work for me.