Learning technique

There's a Swedish saying that directly translates to "repetition is the mother of learning." Or to quote Dan Dennett, "Every time you read it or hear it, you make another copy in your brain."

"Every time you read it or hear it, you make another copy in your brain."

("Every time you read it or hear it, you make another copy in your brain.")

So here's a trick to learning new stuff at poker: Focus on one thing at a time. Decide, before the session, what you'll be working on, and then let most of the other decisions ride on autopilot but take your time on the stuff you're trying to get better at.

Let's say, for instance, that you want to work on good spots to float the flop with weak hands. Before you start your session, you make some notes (mental or actual) about what matters when you make a decision to float or not to float. Position, board, opponent, pot size, etc. Whenever an opportunity arises to float the flop at all, carefully go through and assess all the points on your list before making your decision. After the decision is made and even after the hand itself is over, think through variations of that situation - let's say you decided that your hand was too weak to float. What would have been your break-off point? Or maybe you thought your opponent had too tight of a betting range to call him. How wide would his range have to be on that board with your holding for you to call? Etc. Think during the hand, but also after the hand and ignore most of the rest of the things happening on other tables; fold marginal hands, play on autopilot, whatever. Just focus on what you're here to learn. (Bonus tip: If your brain has a hard time keeping the previous train of thought going because there are new decisions to be made, fool it: talk out loud. "but what if my ace had been of hearts?" Brains are hard-wired to react to talking and you can easily trick yourself into thinking what you're supposed to be thinking about by "broadcasting" a question to yourself.)

The idea is that after sufficient number of situations (which, depending on how tricky the concept is, can vary) you'll internalize it. You gain lots by varying the situation you just played in your head; it's like increasing the number of trials you play by 100%. After awhile you'll know, almost instinctively, when you should be floating and when you shouldn't. By then, you move on to the next concept that you want to get better at. What you're doing, effectively, is improving your autopilot. Every time you own a new concept, the next one will be easier to learn because you'll have one more situation where you don't have to think through your decision consciously.

Now consider the opposite approach: Trying to apply a bunch of different concepts that you don't really own yet all in one session. What you'll get is confusion, which can lead to frustration, which very often will lead to tilt. And you won't actually come away having internalized anything at all; you'll probably get a little bit better at each of the things you're trying to learn but it's an inefficient way of learning.

"Trying to play well" is important. But it's not a great way to learn new things; it's in fact a very inefficient way to learn. Dusty Schmidt touches on this in his book and compares it to a golfer who tries to "implement eight swing thoughts his next time on the course" and I think it's an apt analogy. Mastering one play means upgrading your autopilot, which will make the next learning experience, if not faster, then at least more profitable.

I've heard of learning this way before but you've explained it very well. You've also explained how much better a way it is to learn than other ways.

I admit that i've found myself trying to learn ranges, proper c-bets and stealing/playing pots against certain types etc...but I found myself getting super confused adding and thinking about it all at once.

Sure things like proper c-bets and entering pots with certain hand types against certain villains is very basic stuff, but because i'm really trying to think how i want to play them and what i want to do thorughout the hand it can get a bit confusing, thus, slowing down my learning.

When you add learning ranges and thinking them through it becomes a complete mess lol.

I think its because i thought about my game and realised i'm missing alot of concepts, fairly basic ones, and i wanted to add them to my game, RIGHT NOW. I was also introduced into quite a few concepts with my sweat with C9.

Thanks for this article FP, i'll try and follow it. I've learned the basics of most of what i talked about but the long way, i'm gonna concentrate fully on what hands i'm entering with and why. Hand value/steal/fish and how i want to play the hand through.

Cheers

This is where it would be great to have prepared lesson material. For example, when you start to learn music you go through a similar process; learn one note, play it over and over again in various combinations with previous notes that you have learned.

Good situations to float don't come up that frequently, or at least not with a really high frequency compared with, say, raise/fold preflop decisions. It'd be cool if there were a collection of hands, with relevant information like stats/reads, for various concepts. Harrington does those after each chapter in his books which I like.

I guess if you had an instructor and a group, the instructor could go over the keys to floating, or whatever the current subject is, and then every member of the group could go through their own hand histories and come up with one or two hands for discussion, and the then whole group could discuss. That'd be a way of creating repetition.

Glad you 'rote' this F Paulsson!

I wholeheartedly agree with your recommended approach...there are so many concepts for poker which becomes further refined as one's skills develop/advance & according to one's:

• level (micro/low, medium, high stakes)
• play style (TAG, LAG, etc...)
• game variation (NLH, LHE, PLO, etc...)
• preference (tournaments or cash games -- live or online)

For me having a strong foundation is key (kinda like building a house with premium materials) & anything I can autopilot allows me to focus on increasing my poker knowledge to a higher degree...one concept @ a time .

For those with Stox memberships Jared Tendler has several excellent videos on how our brains work and learn new things. The issue Fredrik is addressing here is fully explored and explained. Jared also provides tips on how we can more quickly move our new knowledge to the level of habit (unconcious competency).

Basically if you have a Stox subscribtion and haven't done so yet watch this guys videos.

Thanks for posting, in a hurry right now but will be coming back to this thread and re-reading many times!!

That's good advice. Trying to learn everything at once leads to mass confusion and super tilt. I started with developing pre-flop skills. I wanted to learn how to play tight but aggressive....raise or fold. That took a lot of discipline. Learning to throw away KQ, KJ, QJ, A-rag, suited cards, etc.

No wait, actually the first I learned was folding in the small blind. That was a major leak. That was a big step forward. Then I learned pre-flop hand selection. Those two things made a super huge difference.

Then I learned how to steal, your basic 'everyone folds to you on the button, so raise with half decent cards to steal from the SB and BB'. I used to get sweaty palms and really nervous when try to steal with K-5, lol. Then I moved on to learn the different types of stealing, as well as defending against the steal (ie re-steal).

Along the way I learned to develop observation skills, identifying TAG, LAG, maniac. I learned who I can victimize with steals and learned who to stay away from.

Then I moved on to learn how stack sizes affect my decisions. I used to take a lot of bad beats even tho I always got my money in good. When I learned how factor in stack sizes, I started throwing away hands that I would previous pushed with.

There were a few other things, but those were the highlights for 2009.

That for me was about 8-9 months or so. Reading about it (Harrington, Super System, Moshman) CC advice, obsevation, practicing with play money SnG's, and repeat over and over and over so that everything is automatic. That part took the longest.

Towards the end of year, things really started to come together . Then I learned a very painful lesson in December, playing everyday waaaaaay to many SnG's caused me to slightly deviate from what I learned in 2009 and I paid the penalty for it (of course the idiots hitting 1-2-3 outters on the river didn't help, but that's another story). It's amazing what a slight tweak will do to you.

There is a lot to learn, good luck.

This is, in my opinion, one of the most important reasons to focus expliticly on the one thing: a GOOD situation doesn't have to occur; if someone bets into you on a board where it's very clear that you should fold but your "topic of the day" is to study floats, then go ahead and fold and then think about which hands you SHOULD call with, or what villain's tendencies would make the hand you have floatable, etc. You're basically creating a whole bunch of scenarios to practise on in your mind but you get to add some realism into it. If that makes sense.

I see this concept of learning pop up regularly on stock/futures trading psychology blogs.

Repetition and focussing on one asepct that you want to improve seems to be one of the main consensus(among trading psychologists that I have read) for improving in performance sports/occupations in general

I must admit myself though that I do not practice it often, if at all.

So thanks for bringing this back to my attention. Im going to try and make a real mental effort from now on to focus on one aspect at a time for improvement.

I like your idea of starting a session with a certain goal in mind. I also like the check list as well. As long as your goals and notes helps you be aware of a good spot to float and your not forcing the play I think it's al good. And if you can end a session and honestly say there wasn't any good spots then all the better.