Talent v. Hard work

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Ubercroz

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I was just reading the interview with Phil Galfond and saw the discussion below it about How you can improve and nature v. nurture and intelligence v. hard work, etc.

It made me think of the Malcolm Gladwell book "Outliers." Really a lot of the conversation in that book deals with precisely this.

What I found most interesting is that essentially you do need both of these things.

There were several interesting examples, but one was in regards to the Nobel Prize in physics. People who get that prize are smart. You have to be intensely smart to get that prize, to be smart enough to earn it. You also have to work hard and put in the hours. I think everyone can recognize that. However, once you were "smart enough" it didn't matter how smart you were. It was more a matter of threshold than an absolute. Someone with a 170 IQ was no more likely to win a nobel prize (based off of results) than someone with a 135 IQ. However, once you fall below that threshold you will almost certainly never win won.

Another example was in an advanced musical school. All of the people who got into the school were very talented. But some of them were going to be soloists, some were going to be 1st chair in a large symphony, others were going to be music teachers who never really got to play at the highest level. The thing that separated these individuals was work. When they added up the total time THROUGHOUT THEIR ENTIRE LIFE that they had practiced, it worked out that people who practiced more got the better jobs. There was not even one example of a "phenom" who got their in less time. There was no example of a grinder who worked harder than everyone else in his group by a substantial margin and worked his way in. Even in chess this is true. Bobby Fischer (a "phenom" player) played 10,000 of chess before he was rated a grandmaster - but he did it in 9 years, rather than the 10 it took most other grandmaster chess players.

This, I believe, holds true in poker as well. You must have a certain natural talent. You have to be smart enough and talented enough to play at the highest levels. If you don't have that natural talent, then no amount of work is going to get you there. You simply do not have the tools to make it. However, if you have those tools then the only thing holding you back is work.

I imagine that at each level there is a skill threshold. It's, unfortunately, like the Peter Principle. The Peter Principle states you will continue to improve and get promoted in an organization as long as you succeed, and will no longer get promoted once you stop. Therefore, the people in positions of authority who are good at what they do will eventually spend most of their working life at a level they cannot succeed at.

This holds true in poker. If you beat 10nl then you go to 25nl. If you beat 25nl you go to 50nl. 50nl to 100nl, 100nl to 200nl, until you start losing. And most players will bump their head against that losing level that they do not have the capacity to beat and will keep taking shots and losing.

While hard work matters a great deal, if you do not have the fundamental skills and abilities to succeed then you will not be able to work your way into that higher level of play. But if you have those skill sets, then hard work will get you the rest of the way.

For me, I choose to play at the level I play at because I recognized that I have probably capped out my skill level. I don't have the capacity for nosebleed play. I can actually bear higher levels than I do play, but I choose not to because of the work it takes and because I have a better winrate with lower risk at the level I am at.

Just some thoughts I had.
 
bkniefel

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I believe talent is relative with hard work. Obviously if you work hard towards your goals you will typically achieve them.

Talent in my eyes is how quickly your hard work pays off.
 
rifflemao

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This, I believe, holds true in poker as well. You must have a certain natural talent. You have to be smart enough and talented enough to play at the highest levels. If you don't have that natural talent, then no amount of work is going to get you there. You simply do not have the tools to make it. However, if you have those tools then the only thing holding you back is work.

I'm currently reading Positive Poker by Dr. Tricia Cardner with Jonathan Little, and there is a section in it on Grit. Here's a related article on it:

Grit: The Key to Being a Poker Success

I don't think you need to be a genius or have natural talent for poker to be successful, but you do have to be willing to put in the work and "deliberate practice". In short, there is hope for some of us dummies. :icon_joke

Angela Duckworth on Grit:

 
AllinIgor

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Well, I believe that hard work has its merits within the poker. The natural talent of a player, requires study. I guess nobody is uniquely endowed to play poker, or any other kind of sport.
Imagine Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson Pro Basketball, Pele or Ronaldo for soccer. These guys are monsters and icons of the sport, yes I agree. But they trained hard to be the best.
I prefer to believe that with dedication, anyone can push the boundaries. Life is more beautiful and meaningful if we believe it.
Just my opinion =)
Gl to all!
 
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Well, I believe that hard work has its merits within the poker. The natural talent of a player, requires study. I guess nobody is uniquely endowed to play poker, or any other kind of sport.
Imagine Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson Pro Basketball, Pele or Ronaldo for soccer. These guys are monsters and icons of the sport, yes I agree. But they trained hard to be the best.
I prefer to believe that with dedication, anyone can push the boundaries. Life is more beautiful and meaningful if we believe it.
Just my opinion =)
Gl to all!

Hard work is 100% necessary to be as good as you can become. However, you must be above the threshold of natural ability to be good enough to play poker at a high level.

Consider this, if someone is mentally handicapped, perhaps downs syndrome which is not terribly debilitating, then they are not going to have a number of the skills you need to be good at poker. You need to be able to read situations, make inferences, and be able to make split second decisions.

People who have a higher natural ability at this will do better. However over a certain threshold (good enough) it doesn't matter if you are smarter or better at math, or can make better people judgments. You just have to be "good enough." In my nobel prize example, "good enough" was a 135 IQ. After a 135 IQ it didn't matter how smart you were. It has more to do with work and effort. If you don't have a 135 IQ, you are out of luck. Sorry that's life.

Its the same in poker. If you don't meet the threshold for greatness (which probably takes a number of factors that most people don't have enough of) then you will not be able to "work yourself" into that skill level. But you probably do have the attributes to be "good enough" for lower levels of poker play.

I think people need to accept that most people are not going to be good enough to beat the highest levels. But you are good enough to beat some level of poker. Find out what that level is, it will take time, and beat it. And have fun doing it.
 
AllinIgor

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I understood what you meant, but his supposed theory is unproven.
I understand that there are many different levels of players, in which each will be victorious, and not others, as there is in any other sport.
What I'm saying here, is how each will react in the most variable levels in your career.
With effort and dedication, anyone can be overcome.
But now the big question:
All will be victorious?
It is very difficult to answer. We can speculate that the vast majority do not.
Now, stating for example that "Daniel Negreanu" born to play poker.
Do not believe it, believe in the dedication that he had to master the game.
Is above the natural ability is a very broad question, which is theoretically proven nothing!
 
rifflemao

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Here is a TED talk on grit and talent by Angela Duckworth, Assistant Professor of Psychology at UPenn.


Here is her grit test.

She basically says that grit is a better predictor of success than talent or natural ability.

I'm not sure what kind of natural ability some of the younger poker greats had when they started out, but it seems that players who started in games like chess or Magic The Gathering tend to do very well in poker. I would say that hardcore gamers in general have developed some natural ability for online poker.

I think that great online multi-tablers like Greg Merson and winning SNE's on pokerstars clearly gain an edge over the rest of us because they hit the 10,000 hour threshold (and\or Xmillion hands-played threshold) faster. I try not to think about it because it's discouraging.

Merson had some early failures in poker to overcome though, along with some personal hurdles. I would definitely say that guy has both talent and grit, but I think the latter served him most in becoming a world champ.
 
BigJamo

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Yes me too.

I believe the hard work pays off. Cause if your talented enough & put in the hard work, thr rest falls into place.

Much the same as an elite sportsperson.
 
rytciaq

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I believe that it's 20% talent and 80% hard work. If you would ask any professional, not only poker, but anyone who has reached a lot in his life, would say that talent is not the main thing to achieve something hard in life.
 
Arjonius

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IRL, it's not as simple as a binary model. Having equal natural talent and working equally hard doesn't necessarily mean two people will learn / improve at the same rate or ultimately reach the same high level. For instance, what about the quality of education / coaching / training / mentorship different people receive? For things that require funding, access to that isn't equal either.
 
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IRL, it's not as simple as a binary model. Having equal natural talent and working equally hard doesn't necessarily mean two people will learn / improve at the same rate or ultimately reach the same high level. For instance, what about the quality of education / coaching / training / mentorship different people receive? For things that require funding, access to that isn't equal either.

100% yes.

That all goes in to the 10,000 hours though. If you have natural talent at something at an early age you are more likely to be selected at that thing and be given the opportunity to do it more often. You get the dedicated practice time with a good coach, or mentor, earlier and more often.

If you are not in an environment where you have access to getting dedicated meaningful training and practice then it doesn't matter how talented you are. If it is a skill based thing, then you will need that time.

Quality of education is important, but I think that it is more the student in the quality education system is more likely to be pushed based upon social influences rather than the education model.

If you live in a high class home, then you are more likely to go to a high class school. If you live in a high class home you are more likely to have parents that value education (because they likely had it as well). If you have parents that value education you are more likely to be pushed to pursue and value education as well. If you pursue and value education you are more likely to put in the necessary time to get better at the thing you are working on. The school is a by product (at least in america) of the tax structure of the homes around it.

That is why independently motivated students can perform at a similarly high level regardless of the social class they come from. However, when taken as a whole you are looking at the social strata of their environment, rather than the individual.

EDIT - I wanted to point out that I am not talking about a binary model. There are a lot of factors that come in, but the most important 2 things, the two things that will make a difference fundamentally - are if you have the talent threshold and if you work hard enough for it to matter. Everything else can give a little temporary bump, but not enough to over come those two things.
 
AllinIgor

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Hard work or natural talent part 2

I come here to open this discussion very well posted by our friend Ubercroz again. What it really takes to become a successful poker player?
We all want to be proud of who we are and what we have done. Want the satisfaction of knowing that we take the maximum of our potential. In summary, we all want to be successful in our own eyes and in the eyes of others.
do not have that answer, so this post will be to share the same I think with you and maybe we arrive at an answer.
In the case of natural talent, we can include physical sports, "Athletics for example."
There are athletes physically born with a compatible body structure coming near perfection to racing 100/200 or 400 meters.
This is the natural talent that the individual may have. No use the effort of a person that has no physical fitness endeavor or study something, it does not come to success.
But when it comes specifically to mind sports poker pictured here, I change my opinion.
Specifically in poker, what we can do is watch, especially the different players. We reached a point in poker that the difference between an average player and a player of high level decreased enough and small details make a big difference.
I think confidence, perseverance, tranquility, balance, positive attitude are some of the talent that these players possess that make them different from others.
Something I can conclude is that a physical talent can really be unique and impossible to be equal, but a mental talent still seems possible to be trained. It may be too much work and sometimes requires drastic changes, especially on ideas. Sometimes we get so immersed in our certainties that seems unimaginable open mind to other ways of seeing.
What seems to me to be equal to all the winners, not only in poker but in life, is the ability to open our minds to new directions.
 
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A famous (Sports) coach once said "Talent is overrated, Attitude is more important".
 
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avjul66

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For me it´s a combination of the two talent and hard work
Talent is not enough you need to study the game and the players and all of that and this is hard work but one key element don´t Forget it it´s Lady Luck
the cruel lover that leaves you either heartbroken or in heaven
 
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Both are important, but if you work hard enough most of us can become top players. You may not have the talent to be the very best player out there, but you can be great at anything if you try hard enough. This can probably be applied to anything in life.
 
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fordman427

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In my opinion to be the best player you can be you need to be talented as well as hardworking
 
ccocco

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as I said in another forum. the talent is not enough there to study hard poker. to be a great player. those who have the talent to see the gestures of other players have always lead in the live poker .. but for me the most talented serving in poker is intuition .. and cheat to steal the blinds. without those things does not become a great poker player. It is my simple opinion. regards
 
Faust

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I believe that it's 20% talent and 80% hard work. If you would ask any professional, not only poker, but anyone who has reached a lot in his life, would say that talent is not the main thing to achieve something hard in life.

I agree with you. I believe that just hard work will get you far if you don't have a bit of talent, but talent by itself is useless in the real world.
 
hashtag

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Play some many hours.

Everybody will have different opinions on this subject. Fact is, hard work is not everything. Natural aptitude will get you there a lot faster. Those without this will give up before that, or stay at a level.

Seriously, people talking about Galfonds words like this as if he said something wrong is not quite right.

Play some many hours like he surely has and maybe this may make sense.

Some good comparisons to other subjects were made by OP. If you cannot relate to another subject that you exceptional at, then perhaps, there are many things said here that will not be readily digestible.
 
SeaRun

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Many great points above, and none that I can disagree with.

My thoughts are hours and thousands of more hours hard work and training is useless without some natural born skills, and vice versa.

Football and basketball (as the example someone used above), Jordan and Majic were unnaturally good, as with Pele and Renaldo. Did they work hard, damn straight they did. But I'm sure there are people who worked harder and didn't make it as far in the sport.

Let's look at poker. Hard work and studying & playing a lot pay off in experience. But you need either some math skills to be able to calculate odds quickly and accurately (or a photographic memory to memorize every possibility). You need guts, something I'm not sure can be learned. To play live, you need a live, you need to be able to emulate someone like Durr, steel faced, no emotions, no shivers or shakes, no tells. Not really sure that can be learned.
 
rifflemao

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There was some interesting info and debate on this topic in the Phil Galfond interview thread, which I somehow missed until now:

https://www.cardschat.com/f49/phil-galfond-omgclayaiken-interview-answers-members-240519/

I guess the question I've been most interested in is: can a person of average or slightly above average intelligence learn enough about poker to be successful (win life-changing sums)? That's really all I care about. I'm never going to be a 12-hour a day online grinder and I have no desire to be, although I would happily play for 12 hours in a live tourney. So I lean toward the idea that grit and determination can get help you attain your goals in the absence of genius and natural analytic ability.

Speaking of genius, I suppose it's a good thing there is luck in poker, or Phil Hellmuth would always win. :D
 
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Talent + hard work = Michael Jordan
Talent + soft work = Lamar odem
Less talent + hard work = Tim Duncan
Lol
 
Staneff

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In my opinion a person with talent for playing poker will always find it easier to choose the right move in a situation. This is usually proper for new players w/o enough experience, but to become a really good poker player you should play every day and improve your skills. Every day missed not improving your skills means some1 other is already beyond your skill level. Players w/o talent can be as good as other talented players if they work hard and gain what they havent had freely. The way of becoming a suxessful poker player is long, for some people even longer, but never endless. Although people learn till they are alive.
 
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I guess the question I've been most interested in is: can a person of average or slightly above average intelligence learn enough about poker to be successful (win life-changing sums)? D

I think I made a mistake when I labeled this thread "Talent v. Hard Work" Its not really a question of "talent" its more an issue of aptitude.

Lets say that there was a minimum to get into the NBA. You had to be 6'6", no shorter. That is the only requirement for entry. Well now we have a threshold - if you are tall enough you have a shot. If you are not tall enough you do not. being 6'11" doesn't give you an advantage over 6'6", because it is a threshold. It's just a minimum requirement.

Lets expand that example to poker. To be a winning player you must be smart enough to at least understand pot odds. You need to be clever enough to put your opponent on a solid range. And you must be disciplined enough to fold in tough spots. That is the threshold. To be a winning player you must do those things. The degree to which you can do them will dictate what level of poker you can play at.

No amount of hardwork is going to make you smart enough to understand math. You could teach someone with a 75 IQ all day and they will not get algebra. No amount of effort is going to make you good at reading tells. You either have the ability to recognize facial expressions or you don't. Someone with autism could never get it. You must have self control. You can teach yourself to be better, but if you don't have the capacity, you just don't have it.

These are all just examples. But, whether you like it or not, if you don't have the capacity to be a winning player - THE MINIMUM THRESHOLD - you will never win at poker. You will only lose because you don't have the base attributes to make you a skilled poker player.

Once you meet the minimum its hard work. You will then work as hard as you can and you will realize the maximum of your potential. Your maximum could be beating 10nl forever, and never beating 25nl. Thats okay. You just have to recognize it and accept it.

Capacity plus hard work is what makes an elite poker player. anything less than the maximum of both will leave you somewhere else.
 
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Hardwork, you must study a lot to be a good poker player, in long time you will have better results
 
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