Whether or not you’re participating in the April Bookclub, I hope you’ll find my latest poker strategy article, “Idealistic Extremes“, to be of interest. It extrapolates on the meaning of a key phrase from Tommy Angelo’s introduction to Elements of Poker and talks about its implications for how you should think about improving as a poker player:
I just began rereading Tommy Angelo’s Elements of Poker, and in his introduction, I came across a sentence I underlined on my first read-through, a sentence that changed the way I approached my attempts to improve as a player even though I promptly forgot where I first encountered the idea. Angelo writes, “This book is about imagining idealistic extremes and then implementing practical methods of moving toward them.”
I’d heard generic advice about visualizing success before. It always seemed like vacuous mumbo-jumbo to me. What good would it do to imagine myself sitting alone at the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event, a fistful of hundred dollar bills in each hand? How would that make me play better or bring me any closer to actuallysitting at that table?
Turns out I had it backwards. It’s not about visualizing yourself as the winner. It’s about visualizing yourself winning, playing like a winner. It’s about knowing what it looks like and what it feels like to be playing your very best poker, and then about charting a course towards achieving that vision.
Understanding this concept is critical to reading Elements of Poker correctly, and it should be a big help to you in improving as a poker player as well. So I hope you’ll find something of use here!
It’s a concept that is akin to many QBs sitting out NFL
training camp.
You’ll often hear them say “I took a lot of mental reps”
This isn’t just lip service.
By going over every detail of every play in their head,
and what they would and wouldn’t do differently from what
they are seeing lets them prepare in ways, that to some
degree, may be better than actually practicing.
“Of course, no one is entirely free of tilt and frustration.”
The ownership of the thoughts have to crate magnetic pull attraction -ego prison.
“I” experience frustration.My mind makes projection that “I” am
that subject.
Okay I’ll be honest after reading this article I am telling myself “I should never just call on the river.” 🙂
And the lack of confidence = compromise was a good point.
add that with what Ed Miller said about playing a good opponent’s blob range, just play your hand vs. compromising (give up, check down…etc)…
The superuser analogy was great. As someone that read hands well, it was a good reminder that I have to loosen up pre-flop, especially in position and attempt to find games/tables where the effective stacks are deeper as it rewards that skill differential.
*reads*
[insert can read but not write joke here]
I think this is a great piece of advice that can be applied to many more things than poker, as indicated by the poster. This could be why role models are so great to have. They provide a great source of inspiration and motivation. Furthermore they provide the idealistic extreme which we can strive for by copying their habits.
Thank you so much for sharing idea!
Thanks Student!
Loved this latest article. Very interesting stuff that I will be thinking about and trying to apply for quite some time.
Thanks, Sean, glad you liked it!
Thought provoking.
Interesting calculus to consider the level of pre flop “mistake” that is nevertheless profitable for a SuperUser. And how many streets of “mistake” can a SuperUser profitably “invest” against any particular Villan given their respective stack sizes, abilities and tendencies?