Time to re-assess (part 2)

PKR presents the best of Bluefire poker's Phil Galfond.

Since the smartest and best in the world routinely overestimate their ability, I’m urging you to consider the fact that you might do the same. Just say to yourself, “Maybe I’m not as good as I think I am. Maybe I have something to learn.”

If it turns out that I’m wrong and you’re one of the best poker players in the world, no harm done. You’re so good that it doesn’t matter what I tell you. But, if it turns out that you have missed opportunities to improve yourself as a player because you thought you didn’t need it, maybe you’ll take this as a wakeup call. If you’re serious about poker — or anything else in life — you should constantly be searching for your mistakes. When you catch yourself making a bad play, you should be happy. Now you can fix it and become a better player tomorrow than you were today.

So, hopefully you’ve come to terms with the fact that you may not be a flawless poker player. What’s the next step?

Fixing leaks

The best way to become a better player, for most people, is to search for leaks and fix them. How do you find those leaks? Well, it’s not always easy to find them on your own, so I have a few recommendations:

• You can hire a coach to look at your play and identify your weaknesses. Good coaches can be expensive, but they are a great investment if you’re serious about your game.

• You can make some good poker-playing friends, or talk to the ones you already have. Even if you are both average players, having in depth discussions or arguments about your thought process can help a ton.

• Join an internet message board/forum. There are dozens of places online where poker players talk about how to play poker. I learned much of what I know from
www.twoplustwo.com. If you take this route, I suggest reading the forum avidly for a week or two before posting anything. (Just trust me on that.)

• Review your play. You can save all your big hand histories and go over them later. If you play live, you can document the action in a notebook. There are plenty of programs that track results online; Poker Tracker is the most popular, but there are others. Look back at all of your biggest hands and see how well you got your money in. See if there were better ways to play the hand. Sometimes you lose a big pot but played perfectly, and sometimes you win a huge pot although you played it terribly. Keep that in mind.
 

Since I can’t be there to coach each one of you individually, I’m going to go over some of the most common leaks amongst mid-stakes players. If you have none of these leaks, perhaps you are more advanced than the average reader, but I assure you: You have leaks. Don’t give up on looking for them.

Read Part 1...

Read Part 3...

© Phil Galfond. Originally published in Bluff Magazine (US edition)

Phil Galfond is one of the world's most successful poker players - you can use your PKR Points to subscribe to his hugely popular poker training site, Bluefire poker.