10/15/2010--I hate memorization!

There are a lot of things to learn about poker. In fact, with poker, as with any other field, the body of knowledge is always growing, and is for practical purposes infinite.

Assuming (incorrectly) that I could learn everything there is to know about No-Limit Hold'em Tournaments, there are all kinds of poker variants out there. There are even players that specialize in what are called "mixed-game" tournaments, which involve alternating as many as eight different poker games as part of the same tournament. For example, a typical eight-game format, according to Wikipedia, is alternating orbits of: fixed limit 2-7 Triple Draw, fixed limit Texas hold 'em, fixed limit Omaha Hi-Lo, Razz, fixed limit Seven-card stud, fixed limit Seven-card stud Eight or better, no limit Texas hold 'em and pot limit Omaha.

I know little or nothing about most of those games except for NLHE, with the exception that I played about 100 hands of fixed-limit hold 'em when I was so new I didn't realize that it was a different game at first (I couldn't figure why everyone was making such small bets!)

There are many other options out there: heads-up games (where you are playing one other person, just as you would in chess or checkers), cash games, more poker variants, and variants of the variants.

And then there is game theory, which is a branch of mathematics taught at the college level. Some of the top turning pros who are mathematically inclined and well-educated (some are PhDs) use game theory in their poker playing. My knowledge and use of game theory is very limited. I've read things about game theory, and I found a Harvard game theory class online and looked at a video of two of the lectures. I don't have the math background to actually take a course.

So, there is always more to learn, but something I've neglected, and that I really need to work on, is basic memorization. I'm scared of it. I'm terrible at it. It takes me a very long time. My son would say "it sucks." But it has to be done.

Everyone who plays decently knows about odds and outs. The idea is pretty basic. If you know how many cards are out there that can improve you to a winning hand, and you compare that to the size of the bet you want to make, you can figure out mathematically if it's the right play.

But you don't really have to do any math! All you have to do is memorize a chart. If you know that with one card to come, your odds of making your hand are 4.11 to 1 against, then there has to be enough money in the pot that if you hit your card, you will win more than 4.11 times the amount that you bet. Over time, this will make you money.

There lots of other basic tables that go beyond simple odds and outs, which very few players at the lower-to-intermediate levels bother to memorize (if they even know that such information exists). In a sense, it's free money. If I know something my opponent doesn't know, over time that is a significant mathematical (and financial) advantage.

Quick example: I know (either from observation or from tracking software) that my opponent is playing about 50% of his hands. I also know that the winning strategy is to play hands that are in the top half of his range. That means that if I'm playing my top 25% against his top 50%, I will win more than half the time, over time.

That's fine as far as it goes, but what are the top 50%, or top 25%, of hands? There's an app for that.* Well, not really, but there is a chart. It's on page 381 of Heads-Up No Limit Holdem, by Collin Moshman, and it's called, "Top N Percent of Starting Hands."

I haven't memorized that chart, but I need to. What good is knowing that I need to play the top 25% of those hands, if I don't know what they are? Well, here's the list:

Ace-seven offsuit+ (offsuit means not suited, and the plus means "or better", in this case, the lower card must be 7 or higher
Ace-two suited+
K9o+
K6s+
QTo (the "T" represents a ten)
Q8s+
J8s+
T8s+

That's it, in standard poker notation. If I'm against someone playing half of his hands, that list gives me exactly the hands I can play and be profitable. I don't have to do any math at the table. I don't even have to understand how the math works. I can play any suited ace. I fold any hand where the highest card is 9 or lower. Nothing to figure out, no guesswork.

If my opponent doesn't know that, or better yet, has no idea of the concept of playing against an opponent's range (the range of hands that he is likely to play in a given situation), then I have an advantage that untimately turns into money. But if I know the concept, but have to guess what cards are in the top 25%, I'm going to be a lot less successful. Knowlege is power, and memorized knowlege is hard to beat when my opponent doesn't have it. Humans know this instinctively, that's why kids like to play the game, "I know something you don't know."

So, I have to do it. I hate it. My brain is weird. I have a 99th percentile IQ. I have ADD. And I'm very, very bad at memorization--a college psychology professor gave me a memory test, and asked if I had ever abused drugs!

The answer to that question was no. I have never consumed an alcoholic beverage. I have never taken an illegal drug. I injest very little caffiene (no coffee at all).

Where someone else might be able to memorize that top 25% string of hands in 1 or 2 minutes, or at most, 5 minutes, it could take me 30-60 minutes of painstakingly adding one hand at a time, working my way up to knowing the full list. Multiply that by learning all of the hand ranges in intervals of, say, 5%, and we're talking about a lot of hours. If I was really meticulous and memorized at 1% intervals, I don't even want to think about how long that would take--but it's free money. I feel like Tevyeh in Fiddler on the Roof--on the other hand . . .

It's money that I can win from you, because I know something you don't know. And do I really want to work on this a bit at a time, over the course of a year or more? There are lots of very helpful charts and tables I could memorize that would benefit me greatly. My brain hurts just thinking about it, but I have to do something.

I guess it's time to make some flash cards and get to work.


*"There's an app for that" has recently become a trademarked phrase.