Flash cards

I'm off to a good start with a $250 cash ($50 tournament) last weekend.  When we were at the final table, someone said that it was one of the best final tables he had seen, and that everyone was a good player.

I agree, everyone was pretty good.  I'm good enough to be competitive and make a lot of final tables.  I belonged there.  Now I need to make it to the next step. I need to be the one with a big stack, When I sit down at the final table and look at the chip stacks, I'm rarely one of the top three.

I decided that to make it to the next level, my number one study priority has to be flash cards.  Instead of 15 minutes every day I am going to increase that to 30 minutes or more.  That was an abrupt transition, so I'll make it clear.

I need to get better at fighting the big stacks.  When someone has a lot of chips and is making a lot of big bets, I often just get out of the way. Choosing your battles (poker players call it "picking your spots") can be a good thing, but but at some point you have to stand up to the bullies.  One way to do that is to play in the top half of villian's range.  What I mean is that if villian is playing a lot of hands, say, opening with 30% of her hands, then I need to call with the top 15% of hands.  Over time, that will be profitable for me.

To do that, I have to know which hands are in a certain range.  I have to have a very good idea what hands are in the top 30% and I have to know what hands are in the top 15% so I know how to fight back.*  In my flash card work this week I've given a lot of attention to hand ranges.  I've worked on three groups of cards this week: odds and outs to hit the turn, top 10% of hands, and top 50% of hands.

I don't work only on hand ranges in my memorization work, but it will definitely be emphasized. I don't have a very good memory, so I have to come back to the things I know, like odds and outs, from time to time and make sure that I haven't forgotten them.

I have never heard of anyone using flash cards in their poker study, but I know myself pretty well.  I know what I'm good at, I know what I'm bad at, and when I'm bad at something I can almost always come up with a way to fix it or at least work around it.  Pounding the flash cards is a way to keep the things I need in my brain.

Today wasn't a good day for study or anything else.  I did the income taxes today and that ate up a lot of time.  I'm not going to get in a 50-hour work week, but I hope to do much better next week.

----------

*Anyone can download a poker equity calculator and type in a number, for example, 20% or 35%, and get a list of hands, but it's not quite that simple.  Putting a player on a range is, like many things in poker, both an art and a science,  Every player's top 20% is going to be a little different.  I play more suited connectors than most players. In your 20% you might have fewer suited connectors than the calculator suggests, but play suited cards more often.

Sometimes in poker the math rules, and in other situations it's just a good guide.