In contemporary theories about how we learn, a key idea is that each area of study is structured by a set of fundamental threshold concepts. The guiding theory is that in order to learn something new, one must be willing to accept a notion that goes against one’s natural and learned tendencies and beliefs, but once one fully grasps these threshold concepts, there is no turning back to old modes of thinking. In terms of poker, I want to examine ten key threshold concepts:
Some of these concepts are quite basic, but they require a transition away from our intuitive and default understandings of the world.
Don’t Focus on Making Hands
I remember when I first really started to accept this counter-intuitive principle. I was complaining to a friend that I wasn’t getting any hands in a tournament, and he simply said to me, “why are you trying to make hands?” I then started to think about the fact that the vast majority of hands never go to showdown. So from a certain perspective, it really does not matter most of the time what cards are dealt to you. What matters is what you are able to represent to other people. Of course, some hands do get to showdown, and so it is good not to just play any two cards, but on a fundamental level, one has to take a leap of faith and realize that poker is not about making hands. This threshold concept is so counter-intuitive because we can see our own cards, and we have been socialized to see the world in terms of a hierarchy of visible values. We also tend to believe that other people can perceive what we perceive, and so if we see two losing cards, we imagine that other people know that we do not have a strong holding.
Play Hand Range against Hand Range
Related to the idea of not focusing on your actual cards is the notion that you should think about how your hand range in a particular situation plays against the hand ranges of your opponents. Once again, this requires a great leap because you have to stop focusing on the cards staring you in the face and start to think about a set of hands you could be holding. You also have to stop the habit of putting your opponents on particular hands, and this process also goes against our common way of seeing the world. Many players can never make this transition, and so they are stuck locked into playing a more basic strategy--if they have any strategy at all.
Being Balanced
A threshold concept related to hand ranges is the idea that you should play different hands the same way in order to hide the true value of your holdings. Without a definite set of hand ranges, it is hard to imagine how you will be able to balance your strategy since you have to construct ranges based on the ratio of value-to-bluff hands. In other words, if you do not play the right set of hands, you will be unable to represent both bluffs and value hands at any particular moment. It is also vital to make sure that you do not end up on the river with too many value hands or too few bluffs, and so it is necessary to construct your ranges in such a way that you are unreadable at the river. By creating calling ranges, checking ranges, and raising ranges ahead of time, you make sure that you maintain the proper ratios between value hands and bluffs. However, this level of thinking requires abstracting yourself from your immediate perceptions so that you can perceive the game from a long-term, mathematical perspective.
Semi-Bluffs
Of course, it is not always possible to determine if a hand is a value hand or a bluff, and so the threshold concept of the semi-bluff was invented. Once again, this idea is not natural since we tend to try to divide things by oppositions, and we also do not like ambivalent situations, but it is essential to grasp the concept of the semi-bluff in order to know how to bet after the flop. In a well-constructed strategy, semi-bluffing helps to maintain the proper calling, raising, and folding frequencies because it can be based on breakeven odds and the minimal defense frequency. What makes this concept counter-intuitive is that it only makes sense within the total context of a strategy and not in the immediate perception of one hand against another hand.
Frequencies
The notion of defending your hands at a specific frequency in order to avoid being exploited is another threshold concept that can be difficult to grasp at first. Humans have a hard time tracking in a live game the number of hands they have folded or raised in a specific situation, and so it is important to think about general frequencies and to construct a system that takes into account the odds you are being laid by a particular bet size. For instance, if we know that we should call a bet 25% of the time, then we should make this decision based in part on an understanding of the 25% of our range we want to defend. This reliance on the odds is often hard for people to accept because they have a difficult time basing decisions on long-term statistics. In fact, what helps computers beat humans is that these machines have the ability to have perfect memory systems, and they are able to apply pure math without the need for emotion, intuition, or even understanding.
Don’t be Results Oriented
Not only do people often ignore statistics and odds, but they tend to judge their own actions based on the results and not the process. Many poker coaches are fond of saying, “don’t be results-oriented,” but this a threshold that has to be crossed because it is simply not natural to ignore short-term results. Once one realizes that one can lose 66% of the time and still turn a profit on a certain move, then one can begin to see that short-term results should be ignored. The problem is that you have to be trained to perceive the game in terms of abstract generalizations and statistical probabilities and not in terms of immediate gains and losses.
You Can’t Get Rid of Variance
Connected to this focus on results is the inability of people to accept the fact that you cannot eliminate variance from the game, and so there is no way of avoiding unlucky results or being beaten by unskilled players. In fact, it is wrong to speak of luck since variance is about the random distribution that no one can control. As a player, you have the ability to control your own decisions, but you cannot control card distribution or someone hitting the one card they needed on the river. Just as people have a difficult time understanding how evolution works without a design or designer, it is hard for poker players to remove intentionality from the random distribution of cards.
It’s All Mental
It turns out that one of the key meta-concepts of poker is the notion that your mental game is the most important thing because it affects everything else. For example, if you are not able to think rationally and control your emotions, you will not be able to remember to balance your range or bluff at the right frequency. A lack of mental discipline also blocks people from playing the right hand range from specific positions, and without focus and attention, one will not be able to track the play of one’s opponents. However, most people are not very self-aware, and they lack focus and mental discipline, and so it is hard for them to learn anything new and improve their game.
Playing the Player
Since one does not play poker against oneself, one has to constantly pay attention to the actions of one’s opponents, and in many cases, one needs to employ different strategies to match different player tendencies. In other words, you have to play the player, and this need to adjust your play for a particular situation is very hard for some people to accept. Most beginning players simply play the same hands in the same way regardless of their opponents because they are not able to clearly detect the mistakes in other people’s strategy. In fact, much of the money you make is by attacking the mistakes of others, and so it is vital to have a sense of the leaks in other people’s games.
Radical Self-Honesty
Another meta threshold concept is the idea that in order to learn and improve, you have to be completely honest with yourself about how you are doing. Players often lie to themselves because they do not want to feel ashamed for their mistakes or their losses, and in order to maintain a positive self-image, they tell themselves false stories about their actions. In order to take a leap in to radical self-honesty, one has to accept that we are all deeply flawed, and we only get better when we deal with the truth.
