Are You Playing or Practicing?

In almost all sports, there is a clear delineation between practicing and competing. In contrast, every time you play poker for money you are in a competition. Unfortunately there are many times when you are in a competition, but playing as if you were in practice mode.

Let's define what I mean by practicing. During a practice, you think through the intricate techniques involved in a move or a play. You break those down into individual steps and you perform it repetitively in order to perfect the technique and make it second nature. You may simulate competition, but there is always an interjection of analysis in order to optimize your skills.

In a competition, however, to perform optimally you should be on auto-pilot, letting instinct take over. Thinking through each step on a conscious level is actually counter-intuitive to the goal of winning. I could expand more here, but there are several sports psychology books written on this subject (one is Winning Ugly, by Andre Agassi's tennis coach Brad Gilbert). Another book you can check out that talks about the power of the human sub-conscious is Blink.

So how does this apply to poker?
What can often happen during a session is that instead of playing, you are actually practicing. You may be new to the game and refer back to what a book said was the "correct" way to play or if you are a student of the game, you may try new plays in order to take your game to a new level. You may also decide to play against a particular person in a different way than you are normally would or might just be in a tough situation that you haven't had enough experience with to know the best way to proceed. In these situations, your actions have not yet become second nature and you revert back to "practice mode".

Practicing while playing poker is not optimal because you are taking too much time and effort to analyze each step and not playing a hand through to completion. You might be thinking only one step at a time and not an entire line (i.e. pre-flop without a plan for the flop, flop without a plan for the turn or river, etc.). Additionally, you may be analyzing previous hands which can prevent you from optimally attacking current and future hands.

And while poker is a thinking game, there is a line that can easily get crossed when you start over-thinking a situation. As you gain experience and have "practiced" a situation enough times, you can perform a very brief analysis and let instinct take over allowing for a more confident and fluid game.

So if you are always in competition, how do you practice poker?
Obviously you can read books and articles or even get a mentor, but that isn't the practicing I'm talking about. In order to practice, it involves either breaking down and analyzing skills or simulating a competitive environment. Here are a few ways:

• Post-hand analysis - Just like a football coach would watch film, analyze your hand histories after a competition. This can be done from live play or online. Also consider signing up for PokerXFactor to use their hand replayer.
  
• Participate in poker strategy online forums - But don't just read. Make comments about hands and how you would play them. It switches your brain from passive reading to active engagement, which will help you learn better. 2+2 is probably the best forum for strategy.
  
• Watch online play - Pick a few tournaments to watch, or even players you know are good. But, as with the forums, actively engage your mind by putting players on hands and thinking through how you would play a situation (and in this case you can make decisions regardless of cards, since you can't see what they have).
  
• Harrington on Hold'em's quizzes - Again with this one, don't read the answers until you've actually thought through the hand and answered it yourself.
  
• Simulate live play - You can do this by dealing out your own cards and play every position as if you don't know what they other cards are. You can simulate a full table, 6 handed or short handed play. This is something that was very helpful to me early on. It helped me understand how strong hands in late position are compared with those of the blinds because you can see the types of trashy random hands that they likely hold.

Now obviously, when you play you are going to find yourself in situations that you haven't practiced before. When those occur, do your best to play on a sub-conscious level without thinking too much. This is how you hone your instincts. Leave the hand analysis for later and separate practicing from competition.