One of the biggest leaps in any individual’s understanding of poker is when they make the step from being able to understand their opponent’s ranges with reference to their own hand, versus understanding their own ranges in great detail. It is this step that usually results in a massive improvement in performances, since the player’s thought process has moved up to an entirely new level.
How is this leap achieved? Well, it takes time and effort. It takes practice, just like anything else. But above all, it takes a big-picture vision. If you’re purely focused on studying one hand and figuring out what you should have done, at the expense of all other potential angles, you’ll miss out on a lot of important information that could have helped you make better decisions – you’ll be unable to understand the hand from your opponent’s perspective. If you’re struggling right now, this might be the key element your game has been missing.
It starts with your opponents
In order to get to this point, however, we first have to have a well-developed understanding of our opponents’ ranges – after all, we can’t really figure out what to do with our own range until we know what theirs is. This requires a consistent habit of thinking in terms of ranges, which of course requires a mindset that is at least partially focused on the long-term realities of individual situations. We can’t afford to be results-oriented if we want to think in terms of ranges – what our opponent actually had in any given hand doesn’t necessarily mean anything about whether we made a good decision or not.
As a result, developing a consistent practice for analyzing hands with regard to your opponents’ ranges is crucial. It’s simply not possible to shift your thought process in that direction unless you’re shifting your actions in that direction. I’d be surprised if anyone has ever truly reached this point in the process on their own, which is why connecting with other poker players and developing a broader approach to understanding player tendencies is essential.
Self-awareness and self-analysis
Similarly, this broader approach should also help you gain a better understanding of your own thought processes themselves, and in turn, your own weaknesses as a player. If your study partner is a better player than you and they think a particular play you made was really bad, for example, then you may start reconsidering some aspects of your own existing perceptions.
A consistent growth in your level of self-awareness requires a consistent practice of self-analysis, and thus a regular study habit is crucial. This is where so many players struggle – after all, playing poker is more fun than studying it for most people – but it’s where the greatest players gain the biggest edge. The ones who reach the top the fastest are the ones who have the most developed ability to develop regular study processes, and translate study time into concrete improvements – the guys who spend 10 hours getting what they could have gotten in 1 hour of more efficient study time are obviously going to take 10 times as long to reach the same level of knowledge.
Whether you do this by getting on a Skype call with some friends and talking over some hands, or posting hands on forums, or getting feedback from a coach, it’s all important – all three in combination is probably the best approach. The more different methods you’re using to increase your familiarity with your own thought processes, the better – as long as those methods are effective. If you’re just watching videos all day, that’s not helping you to actually solidify your thought processes, since you’re not being forced to explain anything yourself.
Learning to exploit yourself
One important aspect of this self-analysis is to look at the lines you’re currently taking and the plays you’re currently making, and think about how your opponents might go about actually exploiting you. If you were the villain in this particular hand, how would you play it? What would you do to exploit your own weaknesses?
This is one area where access to a GTO solver, like HoldemResources Calculator (preflop) or Simple Postflop (postflop), will come in particularly handy, but if you don’t have access to those tools, it can be particularly useful just to simply focus on developing a good understanding of the principles of exploitation – every imperfect strategy has an exploit, and if you can find it, you can improve your EV overnight against that particular opponent. In MTTs, many players have the same leaks, so studying the player pool in detail can help you figure out these leaks, and how your own playing style might relate to them.
If you figure out you have a tendency to three-bet a little too much in the small blind, for example, then start thinking about how an opponent might exploit that. Maybe the optimal exploit might be to 4-bet bluff more often, but perhaps the players in your player pool are more likely to flat-call your 3-bets more frequently instead. What effect does that have on your flop strategies in these spots? Are your flop c-betting ranges too wide, or too tight in these situations? These questions all have answers, and it’s your job to find them.
Just keep talking poker
Finally, as a way of reinforcing what I’ve already said, I’ll stress the importance of regularly engaging with other people on the topic of poker. If you’re not developing a better understanding of how other people perceive your approach to the game, you’re not improving as a player, because your level of self-awareness is standing still.
A steady increase in your capacity for evaluating your own game will lead to a steady increase in self-awareness regarding your own strategies and tendencies, and that increase will lead to a better understanding of your own ranges in individual situations. This, in turn, will make your decisions more effective by an increasing magnitude, as your edge over your opponents in this area grows bigger.