What part of your poker game should you improve?

Image Credit - Raed Photography

A successful poker player has to be proficient in many different fields and gain many different skills throughout his or her career. While it's possible to neglect some of them and get away with it in the short run, the long run will - as always - catch up to you (and usually sooner rather than later).

There's nothing wrong with playing to your strengths and putting emphasis on certain parts of your game that you feel the most comfortable with, but at the same time, strong fundamentals in every aspect of poker knowledge are absolutely essential. In this article, we'll walk through the most important elements of every winning poker player's game and try to figure out which one of those elements you should improve if you want to get to the next level.

Preflop

• What's your default CO opening range?
• What's your button opening range given tight players on the blinds?
• What % of your button range do you defend vs. 3bet from default regular at your stakes?
• Tight UTG opens, recreational BU calls. What is your play with KTs in the small blind?
• What's your default small blind calling range?
• What's your open raise sizing and what's your reason for using it?

If you don't know how to answer those relatively simple questions you should consider taking a closer look at your preflop game plan. A good preflop game can help you increase your win rate and avoid many tricky postflop situations. Fortunately, preflop is the least complex of all the streets and there are a lot of o tools that you can use to improve your preflop decisions. 

First of all, if you're unsure what's optimal - fake it till you make it.Watch coaching videos of good players, pay close attention to the hands they are opening, calling and 3betting in certain situations. Be on the lookout for phrases like "this is probably the worst hand I'd raise in this situation", "you should be defending wide to 3bets vs. this aggressive opponent etc.". Keep in mind that you shouldn't follow the advice blindly, always think about reasons behind coach's decision. When in doubt ask questions in the comments.

If you're comfortable with your preflop ranges and you have some idea how to adjust them based on different table dynamics, it's time to optimize them even further. Fire up Equilab or Flopzilla and analyze different preflop scenarios, hand equities etc.

Math

• Villain bets 1,81$ into 3,37$ pot on the river. How often do you need to be good to make the call?
• You're cbetting 2$ into 3$ pot. How often does villain have to fold for you to auto-profit? 
• You're holding AhKh on Ac2c2d8s9h. Assuming villain has all of the non-2x boats in his range, how many combos are you losing to?
• How many outs gutshots + overcards?
• How much equity do you have with two overcards vs. top pair?
• Do you know how to calculate EV?

If those simple questions give you trouble you should invest some time in reading articles and watching coaching videos on the subject of poker math.While it is not impossible to win at poker without extensive mathematical knowledge, it is absolutely essential to be proficient at things like calculating odds, hand combos, stack to pot ratio, managing the size of the pot etc. 

Practice your basic math skills often. When analyzing a hand or playing at the table, get into the habit of calculating odds and combos. When you're playing against a recreational opponent, always keep the issue of pot management in the back of your mind. Be aware of your opponent's stack sizes at all times and avoid putting yourself in an awkward stack to pot ratio situations etc.

Consider including EV calculations in your poker education. This can really help you understand the game on a higher level. It's also a great way of gaining an edge over your opponents since complicated math is something that poker players rarely ever do. If you're particularly ambitious you can consider learning Poker Query Language and get answers to questions most poker players wouldn't ever dream of asking!

Mental Game and Planning

• What are your short term and long term poker goals?
• What's your warm-up/cool down routine?
• Do you have a stop-loss or stop-win?
• What's your bankroll management strategy?
• What's your strategy for minimizing the amount of time you're spending playing your c-game?
• Do you have a poker schedule?

While books recently fell out of popularity as a source of poker knowledge, they are still amazing at teaching players about the mental side of poker. Even the one that started it all "The Poker Mindset" by Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger is still worthwhile especially for people who aren't that familiar with the mental game of poker.

Speaking of which, "The Mental Game of Poker" by Jared Tendler (both volumes) should be another position on your 'required reading' list. "The Elements of Poker" by Tommy Angelo is one of my personal favorites. If you're still hungry for more consider reading non-poker related books that still touch on the subject of mindset and planning. It pays to be careful since some of the popular books have a rather loose relationship with science, but I can wholeheartedly recommend "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman and "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" by Leonard Mlodinow.

Conclusion

You're not going to become better at planning without... well... planning.

• Write down your short-term and long-term poker goals
• Think about your bankroll management strategy
• Make a poker schedule

Some people work best when they leave themselves a lot of room for improvisation and not everyone will benefit from elaborate plans but at the same time, not having a plan is an easy recipe for failure. 

Consider hiring a mental coach. While this won't be a cost effective solution for most players especially at lower limits, mid to high stakes poker professionals with a tremendous knowledge of math and poker strategy can find the missing edge in improving their mental game. Human beings are notoriously bad at assessing themselves and the outside perspective can often prove invaluable both when we're trying to optimize our betting patterns and when we're trying to soften the impact that tilt has on our game.

Getting into a habit of analyzing weak parts of your game and trying to improve them is the best recipe for becoming a successful poker player!

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection Mark Twain

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