Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 12 October 2009 / Leave a comment

One of the hallmarks of all the best poker players is their ability to think carefully about every piece of information available to them. Poker is a game of extremely limited information, and as such, every scrap of knowledge that you can get has to be considered.

The reality of poker is that not only do you need to be able to understand numerous concepts, but you need to be able to put them together and act accordingly.

The very best poker players use every piece of information available to them in making decisions. Stack sizes, past behavior, game flow, pot size, blind structure, pot odds, all of these are factors that good players are constantly thinking about, not just individually but in there combined effect. Getting a great price on your hand is of little use if you are against a very predictable player and can be extremely sure that your hand is no good. Conversely, playing very loose in a game with small blinds and antes against short stacks is not a good idea, simply because they will shove so often pre flop (taking away the post flop edge essential to loose play), and the blinds are too small to be worth stealing.

When you first start playing poker, certain concepts appear along the way, each of which seems the most important (I remember first understanding the ins and outs of set mining and thinking that this single thing would take me to the highest stakes games, only to get crushed the minute I hit the stake levels where players not only understood this concept, but many others I did not). The reality of poker is that not only do you need to be able to understand numerous concepts, but you need to be able to put them together and act accordingly.

Sometimes this is blindingly obvious, as only one or two factors actually play a part in your decision making, but this is not always the case. The best players really show their skills in situations where lots of different factors have to be considered. Although most decisions in poker are quite simple, the ones that are very complex are the ones that make you a winning player or a losing one. Anyone can fold junk in early position, but playing a big pair out of position, against a good loose aggressive player, while very deep stacked, is the sort of situation where the money is actually won or lost.

Really try and analyze as many factors as possible when playing. The difference between good and great players is nearly always down to them not only spotting more factors than their opponents, but also being able to put that information together and acting on it. Look to put as many pieces of the puzzle when thinking about hands - it is considering as much as possible that will truly separate you from the crowd.

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