Time Away From the Table is as Important as Time at it
While the concept of playing more hands to learn poker faster does run true, it can often be the time spent away from the tables that helps players the most.
When I first discovered online poker I wanted to play it at every opportunity that arose. To this day I still do. Waiting in a queue or soaking in the bath are no longer seen as time wasted because they are another opportunity to play online poker.
Ask any professional poker player for one tip and only one tip for players new to the game and wanting to improve and a large percentage of them will tell the newcomer to play as much poker as they can. The more hands of poker someone plays, be they played in cash games or tournaments, the quicker they will learn. That's the idea anyway. While the concept of playing more hands to learn poker faster does run true, it can often be the time spent away from the tables that helps players the most.
All poker players, regardless of their skill level and experience, should spend time studying the game and trying to improve their own. These days, this can be easily done thanks to the plethora of poker related software and online poker training sites that have flooded the market in recent years. You should try and find a happy medium between playing poker and studying the game. Personally, I prefer to use a 3-to-1 system where for every three hours I spend playing I study for one hour.
Tools such as Holdem Manager and PokerTracker are invaluable to players who want to track their results and find leaks in both their own game of that of their opponents and will often pay for itself within a handful of uses. Sitting down at the end of a poker session and going through hands that you played with one of these tools is a great way to improve your game and to lay the tilt-inducing demons to rest.
What should you look for when going through hand histories? I start by looking at the biggest pots I lost and seeing if I could have done anything different. I then flip that scenario on its head and look at the biggest pots that I won. Sometimes I will discover that I was very lucky to win a big pot, which is good to remember because poker players often forget they ever get lucky when they play, but always remember the times they do not.
As a tournament player, I also spend some time looking for spots where I could have potentially stolen the blinds, where I could have three-bet all-in to pick up chips and for missed opportunities to have put my short stack into the middle of the felt. In other words, I look for situations and scenarios where I possibly missed out on some value.
Other areas to look into are the hand ranges of your opponents and how your hand stacks up against that range. Turn off the option to see opponents' hole cards at all times and go through a hand street-by-street to see how your hand fares against their possibly range of hands. Trust me when I tell you that you will often be surprised at how well your hand performs and also how far behind you were, too.
Time spent away from the table is not only for studying the game and improving. Often, having a break for a day or two can work wonders for your game because you feel fresh and focused, which means you are far less likely to suffer from the dreaded burn out that is experienced by so many players of poker and other games and sports. Having hobbies and interests outside poker can have a positive effect on your poker playing because everyone needs an occasional escape from the game, especially when the chips are down and you are running badly.
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