OPTIMIZING STUDY HABITS IN POKER
MENTAL FOUNDATIONS
Welcome to a new Peak Performance Poker Blog.
Today, I want to touch on a central theme in the process of every Professional Poker player: Study.
Here is a summary of what we’ll be discussing in this Blog:
Tip #1: Setting up the study plan.
Tip #2: When to study?
Tip #3: Use Active Recalling
Tip #4: Motivation and progress
Tool #1: Study plan template.
Over these years working with Poker players, a central point where I find many difficulties is in the routines and the study process players have.
The problems range from low study hours, difficulty prioritizing study topics, identifying which areas need improvement, lack of motivation, procrastination, etc.
The truth is, playing is extremely important. Still, if we don’t accompany it with an efficient study process, we’ll likely find ourselves constantly repeating the same mistakes or feeling the difficulty of executing certain knowledge consistently under pressure in competition.
Let’s understand, no matter what game situation we’re in, the pressure while competing will be there. It may be greater or lesser depending on the circumstance and our experience, but regardless of the intensity, it will exist and affect our performance.
As a result of an inefficient study process and routines, players often experience boredom, frustration, and lack of progress. Others do it out of obligation and spend hours studying something they won’t learn and consolidate because they’re forced to. Finally, there are also those who find it difficult to prioritize what and when to study.
That’s why my goal in this blog is to share some tips to help you set up your study plan. Because a plan is essential to progress as a player.
Before getting into the tips, we need to make an important distinction: Within our study hours, we can do 2 activities: Review and develop new skills. This distinction is extremely important as both activities are fundamental parts of an efficient study process.
We can understand the Review as the process of analyzing hands and the respective decision-making process, both ours and our opponents.
On the other hand, the development of new skills corresponds to the work we do in our game to be able to execute it consistently in competition. I emphasize the last sentence “executing it consistently in competition” as one of the most important parts of this article. No matter how much we know something, or feel comfortable with a skill, if we are not able to execute it consistently in competition, then there is still work to be done there.
Having said this, let’s move on with the article’s tips:
Tip #1: Create the Study Plan
The most important thing is always knowing where we’re going. That’s what the Study Plan is all about.
Setting up a study plan in Poker can be very overwhelming. There are so many topics to work on and in such depth, that spending many hours setting up this study plan can be counterproductive. So my first recommendation is: From less to more. If we don’t have experience in planning, let’s start with the basics. We often procrastinate because we get into very difficult territory that we know little about. Again, from less to more.
If you feel comfortable, you can put together something more complex. Otherwise, start by answering the following question:
What are the basic skills in Poker that I should execute consistently in competition? This question can even be worked on with your Poker coach or you can use hand reviews to do your analysis.
Then we move on with the next question: From the list made, which can I execute consistently under pressure? Exactly, it’s dividing the list we made into 2: Those we can execute consistently in competition and those we can’t. At this point, we must be extremely honest, no matter how much we know about a topic, we may be specialists off the tables but if we can’t then transition it to competition, that means we need to continue working on that skill/knowledge.
Those we can execute in competition, consistently, we will leave aside and concentrate on those we need to work on: From 1 to 10, what is my level of skill/knowledge on that topic? Remember to rate it according to the stakes we’re playing. Logically, the higher we play, the higher the level of the players, so for skills that we rate at 8 playing $50 tournaments, we’d probably rate at 4 if we go to $500 tournaments. But we want to work on the present, so first let’s see where we stand.
Now the next question is: From this list, which skill/knowledge will substantially improve my game if I work on it? This is where we start to prioritize according to which will have the greatest impact on our performance or which we need to work on more urgently. You can assign priority labels like “HIGH”, “MEDIUM”, and “LOW”.
What do we have so far? A list of skills/knowledge, from most excellent to least impact on our game.
Tip #2: When to study?
This question has a critical reason. Studying during competition is not the most efficient. This is where your annual planning can pay off.
What times of the year am I with a high competitive load and what times of the year with a low competitive load?
If I play SCOOP and WSOP, does it make sense to propose to study HIGH priority topics in May and June? Of course not.
Now, I may have more study time during February, March, and April. These 3 months can serve as preparation. So we can ask ourselves the following question:
What well-developed skills would I like to bring to my next competition? When I say well-developed I mean: “Execute consistently in competition”.
Remember, studying is a very demanding process and requires time. We can’t expect to read a topic and assume that we will execute it in competition consistently. This is where the Hand Reviews we talked about earlier come in, you have to evaluate yourself and see if what you studied is within your performance. If it’s not, we have to keep working on it. That’s why is not smart to plan to study very important topics for a week before a big competition. Let’s be clever and give ourselves the time we need to learn.
Learning is a process that takes time and practice.
Tip #3: Use Active Recalling
Something in common that many poker players have is a graveyard of notes. Exactly, they study, take notes and then leave them lying around.
Memorizing is not the most effective. Nowadays, one of the best-used strategies is Active Recalling.
A routine that I highly recommend is, during the warm-up before starting your game day, take 15/20 minutes to review the notes from your study. But don’t reread them, use active recalling. First, try to remember what you studied on that topic, and then review your notes.
If you’re interested in learning more about Active Recalling, let me know so we can work on it in another blog.
Tip #4: Motivation and Progress
“Perform hand reviews to assess how you’re performing in your study topic”
In studying, motivation and progress go together. Experiencing a lack of progress or demotivation is extremely common, so it’s essential that when we start our study sessions, we focus on a topic and aim to execute it as best we can every game day. One reason we might experience demotivation in studying is that we don’t connect what we study with our performance. We don’t analyze our game; we don’t see the progress. When we begin studying a topic and see the progress, it directly impacts our motivation levels.
While motivation is more complex, feeling progress will significantly influence it.
One step at a time, let’s not get desperate, let’s give ourselves time to learn and perfect the skill. Let’s practice what we’re studying until we feel comfortable and confident. Do not rush the process.
Tool #1:
I want to leave you with a tool to help you build your study plan. You can see it by clicking here.
It’s a template, so you can fill it in with your information. Remember to first start with the list of topics to study, assign priority to them, and then based on that list, assemble the On-Going Study list. Don’t overload that On-Going Study list with too many topics, handle 2 or 3 topics at most. Once you feel comfortable and execute that topic consistently in competition, it can move to the Study Done section.
There are many more topics we can glean from this blog, such as study routine, annual planning, and active recalling.
Let me know if you’d like me to write about these topics and I hope these tips are helpful.
Remember, you can build your performance when you seek and find what works best for you. Don’t mimic, put your process to the test and work to find what makes you feel comfortable.
Best Regards