Simplify Your Strategy
You’ve raised preflop from the cutoff 150bb deep with Q♣️T♦️. Both blinds call.
The flop comes J♣️8❤️4♣️. They check to you.
You begin to think about all you’ve learned about the spot.
“Okay, I have a gutshot + overcard + club blocker. This is a good betting hand. I block continues, I have equity, and I can barrel on lots of turns and rivers.
Or would I rather check back because I can defend against small turn probes? Plus I can delay c-bet, or even raise a turn bet?
Or wait, is this a spot that they should bet big on turn or small? I know I looked at a spot like this, but it was heads-up to the flop – not three-handed…
No, I should bet. I remember hands like this usually bet.”
Then, you wonder: Should I bet big or small?
“What is the pot size? I raised to $80 and they both called. No ante. $240.
I think I split sizings against one opponent but should I only bet small against two opponents?
I’ll bet…”
Hang on a sec!
Firstly, well done on having all of those thoughts. Good stuff.
Have you had time to think about your opponent’s tendencies? Or your image – what they think of you?
Do you recall whether or not they check-raise the flop too often, or if they fold too much against turn cbets?
Did you pick up any reads on either of them? Do either of them seem unfocused or tilted?
I guess, since I could hear all of those thoughts going through your mind, I know that you didn’t have time to think about these things.
And that’s a problem. Trust me.
Winning Poker
As I mentioned in my post about not playing like a solver, most of the money you’ll make at the poker table will come from exploits – from making reads on your opponents and then adjusting your strategy accordingly, sometimes in a major way.
These reads can be momentary reads (He looks like he’s weak here!) or historical reads (She calls down way too much).
In order to remember historical reads, to notice momentary reads, and to logically deduce the right adjustment based on them, you need to pay attention to those things!
If you’re spending time and energy trying to figure out whether or not your hand is a good betting hand, or which of your three flop bet-sizes you want to use, you’re taking from your ability to do these, frankly, more important things.
You need to unburden your brain and
be able to find hugely profitable exploits.
You need to have less mental baggage if you’re ever going to reach a flow state.
So – what can you do about it?
System Shift
Psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts, as detailed in his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow."
He calls them “System 1” and “System 2.”
These aren’t physical parts of the brain, but rather conceptual models for understanding how our mind operates.
System 1 is like your brain's autopilot. It's super fast, automatic, and doesn't need you to tell it what to do.
Now, System 2 is your brain's grandmaster. It's slower, more careful, and doesn't do anything without you being fully aware of it.
These two systems work together to help us navigate the world. System 1, with its speed and intuition, helps us make quick decisions and respond to our environment rapidly. System 2, on the other hand, allows us to deliberate, plan, and make more complex decisions.
System 1 vs. System 2 in Poker
When it’s folded to you on the button in your game of choice, do you have to consider what size you’re raising to? Do you have to contemplate how to grab your chips or click the raise button?
Hopefully, you don’t, in which case, these things are System 1.
But, at some point in your poker journey, raising the button wasn’t so automatic. You didn’t know if you wanted to limp, or what size to raise to. You had to count your chips or figure out how to move the slide. It took some real thought – System 2!
This goes to show you that you can move things from System 2 to System 1 over time.
Now, one of the ways you do that is simply with practice, and it takes time. But we can fast-track it!
Simplify
If PIOSolver tells you that the optimal strategy is to use three bet sizes on the turn, does that mean you should?
If you compare a solver output with multiple sizings to one that only has one size, you’re usually going to see that reducing to only one size will cost you some EV in theory.
My take: Who cares?
I’ll take that EV loss every day if it means less study time, fewer mistakes, and, most importantly, more opportunity for my brain to work its magic during a poker hand!
Further, that fractional EV loss is rarely going to exist in practice. In theory, if your opponent knows they’ll only face 35% pot on the turn instead of a mix of 35% and 100% pot, they get to check a range that is well equipped to face 35% pot and relatively less equipped to face 100% pot.
In practice, most of your opponents either won’t know your strategy, won’t think about the impact of it, or won’t know which hands to shift from bets to checks and vice versa even if they do understand it.
Fewer Leaks
The best reason to simplify your strategy is so that you can fast-track getting more of your System 2 thought process into System 1 so that you have the mental bandwidth to find big edges.
The second best reason is that you’ll make fewer mistakes.
Those astute opponents who might know how to claw back a fraction of a big blind in EV by facing only one size are nothing compared to the excellent hand-readers who will spot holes in your story and make +10 big blind EV hero calls against you.
If you have two sizings on the flop, turn, and river,
that’s eight different betting ranges to balance.
Not to mention the countless other ranges that involve checking at some point in the hand!
There’s essentially no chance you’re going to be balanced regardless, but the more ranges you need to juggle, the easier it is for a tendency to create a huge hole in your game.
As soon as you develop the habit of betting a certain size on the flop with a specific hand, and then your turn heuristics tell you to only overbet a certain hand category, and so on… you’ll end up telling stories that don’t make sense from time to time.
This is where a true shark will tear you apart.
Bandwidth Is Key
Of all the points above, the one I really want to hammer home is the importance of freeing up as much of your mental bandwidth as possible at the poker table.
I think that players with no understanding of optimal play can far outperform players who routinely study solvers if the studious player is spending all of their energy trying to recall and implement solver strategies. This is even more true in large-field tournaments or small-stakes cash games, where most of the money will come from exploits.
The best players will study solvers so much that their fundamentals become automatic.
Or, if they take my approach, will study enough with simplified strategies that their fundamentals become automatic (much faster).
Either way, you need to give yourself the freedom to deviate from what you’ve studied, and you need to give your mind the space to process as much as possible in the moment.
Poker isn’t football or basketball – it’s not a true sport.
But it is a mind sport.
In mental and physical sports, it all comes down to performance.
You can have the most poker knowledge in the world, but if you can’t perform in-game, you’ll be outplayed.
Free up that bandwidth and perform like a champ.
