Time does not equal effort

A lot of people seem to think putting a lot of time into their poker automatically means they are putting in sufficient effort. I have news for all those people. It doesn't!!

The time you put into your poker needs to be focused on improving and this is what pretty much everyone struggles with to some degree. People listen to the 'playing to learn' philosopy but do not truly understand what is required to be successful.

I hope that this post sticks in the mind of everyone reading, especially those to which it is aimed at, you know who you are :)

It is all well and good putting the time in. You play plenty of hands and learn from experience.

You do a session review and realise you played badly yesterday. Sometimes you review some hands and realise you didn't play as badly as you thought you did. The whole point of reviewing hands is to improve your thought process in order to make better decisions next time that spot comes around again. If that spot comes around again are you going to remember what you have learned from your session reviews? Maybe you will if that spot comes up again tomorrow but what if it doesn't come up for another 2k, 4k or even 10k hands? Are you going to remember anything from the session review you did 3 weeks ago? Have you studied this 'not sure what to do' spot sufficiently enough to ensure that you will know what to do next time, and have therefore eliminated the possibility that you will make the same mistake again?

Do you suffer from tilt at all? If so have you ever thought it may be a good idea to try and identify what makes you tilt and try to elimate tilt from your game? Tilting is unacceptable and should be taken seriously, not just shrugged off as something you do from time to time. If you need to study tilt then that's what you should be doing.

Do you find yourself reviewing hands but are just going through the motions (ie not putting the effort into your reviews)?

If you think you review your hands well answer some more questions. How many times have you written down your opponents range and analysed exactly how it connects with the board? How many combinations of each hand in their range do they have? How do you expect them to play each of those combinations if you bet?

How many times have you written down every option available to you for a particular street and calculated the EV of each decision? Uhm never? Thought so............

I don't doubt that lot's of people spend lots of time playing and thinking about poker when they are not playing. Putiing that time in does not mean you are going to win, nor does it mean you deserve to.

Time does not equal effort.