Ask The Poker Pro - Archive: Read onlyAsk questions to Online Poker pro, Jerry "Herschelw" Watterson on anything related to online poker and poker strategy. This section is brought to you by PokerPwnage.com.
I love watching hockey, which has cut into my poker time a bit. While watching hockey, I don't play poker online, but I deal hands and try to think about how other hands can beat mine, then turn them over and see what the outcome was. It gives me a better idea of what hands could be out there on the table.
Anyway, while I was watching hockey the other night I was thinking about habits people have.
I have heard of people watching TV while playing poker (obviously a donk move), and have also heard that you shouldn't even listen to music while playing.
So, I thought I would ask the pro's and the other forum members what you like to do when playing poker.
How do you try to increase your level of play and concentration? How do you keep yourself busy?
For me, I like to play with chips, as a lot might like to do, and I also drink a crap load of water. Like probably 5-15 glasses per hour.
Recently I have started talking to myself, and that has helped out a lot. I voice my opinion about each hand I am in and try to think about what is the correct play. I walk myself through the hand.
So, what types of habits do you use to help your game?
If i'm only playing one table I can pretty easily watch TV and play. Probably because I only play Limit.
Otherwise I just surf the internets and listen to music.
I watch hockey and play but its the Leafs so not to exciting where I cant turn away. When hockey on I only play one table and make notes that I will never use again. Music and porn are also great options. Learn to multi task and the ladies wil like u more.
You're on the right track, except the laptop is on her ass-back.
Sometimes I'll play with chips while playing online but I find it distracting and just another thing I might potentially throw across the room.
I'll listen to music if I really feel it won't distract me. I find music is a good anti-tilt.
I'm almost always in my housecoat when I play online, not only for easy junk access, but just cuz I usually play an hour after waking up.
Watching TV or reading forums while playing is pretty -EV for me.
Some good habbits:
- don't play tired. It's just so easy to play bad, then go on tilt, then play worse, then go on double tilt, etc. I usually play after a good night sleep and two cups of coffee. I'm almost always at my best this time of day. Any time after this in the day, I have to check myself before I wreck myself, meaning, I have to ensure I'm mentally alert enough to handle playing. If I don't think I'll play well, I just won't play. Once I found that playing tired usually lost me money, I half assed trained myself to not want to play if I'm tired.
- don't play high or drunk, but if you do, play microstakes relative to your normal game. For the first say 20 minutes of having a dewb, I'm super into it and paying a crazy amount of attention to the game, but after I burn out a little, it's hard to get past playing in auto-pilot, cuz my head just isn't into it any more.
I love watching hockey, which has cut into my poker time a bit. While watching hockey, I don't play poker online, but I deal hands and try to think about how other hands can beat mine, then turn them over and see what the outcome was. It gives me a better idea of what hands could be out there on the table.
Anyway, while I was watching hockey the other night I was thinking about habits people have.
I have heard of people watching TV while playing poker (obviously a donk move), and have also heard that you shouldn't even listen to music while playing.
So, I thought I would ask the pro's and the other forum members what you like to do when playing poker.
How do you try to increase your level of play and concentration? How do you keep yourself busy?
For me, I like to play with chips, as a lot might like to do, and I also drink a crap load of water. Like probably 5-15 glasses per hour.
Recently I have started talking to myself, and that has helped out a lot. I voice my opinion about each hand I am in and try to think about what is the correct play. I walk myself through the hand.
So, what types of habits do you use to help your game?
Also, what bad habits do you have?
I do both of those although I shuffle dice instead of chips. I drink a ton of water while I play. Roughly 4-5 bottles a night. I listen to music and talk strategy over skype with other players while playing tournaments but I have banned myself from chatting on skype during cash game play because it simply takes more focus for me to make the difficult reads and huge folds that are necessary for cash games. I also do not allow myself to surf the net or watch tv while playing. Distractions cost money. Anyone who is a pro or wants to be a pro really must treat poker like a job and make sure every decision they make is in the best interest of making as much money as possible(in an ethical way).
wtf? Your kidneys will be dead before your next birthday
That was a bit of an exaggeration.
I do drink a lot of water though. I take Maui Thai Kick Boxing classes and like to play after them a lot of the time. I find this is when I am most allert. Either way, after these classes I need a lot of water. I sweat more doing Muai Thai than you would sitting in a sauna doing yoga for 2 hours.
I do have a question though.
I started writing notes about each player on every table I was playing, but then realized they weren't helping me much in the long run. Here's why.
The players I wrote notes on usually changed if I ever saw them at a table again. I have barely run into the same person twice. I guess I am moving up in the stakes fairly quickly (went from $1 buy-in's to $11 within a few months of playing and still at a decent bankroll while winning) so the chances of seeing the same people would decrese a bit due to that I guess.
Also, everyone changes their game up in the later stages of the tournaments I am playing. So, if I mark someone as TAG at the beginning of a tournament, they might end up being loose and passive at the end.
Either way, what I have found to work nicely is to simply pay attention to everyone at the table when playing the game and try to figure out their playing style based on recent hands.
So, back to my question.
What types of notes to you keep and what do you include in your notes? Do you include the type of player each person is? Do you include some hands they played that made you question human intelligence?
I used to keep track of each time a player saw a flop and compared them to every other player at the table at hand. I would also keep track of how many times they raised and called a raise pre-flop. I started getting good at it, but felt it was a waste of time. I wasn't seeing a lot of other things I should have been paying attention to.
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