I read a few comments Phil Galfond had posted about his thought process and it really got me thinking.
The most important bit of quick advice I could give is to ask yourself 'why' all the time. Why is he betting this turn? Why did he call flop and bet river when I checked behind on the turn? What could he do that with? What is he thinking? What does he want me to do? Why did he raise to that amount? What's he trying to accomplish? Does he want to look strong or weak? Does he want me to fold or call or shove?
I realised I don't do this, at least not anything like as much or a systematically. My thought process has a lot less "whys", it's more like, I have TPTK, he's called the flop and donked the turn, crap, he's kind of passive - I'd better fold. Not "why did he call the flop here?", "why is he donking the turn instead of c/ring?", etc.
Galfond goes on to say:
You kind've have a mini checklist in your head 'will he call worse hands here? no. Fold better? Maybe. If I check can he bluff a lot? Yeah. OK check.'
I thought this was kind of simple brilliance. I've learnt when I should value bet (worse hands will call), and when I should bluff (better hands will fold) but I don't think I apply it with discipline every single hand OR consider all of the alternatives.
If Galfond thinks in this mini-checklist manner, that seems to be something that is, at least partly, learnable and can be partially replicated. So:
- I'm trying to get a feel for how good players think. Be great if any of the more experienced guys could post their thought process here. Now, I know it's going to be way too complicated in a lot of scenarios and it's impossible to measure all the factors that go into a hand (and this is a key skill) but still getting an idea of this would be useful.
- As a second step, I'm going to scale back to one table and apply a methodical thought process for a couple of weeks to try to learn how to think about poker better.
I figure it can't do any harm - any comments on your thought processes would be much appreciated.
