The huge impact your friends have on your poker success
Barry Carter discusses how posting in poker forums and having friends to talk poker with is possibly the biggest way to get better at the game.
One of the great things about working for PokerStrategy.com is that you get to see a lot of fascinating data on poker trends in our back office. We do have over six million members after all, and I've learned a lot from this community.
I was blown away this week by something our Poker School guru ktu showed me. I can't reveal the exact numbers, but there is a significant correlation between regular posting in our strategy discussion forums, and future poker success.
Quite simply, our active forum members do better than our members who use all our other resources, but shy away from the forum.
This really excited me, because it confirms something I have always felt from years of interviewing the biggest names in poker. That the best way to learn the game, is simply to talk over hands with other poker players.
Poker from another point of view
I had spent several years learning poker through a variety of methods including books, magazines and training videos. However, I learned the most the first time I ever had a sweat session with a coach.
I remember a very interesting hand which to me seemed like a standard cooler, but the coach (A great guy called Stuart Menzies, shout out!) saw it differently and we discussed it for an hour. That single hand taught me more about poker than the years of self-learning before it.
The hand itself is irrelevant, it was the fact that I was talking about it that really accelerated the learning. It also helped that I had misplayed the hand, and was getting a much needed dose of reality from a better player.
Self-study is hugely valuable, don't get me wrong. However, it is inevitable that it is subject to bias; we will reject the hands that don't support the image we have of ourselves. When you get another person involved in the learning process, you will both see another viewpoint and have your own challenged. Which is much needed in a game of imperfect information.
Want to be the best? Befriend the best.
I have noticed this to be true whenever I interview top poker players. The one commonality they all have is their enthusiasm for talking about poker. You would think they would be sick of discussing hand after hand, but they are still as excited as they were when they first started.
Something always bothered me, however, with many of the top players. I noticed that when a lot of them had 'made it' they seemed to talk less about learning using the traditional methods like videos, books, doing equity calculations etc. I always wondered if they had gotten cocky and dismissive about their learning?
I now realise that what tended to happen is that once they reached the EPT levels of success, these more academic forms of learning would become replaced by more high level discussion.
After a certain level, the training material becomes sparse (There are not many videos on how to play $200/$400 against Viktor Blom). However, once a player reaches these levels they invariably hang out with more elite players like themselves. I now believe that socialising with players of similar standing is as valuable, if not more so, than any other form of poker education.
The average of the five people you spend the most time with
I have seen plenty of cases that would confirm this too. There have been so many cases where non-poker professionals become very successful players, because they work in the poker industry.
A good example would be Kara Scott, who started off as a broadcaster and knew nothing about poker, but after years of working on shows like Poker Night Live, Sky Poker and High Stakes Poker, has become a very successful player in her own right. Triple Crown winner Roland De Wolfe also started out as a journalist for a poker magazine (And I have several poker media friends who have gone on to become pros).
Maybe the best home grown example is our very own pleno1, whom I believe is one of the great PokerStrategy.com success stories. He started working for us essentially at the same level as most of our members, but after totally immersing himself in the culture and surrounding himself with likeminded players, he has gone on to become a hugely successful pro and currently ranked #1 in the UK for online tournaments.
This all confirms a great quote from Jim Rohn, that "you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with". What he means is that the best way to be successful is to surround yourself with successful people (and conversely, the best way to be a loser is to hang around with losers).
The power of poker forums
So going back to posting in our forums and talking about poker hands. I do believe it is the best all round way to learn anyway. It is challenging, dynamic and bespoke.
However, I think the main reason why it works is because it also adds a social element to the learning. If you can make friends as a result of talking about poker, that will provide a much needed element of motivation. It will give you more energy and reason to work on your game when you otherwise would not bother.
I dare say it is also probably a crucial factor of surviving downswings. Having poker friends reassuring you that it gets better and reminding you to concentrate on playing well during a tough time is probably vital. Something like that must be incredibly tough if you have to go it alone.
Personally I have got worse at poker in the last few years, mostly because I treat it almost entirely as recreation these days. But, if I am honest, maybe I never hit the heights of the great players precisely because I was always quite introverted when it came to discussing hands. I do know, however, that the best I ever played was when I was getting regular coaching from my friend Stuart and also jaredtendler.
I hope that persuades you to post more on our forums, or another forum, or at the very least to find likeminded people to talk poker with. Even if it has an insignificant impact on your game, if the worst case scenario is you make a few friends then it is worth doing.
Does posting hands in our forum help your game? Do you need other people to improve at poker? If you only hung out with top pros, would you improve by default? Let me know your views in our comments box.
Join our Poker Strategy and Hand Evalution forums
 Barry Carter is the editor of PokerStrategy.com and the co-author of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2. He has been working in the poker industry for nine years and in 2013 won the APAT Award for Best Poker Media Provider. You can learn more about his work here.
Follow Barry Carter on Twitter l Follow Barry Carter on Google+ |
