My inspiration for making this series was based off my own experience. I went off learning PLO, dabbling in 7/8-game, and playing NLHE tournaments, both live and online. When I went back to HU NLHE, or 6m NLHE online, I destroyed everything in sight. I was making all these sick plays, and just embarrassing regulars at 5/10 and 10/20. I realized that the reasons I was able to do this were:

1) My mind had been expanded from playing other games. When you learn a new game, you aren't restricted to 'rules' the way that you are after playing a game for hours and hours every day. You just do what feels right (twss). Interestingly enough, you emulate your mindset after a great session in your staple game. "Wow, I played really well. I was going with all my reads and just owning people!" Sound familiar? Well, when you play different, less familiar games, you're not necessarily owning everyone, but you're still going with all your reads, and never playing on autopilot (your lack of knowledge forces you to sit there and try to absorb every piece of information you can).

2) I was playing less. I was fresher when I played, I was more enthusiastic, and I cared more. I then realized that I could actually change that theory to: I was playing less HU and 6m NLHE online. I was still playing a decent amount of poker, but I was dabbling in different games and arenas. Playing too much breeds an autopilot style of play, so playing too little is always better than playing too much.

These two factors allowed me to both play at capacity, and expand my thought process. We'll discuss why and how later, but at least some reasons should be intuitive.

Getting back to concept of the 'box', and thinking 'outside' of it, we can't. Our poker box is our cumulative ability to think about situations and theory. It's everything that we know that we can apply to a street, a line, a hand, a player, a session, metagame, etc..

I am going to make the argument to you that the poker box is the most important aspect of our game. Therefore, managing our poker box should be one of, if not the, highest priorities for a poker player. The good news is, we can expand our poker box, both temporarily and permanently. The stereotypical bad news is the opposite: our poker box can shrink, both temporarily and permanently.

Use this post as an introduction to this concept and think about the importance of both expanding your box, and keeping it at its current maximum capacity. Brainstorm how you would be able to grow your knowledge base (ie your Poker IQ), and think about what detrimental things may cause your box to grow in the wrong direction. I'll be back with some lists tomorrow/the next day, but I want participation and feedback when I post them. The more effort you put in, the greater the results will be.

Greg