[Xorkrik]

Warning: Contains the ramblings of a poker obsessive. And this is my [disorganized] thought process on how to develop and become your own poker player.


On this forum I see some single thought responses. "Call" "Shove" "Fold"... And that really isn't how you learn poker.

Basically your saying "Raise when you have AA". But if you do not couple that with reason all you are doing is programming a robot.

For the sake of the example you should raise with AA for the following reasons:
It's the best hand and you need to bet money to win money.
You want to push out marginal hands. Why ? They won't call much after the flop unless they have you beat.
You want to narrow your opponents hand ranges. Why ? It becomes easier to figure out what they have.
And if there is someone with QQ/KK/AK they might be willing to get it in pre-flop which would be favourable for you.


If you want to learn poker you have to start thinking in multiple dimensions. What I mean is that when you starting thinking about "what you would do if" then you will see a dramatic increase in your poker learning and ability.

What would you do if you had air/draw/marginal/strong/monster ?
What would you do if your opponent was a passive/aggressive nit/fish/reg/drunk/bully (however many player types you identify) ?
What would you do if you had/didn't have position ?
What would you do on a different board/card ?
What would you do if you had a different image ?
What would you do if the action would have gone differently ?
What if the stack sizes would have been different (deep/short) ?
And then there are the most important question:
Why ?
Why c/c ? Why raise XX ? Why raise YY ? etc. etc. etc.

These are a few things you might want to consider when you read the next hand post.

This will lead you to start thinking a lot more when you are actually playing poker. And it will lead you to start thinking on the third level.
1: What do I have ?
2: What does my opponent have ?
3: What does my opponent think I have ?


Because when you start thinking about what you would do with different hands and combine that with the approximation of what the range the opponent has. With the knowledge of what the opponent would do with different hands. Can he fold a top pair ? Would he bet second pair ?
[Here your mental processing will multiply for the first time.]

That's when you start playing Poker. You start playing the opponent and not the cards.
You start to see. You no longer blindly bet and wonder if you are going to get call/raise/fold...

You have to reach this stage in your poker ability before you can move on to the next step (imho).


Because the next step in poker playing comes in the form of planning.
Once you can estimate what your opponent will do you can start planning the next streets of the hand. And here the "What would you do on a different board/card ?" question comes in. Because here your start to formulate your plan based on the possible turn/river cards. If he is going to float me light -> what turns do I double barrel ? And you go through all the previous threads of thought for each category of cards (blank, over-card, draw completing card etc.). What would he do ? I do ? With different hands ? He thinks ?
[This is where your mental processing will multiply for the second time.]



I don't think you have to think this much when you play poker. There are plenty of bad players out there. But with this thought process you can play & develop your game instead of just copying someone elses.


If you made it this far congratulations. And I hope it made some kind of sense. My mind works faster then I can type so sometimes my train of thought will rush ahead and my writing will suffer for it. Or I will find that I missed writing out a chunk of thought in the middle.