Deliberate Practice: Four Steps to Improve Your Poker Game

So what is the connection between having a gritty personality and being a successful poker player? Those who have a high grittiness will persevere for long periods of time in their passion. They are able to focus on a single topic for long periods of time.

But saying that you need to be able to persevere is one thing. How exactly should you persevere? What should you be focused on and what should you be doing in order to improve your poker performance?

K. Anders Ericsson is considered the world’s foremost expert on what it takes to become a world-class expert. He studied world-class musicians, chess players, and athletes to figure out the process for becoming elite. As it turns out, the formula for success is very similar no matter the domain.

So what do world-class professionals do that their lesser counterparts don't? It's something called deliberate practice.

Most of us practice, but deliberate practice is not the same thing. They have several characteristics that distinguish them, and it turns out that the quality of your practice is more important than the quantity.

Ericsson's findings show very clearly that expert-level performance is the result of expert-level practice. He also highlights that anyone can achieve world-class performance, regardless of natural ability, as long as their practice is consistent and deliberate.

That's the good news, now comes the bad news.

1. Your practice should focus on a very specific aspect that you are trying to improve.

For example, you should work on one specific type of poker problem or question at a time. Once you have mastered the basics, don't go into general study, as it won't do you much good. You should have very concrete and specific goals for each study session.

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2. The challenge of your study must exceed your skill level.

There is a human tendency to work on things that come easily to us, but that is not the kind of practice that will bring improvement. You have to push yourself. This will be unnatural, because in general people don't like doing things that are difficult for them. It takes you out of your comfort zone, which is a very pleasant psychological state.

3. There must be accurate and immediate feedback

This can be a big challenge in poker because there is often a lag between when we are performing and when we get feedback. You should be doing hand reviews, but that is after a session. Also, sometimes in poker you are rewarded for doing things wrong and punished for doing things right! It is not like playing a piece of music where if you play a wrong note you can obviously play the note back until you get it right.

4. Repetition, repetition, repetition

You cannot become “fluent” until you have repeated each skill many times. Your goal is to repeat a skill so many times that it becomes unconsciously automatic. Once you reach this level, your thought patterns will become so second nature that you can more easily look for changes in the lines and make adjustments.

If all of this sounds like a daunting task to you, it is. Not being able to commit to the work required by deliberate practice is the main reason why few people reach world-class levels in any field.

I would like to leave you with some small advice if you are just starting out in the game and have hopes of becoming a top level player.

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First of all, you can’t go from a shaky foundation to elite status. Make sure you’ve mastered the fundamentals. Once you’ve mastered them, work on them some more. Your goal is to achieve perfection. Also, don’t be tempted to move through the material too quickly. It takes a minimum of 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to reach elite status, and 20,000 more is actually preferable.

Lastly, remember that deliberate practice is demanding. It takes a ton of mental energy to focus entirely on improving. That’s why even the elite only spend 2 or 3 hours a day doing deliberate practice. I won’t lie to you, there is a certain amount of drudgery involved in learning at this level, but if you want to join the top of the rankings, there’s no other way to achieve your goal.

Engage in deliberate practice frequently and often over long periods of time, and your brain will physically reshape itself into the mold of world-class poker players.

Translated and adapted from: Deliberate Practice: Four Steps to Improve your Poker Game