Alan Schoonmaker Article

[janeg]

Dr Schoonmaker has a great article, Winners are Brutally Realistic, in this month's Cardplayer.

Thought I'd try a straw poll, just how good do you think your are?

[Richie(UK)]

[Willem]

[AlamedaMike]

The voting must be closed since I can not vote.

Anyway I think that we need to be realistic against a specific line-up as previously mentioned.

One Sunday I sat down on a 6/12 table that was VERY AGGRESSIVE and VERY LOOSE. They had been playing all night. The problem is that there were 3 maniacs at the table and was between two of them. On that table I was not favored to win even thought I was a better player than most of them. They would make it too expensive. I had to quit after a bit even thought the pots were about 2 racks of chips. One player would 3-bet with bottom pair or even air. I did manage to win a little but not much considering what I was risking.

Against average players on an average table I do better than okay. That is no maniacs and raises less than 50% preflop and 4-7 to the flop.

I was thinking this morning that my secret to winning at this game is 1) getting lucky and 2) playing against the right people.

Game selection is the KEY -- end of story--for me anyway.

I play at the Oaks Card Club. Some of the 3/6 players are tougher to beat than some of the 6/12 players. I was reading 'The Complete Guide to Hold'em' by Carson.

He said that losers play against people that are better than they are and winners play against people that are worse than they are.

If there were two tables of 10 player each (20). If I was the 9th best player I would not want to play against the people ranked 1-8 but against the people ranked 10-19 assuming that they were evenly split. You get the point.

If you look at some of the 2+2 threads they openly discuss finding bad players. Heck, SSHE is written assuming that the other players are bad.

That is the way this game is - it is predatory; the sharks eat the gold fish.

Home games, where I learned to play poker, sharks were not as tolerated. If you were a shark you needed to keep that well hidden. You could check/raise (sandbag as it was called) and you could bluff. Just do not take every-one's money. You won't be asked back.

I see players scouting tables looking for the juicy ones. I need to learn this skill.

I know the mechanics and the techniques - the meta game strategies like game selection and player reads are the areas that I am weak on and what is holding me back from really "beating" the game.

The psychology of the game. That is why I do a lot of posting in this thread.