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A big part of getting better at poker is taking the time to reflect upon your
play, your results, and what sort of correlation there is between the two.
Players who never take stock of their game don't improve - they don't know
themselves well enough to fix the holes that keep them from advancing. If
you're dedicated to improving your game, there are few times as good as the
start of a new year to take a look at how you've played and where you're
heading. If you play on any sort of regular basis, a year's worth of poker is
a big enough sample to give you some idea of how your game is progressing.
Reviewing your play over the last year can help you identify weaknesses that
you can strengthen - and that you can exploit when you see them in your
opponents!
First things first: if you want to be able to review your play, keeping
records is an absolute necessity. Online players have it easy because software
packages like PokerTracker are available that can log every hand they ever
play, tracking how they perform at various times of day, with different hands,
at different levels and games. Players who get most of their poker in live
games should keep some sort of written records of each session they play, with
their final result. Writing down a few notes about the general game conditions
can be helpful. For example, knowing that you lost a lot of money to a maniac
who caught cards all night is a lot more useful than a simple statistic of -$150. Also, any details about hands you've played can be very helpful down
the road when you're trying to assess your game. If you haven't been keeping
records of the sessions you've played over the last year, this is a great time
to make a resolution to track your play.
There's an old adage that money is the only scoreboard in poker, so the most
obvious thing to look at first is the health of your bankroll over the
previous year. If you have been keeping records, you'll want to look for the
year's high water marks and low points. Anyone who sees a steady rising
pattern probably has nothing to worry about. It's always a good idea to look
over your biggest wins and losses just to review, but chances are you won't
find too much out of the ordinary. For others who may have had a more see-saw
year, it's important to figure out whether the swings you experienced were the
result of your own poor play or if they came from standard variance. The only
way to do that is to get into the nuts and bolts of how you've been playing.
Players using a software package like PokerTracker have everything they need
to assess their play right in front of them. The place to start is with a
monthly summary of your results. Pick out the months of your biggest wins and
losses, and take a look at the sessions that comprised those months. Looking
over your biggest losing sessions, you should be able to discover why you lose
when you do. One thing to look for is how many hands you choose to play out of
position, especially when you play them for more than one bet before seeing
more cards. Another leak shared by many players is cold-calling too often -
that is, calling more than one bet when you don't already have money in the
pot. Then there's how often you play hands which are easily dominated, one of
the biggest holes in many players' games.
Looking over the biggest winning sessions of the year can sometimes be even
more helpful. For every time someone gets unlucky and loses, there's an other
guy who gets lucky and wins - and nobody is immune from getting lucky here and
there. The problem is that some players are immune to being honest with
themselves about how often they get lucky. The more often you get your money
in with the worst hand and win, the more you should be worried about your
winning ways ending at some point in the very near future. If you find that
the only times you win big are when you get lucky, it's worth going back to
the basics and reading a book or two to fix your game.
Whatever you find when you review your play, resolve to make the new year an
even better one the last by playing in a way that will improve your results
over the long run. There's nothing more enjoyable in poker than winning!
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