I spend a lot of time studying the technical aspects of poker. I hire coaches, subscribe to training sites, run simulations myself using solvers, and I research and collect data to explore questions and theories I have. I also do a fair amount of math, building calculators and elaborate spreadsheets with graphs that visualize the data I generate that help me visualize the flow of tournament strategy for all kinds of MTTs.
I don’t do all of this because it is my job, however. Poker is my passion, not my career: I do it because these are some of the things I enjoy the most about the game.
I do it because it’s fun.
After more than two decades into my obsession with the game of poker, I’ve realized that approaching the game in terms of “fun” might actually be the most important and underrated concept in poker.
For the past year or more, I’ve prioritized doing mental game work over everything else when it comes to training for my own play. I’ve always been a good student who is persistent and learns quickly. But it takes more to win at poker than just studying a lot, knowing the theory, and being a technical expert.
When playing, in order to win, we have to execute this training and knowledge consistently in game. Knowing something and performing at a high-level when the pressure is on, and when I may be tired and hungry or not feeling well, are two very different things. So I’ve been focusing a lot on identifying the factors I need to have in place to perform at my best and be able to execute the strategies I’ve worked so hard to learn.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about my tactical plan or how I approach sessions. That plan is one of the things that has come out of this work. But it’s only one part.
A recent experience outside of poker has given me a way to conceptualize and express one of the biggest things that I’ve learned: how to have fun and win by trusting my gut.
It all started with my recent return to playing Wordle.
When Wordle first went viral, my social media feeds were filled with mutuals who were playing. Having trained in the humanities, and English in particular, this was unsurprising given my circle is full of people who are particularly interested in language, and I caught the bug along with them.
Studying game theory and strategy development in poker led me to approach learning this new game in a similar manner. I looked for theory articles about the best methods and tactics for approaching the game. I read articles about language theory, and which letters are most commonly used in English words. I recall an article that did an analysis of the set of words that are used in making the Wordle puzzles and suggested start words that would optimize solving the puzzle as quickly as possible.
I used all of these strategies, starting every day with the optimal word I selected as my preferred option: ROATE. I remember choosing this word because of it’s statistical advantage, but it always felt awkward and wrong. When I first saw it, I had to look up its meaning, because this is not a word that I have ever used in my life in regular conversation or writing. Nor do I recall seeing it used ever, except in Wordle strategy. I don’t even understand why this word is in the small set of 5-letter English words used for the puzzles when so many words that are commonly used aren’t. But we play games with the rules we are given, so I for a while I took this “computer” approach to the game.
And it seemed to work, for the most part. I got many solves in two guesses. But I also had the occasional frustrating miss. And I got bored quickly. In retrospect, I’m surprised that the fact that I occasionally lost didn’t make the game more interesting for me, which then led me to question: why did I get bored?
This week, I realized the answer to that question: I got bored because playing a rote, GTO approved strategy with words I don’t like or use got dull. I solved the puzzles either too easily, or I got frustrated because the strategy made solving some puzzles much more difficult if the word didn’t use the most common letters.
So I stopped playing.
A few months ago, however, I saw a poker player post on Twitter about their frustration with the difficulty of some recent puzzles. They claimed anyone who solved these puzzles must be cheating because they were so difficult. That piqued my interest in Wordle again.
So I found the puzzle they were referring to and played it (here’s the link if you’d like to try it yourself, it is a challenging one). But this time I decided to use the approach that I recalled poker pro Andrew “ThinkingPoker” Brokos describing that he used in the early days of Wordle: starting with a random word and going from there. I wanted to have fun and challenge myself, so I decided to play the first five letter word that came to mind for the first guess and subsequent guesses, including words that didn’t use prior known letters or that repeated letters I had already excluded.
The original poster was correct, it was indeed a very hard puzzle. But I solved it, without cheating, and not using the optimal strategies I had worked out years prior.
And it was fun! It was a real nail-biter when I got down to the last guess, and it did take 10 to minutes or so, staring at the screen, stumped, before I finally got the answer. But I enjoyed every minute of it.
Since then, I’ve been playing again, using the same parameters as described above and not focusing on GTO strategies and not doing any research or studying. I focus on letting my mind wander and instinctively feed me the most common choices to pair with known letters when I find them. I believe this is the optimal approach for me because I don’t need to spend more time studying the English language to do well at this game: I learned to read before the age of three and have an undergraduate degree and PhD level training in English language and literature.
As with poker, I have put a tremendous amount of time in the past into studying and learning English. And all of that does matter and is a crucial part of winning at the game.
But learning and playing are different. The time to learn and develop strategies is before play time, not during. Play time is for paying attention to what is happening all around me and enjoying the moment.
It hasn’t been that long since I started playing Wordle again. I’ve only done 44 puzzles since I started up again, so a small sample size at this point. But I’ve had a 100% solve rate.
I have occasionally felt bored again because it sometimes feels too easy. But then I’ll come across another difficult puzzle. There have been several nail-biters since the first one I mentioned, where I have only managed to solve the puzzle on the sixth and last guess. Now I’m curious to see how long of a winning streak I can put together.
Because the first time I was playing this game, I never came close to solving so many puzzles in a row. I don’t have my stats from several years ago, but I recall missing quite a few puzzles and I don’t think that I ever went more than a few weeks without at least one loss. And now that I’ve had this realization about the importance of letting go of theory and “what I’m supposed to do” in game and focusing on having fun in the moment instead, I approach playing Wordle as a mental game exercise of letting my unconscious draw from the extensive knowledge I’ve accumulated in my lifetime to lead me to the right decisions.
My approach to my poker play over the last six months mirrors the Wordle play I am describing above. I realized earlier this year that part of what was holding me back from having the results I wanted (and expected from variance analysis based on my historical ROI) was that I was constantly asking myself the question in game: “what am I supposed to be doing here?” What would be the “standard“ theoretical play in this spot in terms of what I have learned from studying GTO poker strategies?
About six months ago, I started to ask myself a different question at difficult decision points: what would be the most fun play to make here? Which action, if I take it, will make things the most difficult for my opponent and easiest for me at the same time?
As with the Wordle game, it’s still early in this experiment with poker. Because of serious health issues I don’t get to play very often, so my sample sizes are currently small and should be taken with a grain of salt. However, I don’t think it’s entirely a coincidence that my recent results have been some of the best I’ve had in nearly 25 years of playing. And, most importantly for me, I’m having the most fun playing that I’ve ever had.
Studying and training are extremely important to success in poker, without a doubt. I think they are really fun too. But when I am at the table, it is not the time to be thinking in generals about what an abstract model would suggest is the best course of action when there are usually so many particulars I should pay attention to in a given hand.
Because when I play, I am not playing a solver or a model, I’m playing another human (well, hopefully anyway). And I play my best when I “forget” everything I’ve learned, in a way, and just focus on listening to my gut and being creative. I allow my mind the freedom to imagine any possibility, not what I think a solver would do vs another solver, or what I think another pro would say is the “standard” thing to do.
I don’t consider myself an expert on mental game and sports performance, this is just some of my experience, which I am sharing in the hope it helps others (because poker is hard!) but also because writing down my processes helps me to think more deeply about them and drill the ideas into my ongoing practice.
But you know where to find me if you’d like help with studying and learning the technicals and fundamentals of poker tournament play. And I can recommend some great mental game coaches and resources that I’ve worked with if these are things you want to explore further yourself.
Have fun, and good luck at the tables this weekend!
