When I’m not working on my websites or at the virtual poker tables, I manage a restaurant.  Valentine’s Day weekend was hell.  We did three times our normal volume even though we didn’t have the resources to do it.  There were problems. A lot of them.

My job is to make sure the guests never know anything’s wrong and that takes a lot of split second decisions.  The right decisions result in a smooth night and happy diners.  The wrong decisions result in hour wait times, pissed off people and freaked out servers.  We pulled through the weekend flawlessly.  Unfortunately I won’t be able to play poker for a day or so because of decision fatigue.

Decision Fatigue and Poker

Poker is a decision war.  Players that make good decisions make money.  But making decisions drains your mental resources and you start to get tired.  The more tired you become, the more likely you are to make bad decisions.

Most of you have experienced this phenomenon.  You’re playing like a god and all of the sudden you find yourself making what-the-hell moves.  You raise or call and think to yourself, “What the hell – why not? Let’s just see what happens.”  Once you start making decisions without solid reasons, you have decision fatigue.

Signs of Decision Fatigue

When decision fatigue sets in, your mind feels like a car engine running without oil.  Small things begin to irritate you and you get frustrated easily.

You’ll notice that you’re making decisions faster.  Subconsciously you want the choice/action over with so you make a snap choice without giving it any thought.  At this point you’re not reasoning through hands anymore.

Finally, your attention will begin to drift.  You’ll remember something that you wanted to search and fire up Google.  You’ll turn on the TV or pull up Hulu.  You’ll do anything except focus on the game.  It’s your brain’s way of telling you that it doesn’t want to play poker anymore.

You should stop playing any time you notice decision fatigue starting to set in.

How to Avoid Decision Fatigue

There’s no way to avoid decision fatigue.  It’s going to happen sooner or later, but the more you practice, the longer it’ll take before fatigue sets in.

Certain choices will become automatic in poker.  Today you might think that you have a decision to make with AJo under the gun in a full ring game.  After a while you’ll realize it’s a snap-fold.  One less decision to make.

There are a lot of standard lines in poker.  These lines will become automatic for you in certain hands.  You’ll use them against the fish and save your mental energy for when you need to get tricky against the regulars.

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Becoming aware of your mental state will make you more money.  Start watching out for warning signs of decision fatigue and stop playing when you notice them.

Remember that you don’t have to get creative on every hand.  Use the best line for the best situation.  Don’t waste your mental energy on non-thinking players and you’ll have plenty in reserve when you face the regulars.

It’s hard to find time to play poker.  We have jobs, families, friends and other responsibilities that keep us away from the poker table.  We deal with it the best we can by setting aside a little time every week to get our poker fix.  The question is, “Are you using this time effectively?”

The problem with setting aside a block of time like 10 hours a week is that you’re likely to spend all that time playing.  There’s nothing wrong with playing for 10 hours a week, but it won’t improve your game.  You have to spend some time reviewing your play and learning new strategies if you want to improve.  Here’s how poker players should manage their time:

Unitize Your Time

All time is not equal.  An hour spent playing poker, for example, is worth more to your development than an hour spent at the bar.  So the first thing we have to do is turn your time into units that reflect the value of any given activity.

Here’s an example:

Playing Poker = 10 units

Reading or watching videos about poker = 3 units

Reviewing Play = 6 units

Now instead of saying that I want to invest 10 hours a week on poker, I can say that I want to invest 90 units.  This system forces me to evaluate the usefulness of any activity.

Time units won’t be the same for all players.  A new poker player should value learning poker more than playing poker and intermediate players should value reviewing their play more than playing.  Let me explain.

The New Poker Play

A new poker player knows the rules of the game but may not understand vital concepts like position, pot odds or the Gap Principle.  This type of player should spend more of his time reading poker books and watching poker videos than playing the game.  Here’s how  new players should unitize their time:

Playing Poker = 3 units

Reading or Watching Videos about Poker = 10 units

Reviewing Play = 6 units

The vast majority of new players’ time should be spent learning the game and reviewing their play so they can focus on winning strategies and principles.  To accomplish this goal, new players should make learning and reviewing more valuable than playing.

Intermediate Poker Player

An intermediate poker player knows basic concepts as well as more advanced ones.  Intermediate players know when to bluff and when to let a hand go.  They’re well versed on the math of the game and just need a little fine tuning to take their game to the next level.  Here’s how an intermediate poker player would unitize his time:

Playing Poker = 6 units

Reading or Watching Videos about Poker = 3 units

Reviewing Play = 10 units

Intermediate players already know a lot about the game so they don’t have to spend as much time learning.  An intermediate player’s time is better spent reviewing his play to see where he’s making mistakes and how he could have extracted more value or controlled his losses.

Expert Poker Player

Expert players are masters of the game.  These players can put their opponents on accurate hand ranges and know how to exploit weaknesses in their opponents.  These players often get some or all of their income from the game.  Here’s how an expert player would unitize his time:

Playing Poker = 10 units

Reading or Watching Videos about Poker = 3 units

Reviewing Play = 6 units

Expert players don’t need to spend a lot of time learning the game, but they should still spend some time watching videos and reading to keep up with the way the game is changing.

When expert players review their game, it should be to make sure they had accurate reads on their opponents and were exploiting them fully.

Of course, the majority of an expert’s time should be spent playing poker since that’s how they make their money.

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Unitizing your time isn’t time management, it’s time maximization.  You should spend your time where it does the most good and the best way to do that is by assigning different tasks different values according to worth.  Give it a try and let me know if it improves your game.

 I was sitting in a conference room today learning all about better ways to control costs and predict what effect a new cost would have on a business and I couldn’t help but think how all this information could help me in poker.  I slowly started to realize something.

Poker is a business.

When you become a winning player, you start thinking about your game in term of expected earnings.  You expect to earn x big blinds per 100 if you’re a cash player and you expect to earn x% ROI if you’re a Sit ‘N Go player.  In a sense, you own a small business.

Our poker businesses are remarkably similar to stock traders businesses.  We use a lot of the same formulas like Risk of Ruin and we both depend on probabilities of success to make money.  But it’s deeper than that.

Take, for example, poker software.  Most of us decide whether or not to buy something like Hold’em Manager or SitNgo Wizard based on whether or not we have expendable income at the moment.  We see it as a toy – like a Wii or a new TV.  But it’s really a cost of doing business.  Here’s a scenario that shows how we should look at the investment:

Joe Average is a low stakes grinder.  I recently learned how to beat .50/1 for 3.5bb/100 while four tabling.  He likes Hold’em Manager and wants to buy it, but only if it pays for itself in two months.  How much would the program have to improve Joe’s win rate for Hold’em Manager to pay itself in two months.

Joe Average grinds 300 hands per day every day.  That’s roughly 9000 hands per month.  Since a big blind is $1, Joe would only have to increase his win rate by 0.5bb/100 to pay for the $80 program in two months (actually it’s a bit less).  Joe is losing money by not buying Hold’em Manager.

We can also diversify our poker business.  We can stake other players.  Chipmeup.com is a great place to get your feet wet in staking.  I’d encourage you to start off by staking players who you know and who have a proven track record.  I’m starting off by buying shares in my former prop bet adversary @wizardmickey and another player he recommended to me.  They may not win today or tomorrow, but their long-term stats tell me that I’ll make money over the long haul.

Obviously these examples are basic, but you can apply almost any finance model or business report to poker and improve your income. 

Start thinking about poker as a business.  How much are you making an hour?  What tools could you buy to increase that hourly rate?  How can you diversify your business?

I’m getting ready to take a trip to Florida for a conference required by my “real job.” But before I go, I wanted to ask something.

What are your biggest challenges in poker?

What is it that you think is keeping you from making the money you want to make at the tables?  Your comments will help guide my future articles and videos.

Here are two tests to help you if you’re not sure where your weaknesses are:

Test Your Poker

Donkey Test

I look forward to hearing from you.

Reviewing your play is the most important thing you can do to improve your poker game.  You know it’s true and still you don’t do it.

You tell yourself all kinds of lies.

• I just need more experience at the tables.
• I don’t make money when I’m reviewing my hands.
• I already know what I did wrong.
• I don’t make mistakes. (If you say that, just kill yourself now.)

You are losing money if you don’t review your play.  Of course, there is one valid excuse for not reviewing your play – you don’t know how.

If that’s the case, I’m going to change that.

How to Review Sit ‘N Go Sessions

Sit ‘N Goes are the easiest games to review.  There’s no line balancing, no real post-flop play; just value raises and shoves.

There are tons of articles across the net that will tell you what hands you should play during the different stages of a SNG.  Despite what I may have said in an earlier article, the right way to play the early stages of a SNG is super tight.

You’re basically waiting for premium hands and that’s it.  It’s the late stages of a Sit ‘N Go that get interesting.

In the late stages of a SNG, you’ll shove AJo, K7o, T8o and worse.  Whether or not your shove is correct will depend on your position, the action, the stack sizes, the size of the blinds, how loose or tight your opponent is and how many players are left.  It’s a lot of information to digest, fortunately there’s a mathematical model that takes all these factors into account: the Independent Chip Model.

The Independent Chip Model is too complicated to figure out using a pen and paper.  Fortunately, Sit ‘N Go grinders can just import their tournaments to SitNGo Wizard and easily find their mistakes (there’s a 30-day free trial too. This software is REQUIRED for all serious SNG players).  Once you import your tournaments, SNGwiz will tell you which shove/fold situations you got right and which ones you botched.  There’s even a simulator for you to get a feel for when to shove.

Of course, there are situations that SNGwiz can’t figure out.  For example, if you want to know if you made the right move raising with the intention of folding to a shove, you’ll have to do a little more work. 

Let’s say you have a $3000 stack with 5 players left and the blinds are 60/120.  It folds around to you in the small blind.  Your opponent is a very tight-aggressive regular with 1800 chips.  You think he’ll shove over your raise with 20% of his hands.  Should you raise to steal?

If you raise to $360, you’re risking 300 chips to win 180.  In 100 trials, you’ll win 180 chips 80 times (180*80=14400) and you’ll lose 300 chips 20 times (300*20=6000) which means that your steal has a positive expected value of 84 chips.  (14400-6000=8400/100=84).

Next you can use an ICM calculator to see how that chip gain will affect your equity.

Now you have no excuse not to review your Sit ‘N Go sessions.  Not only did I tell you how to do it, I gave you a link to a free 30-day trial of the best Sit ‘N Go software on the market.

In the next part of this series, I’ll talk about reviewing your cash games.