Chip Concentration
June 23, 2007
If you are looking to, or have just started playing live games, you’ll realise that
there are as many distractions in a live room as there are in your living room. I’m
personally guilty of watching YouTube movies, fiddling around with Facebook, and playing
shockwave games while playing online poker. The plus side of this: I don’t get so
bored and start playing hands I shouldn’t. The down side: I KNOW for a fact I am missing
valuable information about people’s betting patterns, positional play, etc.
In a card room you have abient noise, people wandering about, cocktail waitresses
floating around looking (depending upon where you are) gorgeous (i.e. Vegas) or ugly
enough to be a serious distraction for all the wrong reasons (I’ll leave
it to you to fill in this gap with your favourite location!)
Now as you read this blog, what else COULD you be aware of? Well while still reading
this, allow your focus to drift and realise all the other things you can see. Your
mouse, your keyboard, PC speakers, junk on your desk… whatever is there, you’ve
somehow only just noticed it because I’ve told you to.
The point I’m making is that being bombarded by tons of sensory input is nothing new,
but when it comes to poker, you need to somehow narrow your focus down to block out
the ‘noise’ and just focus on the stuff that matters.
Here is a little trick to help you train this ‘focus’ if the live environment is new
to you.
You have a mission. In exactly one hour, I want you to be able to deliver me a report
on how each player at your table uses their chips. Does seat 2 ALWAYS place the chips
when holding a good hand and throw chips in when bluffing? Does seat 5 act exactly
the same way regardless of his cards? Does seat 7 count his amounts out in his hand
like someone unfamiliar with chips?
Basically I want you to profile each player based solely on their chip habits. Now
this will achieve two things. ONE: It’ll keep you focused on the game (and you’ll
‘accidentally’ absorb loads of other useful information along the way), TWO: you might
even pick up something that later helps you make a decision about all these players
you’ve been watching carefully for an hour.
Now doesn’t that sound more productinve than staring up waitresses’ skirts?
Another distraction for you, sir?
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