What Are Your Top Priorities?

Did you know that most people do not spend the majority of their time on what they themselves say are their top priorities? That’s what productivity expert Bob Pozen’s research says. Spending time on priorities is a main differentiator between successful people and failures.

So what are the top priorities in poker? How do you actually get better? Is it the amount of time spent playing? Is it thinking about bad beats? Is it asking specific questions like “should I have played AQ off-suit in this position against this player?” The answer to all of these questions is “no”!

I’ll tell you why.

1. If you’re playing poorly, putting in volume will reinforce bad habits and have the unintended consequence of making you really good at playing badly.

2. Bad beats happen, move on… And no, there’s nothing you could have done differently.

3. Did you know there are more than 133 billion combinations of seven card possibilities (flop, turn, river + cards in your hand)? That’s not counting the fact that there are other people at the table with cards, in which case, the number of combinations becomes more than the number of atoms in the universe. The truth is that statistically you will never have the same situation twice. Asking about specific situations is not what the best players do… It’s “loser think”. Instead, they attempt to derive generalities from each situation.

So if those items are not priorities, what are your top priorities? I will give you my top four priorities on the poker table. In another article, I’ll discuss priorities "off the table."

On-The-Table Priorities

There is no doubt that “running good” feels great and instills confidence, but the reality is that you will only run good a small percentage of the time. Running well may increase your short-term winnings, but your win rate is not calculated by how good you run over a few hours. It’s the totality of your play after thousands of hours, which will invariably include periods of running terribly.

A useful way to conceptualize win-rate is by considering what happens when you run completely normally. If you get rid of your best sessions and your worst sessions, what happens uncovers the “truth” about your poker ability. It’s the decisions you make when the deck is neither cooperating nor screwing you over that really defines your skill level.

By doing these four things at the poker table, you will increase your "true" win-rate:

1. Focus on ranging your opponents.

2. Think through each decision point critically.

3. Direct your attention to what’s Important.

4. Apply appropriate exploits every time.

Ranging Opponents:

"Everyone is equal, but some people are more equal than others" (George Orwell in Animal Farm)

Poker is an imperfect information game: the cards of your opponent are not known. That’s what makes poker fundamentally different from a game like chess. But through good strategy and situational awareness, it’s possible to gain some clarity. One of the reasons that good players consistently beat bad players is that bad players do things that reveal information that is supposed to be hidden. The quote above is applicable to poker... "it's a game of imperfect information... but some people's information is more imperfect than others."

My main objective during a hand is to narrow my opponent's range. You should be much less concerned about your own cards than you are with your opponent's range and how the flop, turn, and river interact with that range.

Preflop, the range of any person is100% of hands. Once they call a raise, their range is something else (depending on the player)... By using the strategies taught at Ultimate Poker Academy, you will be able to put your opponents on a fairly specific range by the river. I’ll reveal some these strategies in future blogs.

Think Critically

If you are acting quickly, you are not considering all of your options. Good players ask the question “what happens if” and go through a game tree (albeit a simplified version) to determine what actions make the most profit.

Many players brag about their speed, saying things like “I make my decisions in five seconds” - but the simple truth is that these players are rarely crushers or even significant winners at the game. You need to take your time to carefully plan ahead, like a chess player, and consider the consequences of your actions.

I’m not saying to slow the game down. There is no need to tank every decision. But if you’re acting impulsively, that’s a huge leak. You need to trust your instincts, but verify them with logic… As the old saying “trust but verify” goes.

Important Details

Memory is commensurate to skill. Have you ever noticed that excellent poker players can recall hands in perfect detail whereas amateurs cannot remember things like position, stack size, etc? Beginners and weaker players inevitably forget what position they are in, how many people were in the hand, what the effective stacks were. Instead, they focus on the cards they had and how much money they won or lost.

The amount of money won or lost is just incidental. It is the actions themselves deserve priority. Here’s a basic “tier list” ranking of the details that are important, and how important they are.

Priority Level	Priorities	Explanation
1 (high)	Effective Stack Position Chronological Order of Actions Cards in your hand Cards and suits on board Blind Levels (tournaments)	These are absolutely essential for building a sound strategy.
2 (medium)	Specific Suits Player Descriptions	Also important, but suits are usually not too relevant at the advanced beginner level unless a flush draw is on board.
3 (low)	How you think your image is Who actually won Balance Blockers GTO	Things like blockers are not important at this level, and balance is not important either. You win money by being unbalanced at the medium stakes.

Exploits

It is imperative that you actually apply the concepts that the Ultimate Poker Academy teaches. The exploits we teach for live poker are based on millions of data points related to low / medium stakes player tendencies . I won’t go into detail in this particular article as to what those exploits are, but you must fearlessly apply them every time if you want to maximize your winnings.

Summary

People who get good at things focus on the right priorities. When you shift your thinking from your specific hand to ranging your opponent, you’ll be able to apply appropriate exploits every time. You must think through each decision point critically, which will also help bolster your memory. Many people act too quickly without mapping out the entire “if-then” game-tree in their mind.  Lastly, focus on the right hand details and not the unimportant stuff. Most things (like pot size) are incidental, meaning that they are derived from the culmination of individual choices you make at every decision point. Understand the decision points themselves and the rest will fall into place. Good players remember hands because their choices at each decision point are guided by logic and make sense.