Two questions were asked to me on the Twitch stream lately. The first one was how high of a winrate I thought is possible at 500NL zoom. My answer was 8bb. The second question was how high I think my winrate is at this moment playing 500NL zoom. I responded with 2bb. Reflecting on this made me realize even more that there is so much more than succeeding in poker than knowing how to play poker from a technical perspective.
Obviously, if I would focus only on playing poker, a part of the winrate gap will be closed with technical knowledge. Since I haven’t focused on playing myself in a while you easily forget stuff, but it’s not necessarily new technical knowledge that will bring me to 8bb. I would not have to divide my attention between the Twitch chat and playing, and in general I would be more focused. When I have a routine and I’m in the flow, I will be able to apply more of what I know at the tables consistently.
Now, knowing when to play and when not to play is also very important. I currently play at 16:00 CET on Monday and Thursday, regardless of the quality of the games. So, playing at times the action is better, or deciding to study instead of playing when the pool is though, are essential skills to have a higher winrate. You could even go further and move to a country where life is cheaper, and poker is tax free. This will have a big compound effect on the “success” (money wise) of your poker career.
And last but not least: reads. Adjusting based on your pool and on your opponents is an essential skill in boosting your winrate. I don’t play enough currently in the 500NL zoom pool to utilize this skill that I have. Going from a more GTO strategy to a maximizing EV strategy based on tendencies from your opponents would be the last step in turning my current winrate into the winrate that it could potentially be.
As we can all understand, this takes a lot of effort and I think that it’s only possible if you fully dedicate all your time to it. Something which I’m currently not doing, as this is not in line with my objective of playing at the moment.
This realization has made me decide that I already know the first content update for the Mechanics of Poker, keeping the feedback loop in mind, stay tuned…