Are you good at poker?

peter27

I have been working to improve as a player lately and going through a recent period of poor results has really hit my confidence.

This got me thinking about my frustrations with the game, and the major one is that with me only able to dedicate a couple of hours to poker per night, I will suffer with a small sample size of results for a very long period of time. This means that my profits/losses are not really an indication into my skill as a player. Without having a metric to turn to, I am struggling to figure out how I am supposed to know if I am improving or not.

Do you believe you're a "good" player? If so, how do you know?

I expect this will turn into a discussion about what level of sample size gives someone enough information to determine their own ability. But, let's see ..

The--Don

It is hard to define what a good poker player is.

I try to sit in games where I'm one of the best at the table, which long term makes me profitable. I'm sure many regs here wouldn't consider me to be a good player because I play a very exploitable style due to the types of tables I sit at.

When I play on other sites, where it's harder to find tables where you're one of the best two or three players at the table, I play a much different style and theoretically play much better poker but my results aren't close to being as good.

Poker success is ultimately decided by how much money we end up with at the end of the year. If we made money, we must have done plenty right in order to have achieved that, whether that is playing well consistently, or by finding vastly inferior players consistently doesn't matter very much.

It's important to feel like we know what we're doing and playing well but that is only part of the battle.

Duesenberg

Agree with @The--Don about it being hard to define what 'good' means in poker. If you were the 6th best poker player in the world you would be a truly outstanding elite level player. However, if you always sat at a table with the other 5 best in the world you'd be a losing player, despite your phenomenal technical proficiency. If financial results were the only definition of 'good' then a relative numpty like myself could be considered a better player than the 6th best guy who happens to play in the in toughest game on earth.

Six years ago, if you asked me to rate my poker ability I'd have probably given myself 6/10. Today, I'd rate myself as 4/10 (maybe 5 if I was feeling super generous). Perhaps somewhat perversely, six years ago I was I break even player who never worked on his game at all but, since then, I've worked a lot on my game away from the tables and have been consistently making a healthy profit for the last few years.

Today I'm streets ahead of where I was as a player six years ago. The reason I now rate myself lower than I would have done back then is that I was ignorant as to what being a good player really involves. The more I learnt, the more I became aware of the gaps in my knowledge and the holes in my game. If I was to rate my play from 6 years ago now, it'd be 2/10 at best. I now consider myself to be a moderately skilled player who is able to beat games up to a certain level due to the fact that there are still enough people playing in them who are significantly worse than me. I think a lot of people overestimate their abilities as players due to not knowing any better.

A decent sample size is undoubtedly required to establish whether or not you're beating a particular format but increased volume or experience will not alone equate to increased ability. I see lots of players who've been playing the same cash games for years or have many thousands of tourneys listed on Sharkscope, and they are still terrible in so many ways.

A little humility and proactive study away from the tables are what's required to improve. If you are doing those things then you'll know within yourself when you're making progress as you'll feel lost in certain spots far less frequently and more confident overall. The results will then take care of themselves over time.

madprof

Hey

I'm not a good player...MattB, Chickn, RSCPA12 etc etc etc are GOOD players...

From what I see -when they play and many, many others I could name is they 'seem' to know when to push hard(er) and therefore put players like me with the dilemma of a bet for my tournament life/a hero call/folding my hand and with 8 or so seconds think about it, I watch a lot of people, including me fold more than bet.....

I'm a better player than I was when I started 4 years ago; my mistakes and errors in my game are slowly reducing BUT can I also suggest you read

' Every hand revealed ' by Gus Hanson...It has changed the way I look at my gameplay and I'm just starting to reap the rewards of his philosophies and I'm so looking forward to trying out my game live!

My issues still remain that I get bored trying to grind out for a long time, play too many pots-more on line than live- and

If you are time constrained, I find the 30 minute timed tournaments are good for my game; you get a lot of shoves in a short space of time as people chase the chips for position/£ but they focus your attention on WHEN you might want to party with a hand and have improved my selections of when to shove and when to fold.

So a good player to me is one who knows when to take the risks, how to fool me into thinking I'm still ahead with their betting patterns, and how to minimise their losses when they do lose pots; they just seem to know when to give it up-I don't!!

Hope to meet you on the tables sometime

LMPIHYRG

GLGL

Danny

hhyftrftdr

I see the word 'downswing' swatted about way too much on this forum and I think that allows people an easy escape from the harsh realities of the game.
I think there are certainly a number of players who perhaps just don't understand or want to acknowledge exactly what a downswing is, and it's very easy to attribute a negative set of results on a downswing, when it's just not the case.

If Player X isn't much cop but goes on a bit of a heater, then proceeds to give it all back, that isn't a downswing. That's just their lack of ability levelling out.

The beauty of poker is that anyone can win short term, but realistically only the better players win long term.

Being able to comprehend when you're any of the following 2 below and separate that from the mindset of 'I won x amount I must be great' or 'I lost x amount I must be terrible' is important;

Running good
Playing good
Running bad
Playing bad

There are anomalies, but ultimately (and as someone once famously said in The Rail) results do the talking. That will often be the biggest indicator as to if they are a good player or not, but there are always caveats and anomalies.