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’m not bipolar, but poker makes me feel that way sometimes.  Some days I’m on top of the world.  I make all the right moves and get paid off.  I win tournaments, Sit ‘N Goes, cash games, whatever.  I am the king of the card room and no one can touch me.

Other days, I make unexploitable shoves and great calls only to get drawn out on.  My pocket pair never holds against two over cards and my AK seems to be a magnet for 269 flops. 

You went all in with 85s versus my Aces?  Don’t worry.  You’re good sir.

Soon I’m on tilt and it’s like I don’t even know how to play poker.

If you’re not a poker player, you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.  I can’t think of any other aspect of life where someone can feel like a god one day and an insect the next. 

Poker players are a special breed.  Winning never feels as good as losing feels bad.  Sometimes we feel like quitting our jobs and playing full time and other times we feel like smashing our computer with an aluminum bat before running head-first into a brick wall.  Yet we keep playing.

I had a bad day today.  I didn’t catch any cards and when I did, they didn’t hold.  My losses were small compared to my bankroll, but psychologically it feels like I lost a third of my money.

I have a lot of respect for all the grinders out there who can play day in and day out and take beats with stride.  I’m not there yet. 

I will, however, keep playing.  Through the pain, through the frustration; I know my next upswing is right around the corner.

Do you notice a lot of swings in your bankroll?  I do.  I’ll run hot for a while and post a solid ROI and then I’ll go on a bender and lose a good portion of it.  At that point, I do what most of us do.  I take a break from poker, relax and maybe read a few poker books.  A month or so later I’m back in the mix and winning again.

At first I thought I was experiencing natural ups and downs.  But then I realized what was really happening.

After carefully analyzing my last few boom-and-bust cycles I noticed that I slowly picked up bad habits and sprung poker leaks.  I’d make increasingly loose calls and increasingly loose re-raises.  Soon my usual winning play would go out the window and it would be replaced with some bastardized donkey-style poker.  It’s happening to you too- slowly, but it’s happening.  Unless you analyze your game constantly for these little leaks, your game will degrade until it breaks and you become a losing player.

Why The Hell Does This Happen?

My “ah ha” moment came when I remembered a classic study on superstition from my behavioral psychology class.  For those of you who don’t know a lot about behavior psychology, it’s based on the premise that we will repeat behaviors that are rewarded and stop behaviors that are punished.  In this study B.F. Skinner explored what would happen if he gave pigeons a reward at random intervals regardless of their behavior.  The results were interesting.

Some birds would constantly bob their heads, some would lift their legs and others would spin in circles.  When a bird was reinforced, they associated the reward with the behavior they were doing at the time and that caused them to perform that behavior more often.  If the bird was rewarded while bobbing its head, it bobbed its head more often which increased the chance that the food would come while its head was bobbing.  The head-bobbing behavior would be reinforced to the point where the bird constantly bobbed its head.

Soon Skinner had cages full of pigeons performing ridiculous antics believing that these behaviors would get them food.

What Does This Have To Do With Poker?

We all have friends that have favorite hands.  A good friend of mine always plays 7-4 because he won the biggest pot of his life with that hand.  I also played with a couple of guys who swore that J-9 always hit.  Stories like Doyle Brunson’s legendary 10-2 only serve to reinforce these superstitions.

You Think This Doesn’t Apply To You?

Most solid players are good enough to know better than to play trash hands “just because,” but superstitious behavior can develop in other ways.

Let’s say you’re playing in a Sit ‘N Go and you’re having a hard time.  All the hands you raise pre-flop miss on the flop and all your continuation bets get raised.  It happens to all of us and it sucks.  What do you do when it happens to you?

I’m willing to bet you stop raising so much.  You start to limp with hands that you’d usually raise and you stop c-betting on flops you miss.  You become a passive player because your correct plays are being punished.

On the other hand, let’s say you’ve won a couple of nice pots by re-raising outside of your usual range.  You start to think you’ve found a cool tweak to your game and you start re-raising more often.  Soon your opponents catch on and start playing back at you.  All of the sudden, you’re hemorrhaging money.  After a while, you’re beaten into submission and fall into a passive playing style causing you to continue your losing streak.

See what I’m saying?

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It’s in our nature to increase the frequency of behaviors that are rewarded and decrease the frequency of behaviors that are punished, but that tendency can hurt you in poker.  Poker has an element of luck in it that occasionally rewards poor play and punishes good play.  The luck factor throws us off and makes us pick up bad habits that, if left unchecked, will wreck your game and send you into a downswing.  Take time out of your week to analyze your games, both winning and losing, to see if you’re picking up any bad habits.  Fix your leaks before they become serious and you’ll save yourself a lot of headache and money.