DeathDonkey : Musings on Poker Education Page 1 of 3
32 posts, 20 voices
title: Musings on Poker Education
from feed: DeathDonkey.com
published May 28, 2008 10:43am
“I taught you everything you know, but not everything I know”. We as poker educators struggle to prove this oft quoted statement of superiority is not necessarily true in our field. However, I recently read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, which argues that not only is this quotation accurate, it is an inescapable truth of any skillful activity. In Blink an example of a renowned baseball hitter is used, in which the hitter offers his perspective on what makes him so successful. There’s only one problem: upon analyzing this hitter’s swing, his proffered explanation is not only insufficient, its flat out wrong! The truth is, he is an expert at hitting a baseball, but his subconscious mind shoulders the workload, leaving his conscious mind to try to come up with an explanation for how the whole operation works, and it cannot be done. Indeed, Gladwell argues that any expert in a field that requires some “artistic” ability performs the activity largely subconsciously. This leaves us with an interesting and perhaps disturbing question: if this is true for poker players, how can we ever really teach the game?
Before attempting to offer a solution, I think the problem Blink highlights is clearly already known within the poker education world, but perhaps not explicitly realized. Coming from the perspective of an experienced player, I know I am often frustrated or disappointed when watching a well-regarded poker player’s attempt to impart his wisdom through the video medium. After reading Blink I now realize it may not be a lack of communication skills, nor is it likely the coach is just not as talented as expected; the reality is he may simply be incapable of offering a valid explanation for correct plays his mind subconsciously makes. This is not a problem when teaching basic poker concepts, deeply rooted in theory that can be “proven” to be correct. It manifests itself only when an instructor attempts to delve into the subjective art that is higher stakes poker strategy. Not only will you frequently hear “it depends” but now we know it may depend on factors our expert player cannot put into words but intuitively understands.
If we accept that we may not be able to consciously defend our brain’s actions when making unorthodox plays or ones that fall into the gray area between clearly correct and clearly awful, we as poker coaches must attempt to orient the student to all the factors we process at the conscious and subconscious level. It is therefore imperative that the student hones his own “feel” for the game through repeated experience, which can never be hastened or replaced with poker coaching. We should strive to teach the fundamentals of the game that are rooted in mathematics and poker theory, and then once ready to attack the artistic side of complex strategy, have a clear plan for analyzing the environment in which we make those plays. As an example, I no longer use a statistical HUD when playing, preferring to allow my subconscious to pay attention to the playing styles, current mood, and recent relevant history between myself and the other players in the game. When making lower stakes poker videos, I will continue to use the HUD as a way to analyze and evaluate plays that are “clear”, but when I delve into higher stakes videos, I will attempt to play the session under the same conditions I ideally work in, and discuss what factors I am paying explicit attention to, with the hope that the viewer can subconsciously process the same information I am privy to but cannot necessarily vocalize. Finally, I believe it will be better to add audio commentary after the session ends, even if it results in a struggle to honestly explain the reasoning behind certain plays, or an inclination to attempt to defend plays that may appear or may just be incorrect in retrospection. I think this will allow us as teachers to make the plays that we intuitively believe to be correct without the burden of having to justify them in the spur-of-the-moment. The beauty of recording videos as a poker education medium is that we can capture the brilliance of our coaches’ subconscious even if we cannot always explain its method.
Rating: 5.0/5 Stars (11 total)
- letranger0
- Pair of Deuces
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114 posts
Joined 01/08
I'm glad to hear you will be doing the audio after the fact and I hope more coaches adopt this approach. One of the biggest weaknesses in poker video coaching, especially when playing multiple tables, is having to rush through the analysis of a hand, which completely ruins the whole point of the video. One of the reasons I think the BobboFitos videos at leggopoker are so good (apart from the fact that he's a very good player and teacher) is that he pauses the video often to make sure he is able to cover every aspect of the hand clearly and in full detail before moving on.
- PublicHammer
- Deuce High
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16 posts
Joined 12/07
I also prefer after the fact videos. Doughnutz is another player who makes excellent videos this way, he's able to clearly explain his plays by pausing the video without having to rush onto the next hand.
This also brings up another point, not only is it difficult to teach, but it's also difficult to learn. Watching live videos is entertaining, but is it educational? I believe personally that I've improved as a player by watching the LHE experts play, but I struggle to think of a single concept that I can say I've improved upon. What I mean is, I feel instinctively that my game is improving so maybe watching videos is helping some of the info sink into the subconcious level, so I may be unaware of what I've learned.
Does any of that make sense? :o)
- Tommy Angelo
- Deuce High
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62 posts
Joined 10/07
Great article, Chris. I especially liked this line:
"The truth is, he is an expert at hitting a baseball, but his subconscious mind shoulders the workload, leaving his conscious mind to try to come up with an explanation for how the whole operation works"
And this part:
"If we accept that we may not be able to consciously defend our brain’s actions when making unorthodox plays or ones that fall into the gray area between clearly correct and clearly awful, we as poker coaches must attempt to orient the student to all the factors we process at the conscious and subconscious level. It is therefore imperative that the student hones his own “feel” for the game through repeated experience, which can never be hastened or replaced with poker coaching."
We could think of there being three phases, like the phases of matter, gas, liquid, and solid. There's having knowledge -- knowing what to do. There's acquiring "feel." And there's the physical/mental act of attaining and maintaining a body-mind condition that is most likely to produce our best "feel" while we are actually playing.
I've always thought the highest compliment in the poker lexicon was to say "He's a solid player." This brings a whole new meaning to the word! (I definitely wouldn't feel complimented if someone called me gaseous. :-) )
Tommy
- TheBeloved
- Deuce High
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55 posts
Joined 01/08
In after the TA ! Excellent article by the way DD. You could have titled it Musings on Learning Anything
Further into the topic of explaining one's actions. True thinking is never consciously motivated. We never know what our next thought will be, what generally happens is that a thought/feeling occurs (from who knows where) then action of some sort follows and then in the final analysis we make up some "excuse" or "reason" for this action.
- DeathDonkey
- Founder
- Quad Deuces
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2184 posts
Joined 11/06
Public Hammer: Funny enough Doughnutz was the exact example I had in mind when writing the sentence about being disappointed with a video from a well-respected player. I don't really want to stir up any trouble but he plays a lot better than the reasoning he gives for his plays :) (example: limps in sb with 23o with one limper and the explanation is "if they are going to let me see the flop for cheap then I'm going to take it!").
Tommy: Since we've met and hung out and aren't just internet buddies I'm going to share this, when I first read your posts on 2+2 before really knowing much about you, I would fall into the category of the guys who would dismiss you due to the perceived "bad poker strategy" you employed amidst your stories. I know now that I did that because I learned poker the way a lot of "internet players" learned poker, by trying to apply science and math to every scenario until it was solved! It's only been more recently that I've re-kindled an interest in really improving at poker again (I thought I had it all figured out) but my new methodology is to put my mind into a ready position to play optimally without "thinking" about anything. Getting rid of the HUD that shows online PokerTracker stats was one great example of how I've done this. As you well know, after we learn all the "strategy" of checks, calls, bets, raises, and often folds, we can start getting to all the important stuff, but first I think I have had to forget some of what I learned along the way to really start making progress. So I'm thinking using your analogy we should strive to end up as the "gas" because we leave behind a lot of the physical handicaps those solid states have but can condensate or desublimate (I looked this word up!) as necessary.
-DeathDonkey
- Tommy Angelo
- Deuce High
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62 posts
Joined 10/07
So I'm thinking using your analogy we should strive to end up as the "gas" because we leave behind a lot of the physical handicaps those solid states have but can condensate or desublimate (I looked this word up!) as necessary.
I like that very much. We could even go another step and say that the ideal state of a poker player is superfluid.
From Wikipedia:
"A superfluid acts as if it were a mixture of a normal component, with all the properties associated with normal fluid, and a superfluid component. The superfluid component has zero viscosity, zero entropy, and infinite thermal conductivity."
Infinite thermal conductivity sounds a lot like tiltlessness to me. :-)
Tommy
- Boomer
- Set of Deuces
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329 posts
Joined 06/07
Infinite thermal conductivity sounds a lot like tiltlessness to me. :-)
Tommy
Does that mean you run hot forever? That'd be pretty awesome ;)
- PygmyHero
- Quad Deuces
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1192 posts
Joined 08/07
Chris, that was a really good article.
I read Blink about 3-4 months ago, and I seem to remember Gladwell citing a decision making experiment where people did pretty well when they were instructed to just intuitively choose (I don't remember how many choices they had, the nature of their options, etc.). However, when subjects were asked to justify their decision verbally to the experimenter, their decision making was much less strong. Maybe you can flesh out some of the details there since you read it more recently. If you don't remember I can try to look it up the next time I swing by a bookstore.
But given that, the results seem to suggest that live commentary actually hampers the play of the video making poker player. I'm wondering if you could address this point a little further. I'm especially interested in trying to reconcile these thoughts with, say, The Psychology of Poker, where Alan Schoonmaker urges players to have a continuing dialogue (possibly even out loud) about their decisions. In other words, to do the exact opposite of what the studies cited by Blink recommend.
And by the way, you and Tommy should extend the analogy to account for plasma and Bose-Einstein condensate.
- DeathDonkey
- Founder
- Quad Deuces
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2184 posts
Joined 11/06
Great question / point PygmyHero...
I think really the answer is two parts: 1) There are times where you just don't know what to do, villain's play either doesn't make sense or you just have a very marginal hand in a very marginal situation and if you are being honest with yourself, you just aren't sure what to do. That implies that your subconscious doesn't know what to do either, so in this situation talking through all the things you do know would definitely help you come to the most logical conclusion you can in that moment, which is what I think Dr. Al's main point is.
Contrast that with situation 2, the main point of my article (imo) - there are many times where you do "know" what to do, but you just might not have a great reason for it on the tip of your tongue. I think these are totally different situations than in #1, just like in the Blink experiment (I'm sort of hazy on the details too, audio book) where I believe the subject they were asked about was a familiar one, where we can presume people would have an easier time coming up with a decision.
Now as it pertains to making videos about poker, in my own experience doing the audio commentary does indeed hamper my play, but only at higher stakes (or more appropriately, in tougher games). I noticed this when contrasting my experience making videos for Mano a Mule, especially near the end vs decent players as opposed to the LAGs on a Leash series, which is at much lower stakes and generally makes for easier decisions. Furthermore, its a matter of my target audience, when I am doing a lower limit video I am concentrating on the fundamentals of sound poker play and theory, a subject that is easy to address with my logical mind. But when playing higher stakes, the target audience demands and deserves some second level analysis, metagame, detailed player reads, etc. and all these types of analysis / decision making occur at least partially at the subconscious level for me, so trying to articulate them quickly and concisely takes away from some of the things my brain needs to be doing to be a winning player in those games, so I give up something one way or the other.
An example of that last point immediately springs to mind and I don't mind sharing a failed video experiment - a bunch of us were up in Seattle and me, Entity, and Danzasmack tried to record a 15/30 video, single tabling with me playing and all three of us just discussing things as they came up. My brain was so busy trying to hold the conversation with those two, and analyze some of the plays we made post-mortem, that I realized part way through my play was just no where near the level its normally at, and that by the end of the video, with 3 good limit players sharing ideas and only one table to focus on, I knew hardly anything about my opponents in the game! We got destroyed in the video, and yes probably ran a bit bad, but I was never comfortable, and I think on a smaller scale that happens any time someone has to add in the audio commentary when the decisions are difficult and partially subconscious. I will probably know for sure after putting my plan into action and making some videos doing the commentary afterwards. By the way, I hope I didn't just tilt Entity if he was planning to release that vid, but I really doubt it :)
And by the way, you and Tommy should extend the analogy to account for plasma and Bose-Einstein condensate.
You just went way above any science knowledge I have!
-DeathDonkey
- Entity
- Founder
- Quad Deuces
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2856 posts
Joined 11/06
An example of that last point immediately springs to mind and I don't mind sharing a failed video experiment - a bunch of us were up in Seattle and me, Entity, and Danzasmack tried to record a 15/30 video, single tabling with me playing and all three of us just discussing things as they came up. My brain was so busy trying to hold the conversation with those two, and analyze some of the plays we made post-mortem, that I realized part way through my play was just no where near the level its normally at, and that by the end of the video, with 3 good limit players sharing ideas and only one table to focus on, I knew hardly anything about my opponents in the game! We got destroyed in the video, and yes probably ran a bit bad, but I was never comfortable, and I think on a smaller scale that happens any time someone has to add in the audio commentary when the decisions are difficult and partially subconscious. I will probably know for sure after putting my plan into action and making some videos doing the commentary afterwards. By the way, I hope I didn't just tilt Entity if he was planning to release that vid, but I really doubt it :)
I'm only tilted because you said you ran a bit bad. We ran insanely bad. :)
Rob
- sudic
- Deuce High
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14 posts
Joined 02/08
You see the same thing in other sports.
Magic Johnson and Michael Jordon couldn't coach a bunch of up and coming regular NBA players, but they could put a bunch off seasoned talented players (Pippen, Grant, Rodman, Kareem, Rambis, Cooper, etc) on their back and take them to the NBA title over and over again.
It seems some of the best coaches were not the superstars of the game.
It begs the question, Would the best Poker coach be someone who is a winning player at midstakes yet was never talented enough to play the nose bleed levels?
- MickeyWins
- Quad Deuces
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1553 posts
Joined 07/07
DD,
I know you love to teach poker, but please do us all a favor, including yourself.
And become/BE the best poker player you can. This also means giving yourself permission, and allowing your brain to be "ARTSY-FARTSY".....think in the abstract, subconscious....FEEL..
I have so many thoughts here, and so much to say...wow.....(or is it I just FEEL, like I have a lot of thoughts here?...lol)
I know very little about poker compared to you.
By that, I mean, I dont understand poker theory, math wise or strategy wise etc....the brass tacks, nuts and bolts.....or "COOKBOOK" of poker.
The conscious part of poker.
The explainable part of poker.
The TEACHABLE part of poker.(I agree, debatable)
(the part me and Mr Tall agree, takes the "IT DEPENDS" out of poker)
However, I have enough confidence in my ARTSY FARTSY, subconscious, FEEL part of my thinking.
That when (ok IF) I ever master the nuts and bolts, I plan/can/will whoop your ass!!
Now you may pooh pooh my line of thinking here.(I actually expect you to, at first glance)
But I dont think you will, because my FEEL for your thinking on what I am saying is.....I(Mickey) have some merit in your(DD's) mind.
if I am wrong....never mind, either I am leveling wrong or you are, and thats ok BTW.
I believe what you said about thinking you had it(poker basics) all figured out. I think its true, or atleast 98% true, you got the nuts and bolts down pat. This makes you a good teacher and a good poker player. But I dont think (by itself) it makes you a GREAT poker player. In fact, I will go so far as to say, it only gives you the ability to play "adequate" poker. The ability to master the "basics" at this point in pokers history makes you better than maybe 95% of all poker players. In the not so distant future, if poker theory and teaching techniques continue to improve, mastery of the basics may be needed to play 1/2, and any higher limit game will need FEEL, METAGAME, ARTSY-FARTSY stuff, in order to beat.(course I agree that wont happen because the rake will kill the game first, as no player will have a big enough edge)
As for the videos, and poker teaching techniques at DC and others.
And I apoligize if I offend anyone.
THE PLAYING VIDS ARE TOO ADVANCED FOR TEACHING BASICS!!
I understand there is a GIVEN, that players/students on DC, have played some poker, post on 2+2, own and have read/studied at least some poker books, and UNDERSTAND THE BASICS of poker......
but wait....that doesnt make sense.....do they understand the basics? Is DC teaching FEEl and leveling, and metagame stuff to players who already know the basics.
I dont think so......(ok maybe oink, pokerbob,schneids,kpr16 and a couple other guys are)
Why are the vids too advanced? (and I admit, it may just be me, I am old and think slow)
you are showing the finished product, before showing the "how to"!
I understand the making of vids better now, as I have made some myself, although for a different purpose...."to show my finished product"...the way I play at present (hopefully constantly changing for the better)
The feed back I get on my vids, helps to fill in the holes in my thinking and/or builds better basics. But I am not using my vids to show a concept or basic tool. I think teaching a basic tool/idea/concept is done in a slower more indepth process. Danzasmack has used this process in the past.
so...what would I suggest, like to see?
1) there is no point in a 1/2 video (and debatably .02/.04 thru say 5/10, IMO the learning the basics limits), except to show a finished product of how to beat that specific game from a "basics Mastered point of view".
2) make a list of basics...how ever long that list is...make one vid on each concept, on JUST that concept, going in depth to the best poker knowledge available. The individual concept may need a short vid or a entire series, but once finished you are done teaching that concept!(course you would need to monitor the current questions and perhaps add if new info on that concept was found)
3) make this library of basics easy to access and if possible, in a order of learning thats makes some sort of sense.
4) I like the idea of you playing first and commenting after the vid is made, for lots of reasons. You play your best, and then after you can concentrate on all factors and take all the time neccessary to explain.
5) I would like to see some long(2-3 hours) "finished product" vids, as to get a feel for metagame. Especially at the higher limits.
one last thing...
Is the "feel, metagame" stuff, whats holding back the "internet kids"?
Cause they sure do seem to play better than the "old guard".
or maybe its, live reads vs how many tables we can play at once!?!?!...hhhhhmmmmm
DD..perhaps I over-estimate you (but I doubt it), I think if you allow yourself, you can be a truely GREAT poker player....and teacher too.....and thats that.
- Cblanks
- Pair of Deuces
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101 posts
Joined 03/08
This article was great and really helped me to grasp some concepts I hadn't thought of before.
Also BTW Mickey, the 10-20 challenge krantz and whitelime do in an earlier video series has lots of metagame for higher limits