Writing for the Two Plus Two Internet Magazine is something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand you get to write alongside great poker writers and tell your friends that you are writing for the best poker publishing company in the world (hopefully that's enough for a pay rise, Mason). On the other hand, you are, of course, expected to write to those same high standards and are going to be judged by strong players, many of whom are better players than yourself.

It is a new problem to me that those better players are expecting to learn something from each and every article that is written. Although this, in theory, is the aim, if I could invent an exciting piece of poker strategy each and every month, I would eventually become better than everyone in the world by a long way.

What I can attempt to do, however, is to tell you things that you already know, but in a way to which you might listen — things like "Smoking causes cancer."

I recommend that you print this out and read it in the bathroom. That way you will save valuable time.

*Please note that throughout this article, bb/hr is used to mean big bets won (or lost) per hour.

THINGS YOU ALREADY KNOW

  1. Smoking causes cancer
  2. The best player in the game will win the most money in the long run.

It seems crazy that so many people smoke, knowing that it will probably kill them.

It also seems amazing to me that many people will spend many hours a day reading about poker and then jump into the first game they see, despite knowing that their long term results depend entirely on how good they are compared to the other players in the game. They might be at work and taking a casual look through forums in their spare minutes, or they might simply be newer players wanting to absorb as much fresh information as possible. However, one thing that the vast majority of players reading this article and other poker literature will do is jump into the first game they see when they decide to play. Does this sound familiar? I thought so.

Let's just put this into perspective. You spend many hours each week reading posts and articles that will increase your hourly rate by small fractions of a big bet, and then you don't even spend five minutes selecting where you are going to sit for the night's play. Even many of those people that do give some thought to table selection will stay in the game long after it's gone bad or even worse will "try to book a winning session" before moving tables. Does this not strike you as a very unbalanced way to do things? It should.

What I need is a way to show you the poker equivalent of those pictures of charred lungs and children whose parents died of lung cancer distributed by the anti-smoking lobby that make you stop smoking for five minutes (before you forget about them and light up again).

Say you are going to play a total of four table hours (240 minutes) at 1BB/hr. Taking fifteen of those table minutes (five minutes for each of three tables if online, or fifteen real minutes if live) to find a better game would have a positive impact if those minutes increase your win rate to 1.07BB/hr. You can play with the numbers to suit your own situation, but it is clear you are doing yourself harm by not having at least a cursory glance at the games you are considering playing.

You will of course get plenty of positive reinforcement that you are not an idiot for jumping into the first game you see. Booking that 4 BB win stipulated in the paragraph above will convince you that you are already doing the right thing and that Lorinda is simply trying to stunt your development by suggesting you take a few minutes from your playing time to devote to table selection. You never get to see the extra 0.xx BB that you would have won if you had done the math and worked out a little scouting time for yourself. Bankroll cancer is often very difficult to detect as it leaves the bankroll functioning perfectly well for a long time.

You've forgotten the numbers already? Here are some more.

If you're the same player as above, with a 1bb/hr win rate, and you can find one six-handed game where one player has a 1bb/hr lower expectation than the players in the one you were going to sit in, that's 0.2bb/hr for each of the other five players on average. That easily covers the 0.07bb/hr required to spend profitably fifteen minutes out of four hours of playing time looking for the right game.. In fact, if it took you three minutes to find such a game (it should be easy enough even without tracking software), the game would only need to last fifteen minutes to reach the same overall winnings as an eighteen-minute game with the lower win rate.

Even more incredible are the people who play several tables and read at the same time. There are a lot of very intelligent people who do this. You think that I'm going to rant about how this cuts their win rate, too, don't you? Well I'm not. I'm going to rant about how this cuts their learning rate.

The human brain can only process so much information at once. If it is concentrating on just one thing, it can use all of its processing power to analyse that one thing. (Often this is referred to with phrases such as "being in the zone.") However, if it is doing two things at once, it is not only using power to do those two things, but it is also using power to manage the two separate trains of thought.

Reading about a pot that someone else played in a different game format against a loose player with their AA, while you are simultaneously playing a pot against a tight player with your KK (your eyes are glazing over already aren't they? You do this when you read and play. Are you reading and playing now? Do you know what the previous sentence actually said?) is going to result in the brain cutting corners to get both things done. You'll probably end up playing the KK on autopilot and skimming the post about the AA and not really analysing either event. Certainly neither is likely to get committed to memory so that you can recall it later.

Again, you'll feel you had a productive evening. You'll tell yourself that you learned quite a bit today (although you won't quite remember what) and that you also won some money (although you'll never know that it could have been more since you missed a bet on a river that you've now forgotten). You'll go to bed thinking you're a world beater. Well done. You look fine. Your lungs must be fine too. Anyone for another cigarette?

Finally, in their quest for money, some people simply refuse to take a break. They will play for hours on end and justify it by saying that it doesn't matter if their hourly rate is lowered, as long as they are making money. After reading this article, have a look at your longest sessions. For many of you, these will be ones with reduced hourly rates or even losses. (That is, of course, unless you have a policy of only playing long sessions when you are winning big or against particuarly bad players.)

No matter how young and indestructable you feel, and no matter how much you feel okay with your play, your play will deteriorate substantially after even two hours. A five-hour session at 1bb/hr earns you less money than a four hour and fifty minute session at 1.04bb/hr. That's two sessions with a ten minute break. I'm sure you can do the math yourself to find a pattern of taking breaks that suits you.

Of course, you knew all this already. You also knew someone who got cancer from smoking, but that was them and this is you. Different rules apply.

To sum up, if you don't agree that this analogy holds true, then just stop smoking anyway. That's one thing you definitely know is killing you, and dying is very bad for the hourly rate.

If you followed all of my advice in this article, the worst position you should be in now is one of having saved money on toilet paper. Hopefully for some, it will be of more use than that.