There are many qualities possessed to varying degrees by poker players all over the world – some are positive and some are negative, as with all things. One consistently intriguing and perhaps confusing reality, however, is that there is often some ambiguity as to which exact qualities belong in each category.

An aptitude for simplicity and a no-nonsense approach are often regarded as positives in a variety of domains, but most people’s instinct is to assume that a form of psychological warfare such as poker would not be one of them. In fact, given the level of conceptual difficulty involved in understanding the game, nothing could be further from the truth.

The trap of complexity

Many poker beginners fall into a very specific trap when they start out in the game – after they begin studying, they start to grasp the depth of the strategic rabbit-hole they’re about to fall into. They think the best approach is simply to dive in, so they do. The problem with this is that they end up rapidly drowning in so much strategic information that they can’t possibly digest it all at once – they misapply specific ideas, jump way ahead to concepts they simply don’t yet need, and end up having to retrace their steps a few months later and re-organize their learning.

The reason they’re so easily able to fall into this trap is because they’re conditioned to expect a massive degree of complexity from poker. The way poker is presented to outsiders – as a mysterious and intense emotional and psychological battle in which only a very specific type of person can succeed – generates an expectation that a simplistic approach isn’t going to cut it.

The reality, though, is that this is only half-true. We should obviously be aiming to eventually develop a more complex framework for understanding the game that doesn’t attempt to reduce ideas to bite-size versions of themselves, but when we first start out, there’s simply no utility to an approach that presents us with concepts we’re not ready to understand, in ways that take months or even years to grasp.

Using sliding scales, spectra and continua

One of the most useful methods for reducing ideas into more digestible forms is to place concepts on a sliding scale of some kind. Call it a spectrum, call it a continuum, give it whatever name you like – but familiarize yourself with the idea that many poker concepts can be visualized as a straight line with a market running backward and forward along it.

A simple example might be the concept of preflop opening ranges – you don’t necessarily have to be able to estimate the exact percentage of hands a player might be opening, but if you can place that player somewhere on a spectrum based on how loose or aggressive you expect them to be, you’ll be off to a good start.

You can do this with bet sizing principles, bluff-catching frequencies, blind defense strategies, 3-betting ranges, preflop shoving frequencies, fold equity versus implied odds, and all kinds of other ideas. You can fit the precise parameters of your measurement system to suit the concept as you see fit, but using a tool you can easily visualize without the need for specific numbers or details can help to make a huge number of strategic ideas significantly easier to understand.

Execution beats planning

Another reason why complexity can quickly become the enemy in poker is because the more complex a strategy is, the more difficult it is to actually execute. We might have a very well-developed understanding of the concepts and strategies needed to succeed in a certain game, but if our strategy is so convoluted that we fall over ourselves trying to put it into practice, what’s the use of it in the first place?

The strategies we develop should be devised with the intention of being easily executable and frequently repeatable. If you’ve ever done a significant amount of study regarding GTO concepts in poker, you’ll be familiar with the idea that a simple strategy executed correctly will often have a higher EV than a complex strategy executed imperfectly against an unknown opponent – this reality extends further than you might guess, and the better our opponents get, the harder it is for us to effectively execute complex strategies. It’s crucial, therefore, for our strategies to be simple enough that we can actually remember what they are and put them into practice correctly.

Progress begins with a solid foundation

Now, let’s not pretend that simplicity can get us all the way to greatness. It can’t. Eventually our approach has to evolve. But when we first start out, it’s obvious that simple strategies and metrics by which we can learn the game will have a greater impact. Our goal should be to start out in this way, and then gradually develop new ways to think about the game that push our understanding forward.

A two-ended sliding scale might become a conceptual triangle, or a double axis with four points – you get the picture. Our visualizations can become more complex, or we can do away with visualizations altogether and begin thinking in terms of specific numbers if we see fit. We have options beyond whatever approaches we start out with.

The bottom line, though, is that the simple strategies that we execute effectively are the bedrock of our poker development. Without this foundation, we might end up being stuck coming back to certain ideas again and again later on in our careers, after we’ve already made multiple attempts to understand them and put them into practice. If you want to evolve and progress, you need to start simple, and even once you reach a higher level, don’t forget that it was simplicity that got you there.