<SPAN class=postbody>This is a shadow post also on PXF

I recently finished consuming the book “On Intelligence” by Jeff Hawkins. Although the main goal of the book is to expand dialog of the future of artificial intelligence, the main body of the book is a discussion of the human brain and its inner workings. While this is not the reason for this post, I would highly recommend this book to any deep thinkers who might wish to gain a better understanding of actual understanding, and how it is they think so deeply.

In a nutshell the brain works in a hierarchical fashion and is a memory based system that uses prediction rather than calculation as we might have assumed. Learning is done in patterns. For instance although you may be able to recite the alphabet as quickly as you can speak it, it’s not so easy to do backwards, as you most likely learned the alphabet in the pattern of A to Z. You may be able to recall the song “Dust in the Wind” but you cannot remember it all at once. You will remember it in the pattern in which you learned it. The brain learns in patterns and stores the knowledge in a hierarchical manner for later retrieval. It assigns levels of importance to the memories and the more you do something, the more importance that memory is assigned, and the better it becomes at predicting the outcome of an event. For instance, every day you go in and out of your home and without thought you reach for your door handle, as your brain is predicting that it will be there. You do millions of things such as this each day and your brain makes millions of predictions as you go about your day. Ever go down a flight of stairs and there’s one less stair than you thought? Your brain predicted it would be there and was surprised when it wasn’t.

Anyway as I made my first run through this book it made me think about the learning pattern of poker, as well as the hierarchy of entering a pot in a multi table tournament (MTT). The following is an attempt to shuffle the parts and start a dialog to help myself and others understand the importance of the many facets of the MTT.

When I first began to study the art of multi table tourneys, it all started with opening hand requirements. As I continued on, I learned that position was pretty important as well, and that different starting hands were good from some positions and not from others. Then came the discussions of stack sizes, relative stack sizes, tourney position, image, reads on your opponents, bet sizing, trapping, limping, raising, etc. So what is the hierarchy of the MTT? Lets look at it as a waterfall and see where it takes us. I don’t believe starting hands should be at the top, even though it seems to be the first thing driven into us as poker students. Starting hand requirements change continually depending on other factors at the table and in the tourney. Therefore starting hands cannot be at the top of the waterfall. So if you feel stuck like I do then maybe we learned this game in the wrong pattern. Lets shuffle up the parts and try again.

I think we should start our journey with chips and not cards. Should the top of our waterfall be ‘tournament position’ and trickle down from there? We all start in the same position with the same starting stack, and although we have a huge number of big blinds, we are all equal as far as starting stacks go. So from here on out we need to keep an eye on our place in the tourney; where we are relative to the average stack in the tourney as well as where we are as to the average stack at our individual table.

But what is next in the MTT hierarchy? I think it may be ‘table image’. Is this table full of donkeys raising and re-raising each other with total garbage at the 10/20 or 30/60 level? Is it a table full of limpers who all want to see a cheap flop? Is it so tight that no one wants to play a hand? This, it seems to me, is very important as far as how we begin to play our MTT, and should be number two as we trickle down our waterfall.

Number three, it seems to me should be the image we have of our individual opponents. If you have a maniac on your left you might want to play a little differently than if you have a rock on your left, and so I would assign ‘opponents perceived image’ as number three.

I’m going to place ‘table position’ as the fourth item to consider. Is it folded around to you? Are there limpers in front of you? Is there a raise in front of you? How many are to act behind you?

Number five is going to be ‘my own image at the table’. How do my opponents see me? Have I raised a lot? Am I perceived as weak/tight? A bully? The guy who can be bluffed off a big hand? A calling station? It’s very important to see how we are perceived.

‘Stack sizes’ are the next level of my waterfall. My own stack size relative to the blinds as well as to my opponents stacks. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and in my playbook, desperate measures usually precede desperate times. If you let your stack get to low you lose fold equity and fold equity is what my chip stack is all about. So chip up or die I say.

Almost coming full circle I’ll give ‘hand requirements’ seven on my list, and I’ll remove the word requirements as well. The reality is with all the other components in order, sometimes the cards just don’t matter. As proven once by a pretty young lass with a post it note on her screen when she was challenged by none other than myself.

I’ll end my list with number eight being ‘bet sizing’ and all I will say about that is aggression, aggression, aggression.

1: Tournament Position
2: Table Image
3: Opponents Perceived Table Image
4: Table position
5: My Table Image
6: Stack Sizes
7: Opening Hand Requirements
8: Bet Sizing

I’d like to end this by stating that although I’m searching for some hierarchical structure. I do understand that all the parts of the whole work hand in hand, in conjunction with one another. But I think by separating these parts, it forces us to not forget critical parts of the whole. Therefore finding a structure and learning it in a pattern may well help some of us to stop forgetting a little piece here, and a little piece there, as those are the times we get beat and smack ourselves on the forehead and say “why did I do that?” “I know better than to do that.”

If you’ve taken the time to read all this, I thank you, and I would ask that you feel free to discuss, add to, subtract from, re-shuffle all the parts and maybe we can all get a little something out of it.

OlDustyAces</SPAN>

Very good post sir , as i have read the book myself couldn't have put it any better , good info for all great info for beginner's !!

I like this post. Good work.

great post
going to look into the book

but every one of the things you have mentioned should apply to EVERY hand, regardless of how you rank them in importance

the game goes even deeper than this