Concentration

[Aequitas58]

I think this is a good post. Here's what I think.

While playing poker, I don't do too much more than play poker. I'll usually have my instant messenger open, I might peruse a few forums, but other than that, I'm not watching movies or TV at all.

For me, poker is broken up into two categories: ring games and tournaments.

Ring games are beatable by monotonous, standard, routine play. I'm not playing high limit 6-max or NL, so I don't need to be tricky. As you always say, simply playing good hands hard and "not" getting cute is a winning strategy for low limits. I recently switched from playing NL to L, so I don't feel as "robotic," especially at the 6M tables. Either way, I'm not heavily concentrating on one table.

Tournaments on the other hand require much more concentration for me. I'm constantly making player notes and watching the action just to figure out my opponents tendencies. It's amazing how much information is available to you if you take advantage of it. I don't like multi-tabling MTTs for that very reason AND I don't even like multi-tasking while playing MTTs. (Then again, that's my favorite form of poker, so I guess I'm enjoying it more as well.)

Is concentration NEEDED to win a higher levels? I dunno, I'll let you know when I get there. I can say that it depends on the person. Last week I was talking to a high-limit player. Here's what he had open:

$30/60 O8
Stars Stud8 MTT
Stars NLHE (or PLHE?) Satellite to WCOOP

How can you possibly play like that? Who knows.

One day.