The Evolution of Poker
Everyone sucks at poker; not just you, not just me, but even the best player in the world, whoever he may be (rhyming completely unintentional).
Let me clarify with a metaphor. Forty years ago, the best bridge player in the world said something along the lines that he couldn’t imagine improving his game. Then years later, he said he couldn’t believe how bad he was when he originally said that. Despite still being the best player in the world and having ten more years of experience, he had come to realize that his game still had a long way to go.
Take chess for example. Modern chess has been around since the 1400s. The tradition of organized competitive chess has been around since the 1500s. It took decades of trying, due to the vast complexity of the game, but computers have finally become stronger chess players than humans. This is in spite of the vigorous training that the most talented chess players dedicate their entire lives to.
Poker, on the other hand, is even more complex than chess. There are more situations in poker than board positions in chess; poker is not a game of perfect information, unlike chess; and there is a seemingly infinite amount of complexity stemming from just the various types of opponents you will encounter, even disregarding game theory itself. Furthermore, the rigorous sharing of information and overall constant improvement of the poker community has only been a major force for less than a decade (thanks, of course, to the internet). So not only is poker more complicated than chess, but we are still at the early stages of understanding the game. Basically, everyone still sucks at it.
Don’t get me wrong — we have come a long way. Guys like Doyle Brunson have been adapting their strategies for decades and decades, eventually sharing most of them with the world. I’d estimate that the game of poker (measured by the overall skill of the best players in the world) has gone through four paradigm shifts in recent history. There was a huge increase of skill with the first rounders, many of whom traveled nomadically across
The second paradigm shift came in the 1970s, when tournament poker started to become more popular, and the first WSOP superstars rose to fame. The writing of Super System was also a major contributor to that paradigm shift. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, strategy books such as Theory of Poker and Hold’em Poker for Advanced Players, most notably from the 2+2 publishing company, caused another paradigm shift in play.
The most recent shift started around 2003 and 2004, thanks to the internet. First it led to online satellites for televised events, using hole-card cams that made the game much more popular. It also made poker a lot more accessible to everyone, vastly increasing the number of hands played annually. Most importantly, the internet led to a massive sharing of information over the internet via instant messenger, poker forums, and even training sites. Naturally, this caused a huge increase in the overall skill level of poker players.
Just ask anyone who has played online to compare the games of 2006 to the games of 2004. Even if you look at similar stakes, anyone who knows anything about online poker will tell you that the games in 2006 are MUCH tougher.
I don’t like to speak on behalf of other players but, without exception, all of the best players in the world admit that they are constantly making mistakes. Barry Greenstein is my favorite example of this. On his website www.barrygreenstein.com, he analyzes many of the best players in the world. He even has an analysis of himself. In the weaknesses section, he wrote that he has “so many, that I needed to write a book to cover them all.” Some of the other best players in the world, like Patrik Antonius, Brian Townsend, and Daniel Negreanu keep blogs in which they are constantly talking about the mistakes they make. And of course, this only includes the mistakes that these guys notice.
I am going to make some predictions — some that many people will disagree with — but I am confident that these will come true:
First, the games will become a lot tougher over the next four years. An influx of new players starting at the beginning of the learning curve will temporarily deter this, but the overall progression of poker is leading to tougher and tougher games. We have already seen online poker become increasingly tougher and tougher at a very fast rate. This trend will only continue.
Second, the association of pros and their signature styles will slowly devolve. As poker itself evolves as a whole, the merit of different styles being viable will devolve. Certain styles, like extreme loose aggression, are very exploitable, especially by very talented players. The top games will become more and more saturated by these top tier players and, as such, these styles will no longer be practicable against weak competition. Furthermore, it will become less and less accepted that a tight straightforward style is okay against weak passive players. In any given situation, no two styles can have an equal amount of success. Over time, good players will learn this, and there will be a greater emphasis on learning multiple styles of play and adapting to unique situations, rather than specializing in one style.
Third, the increase in aggression (and I do NOT mean looseness) that we have seen online will transfer to live play. Many of the highest stakes live cash games are played very passively, with many players to a flop, while the opposite is true online. Very few hands online in the highest stakes cash games even get to a flop, despite heavy action pre-flop. It has been a bit of a stereotype that live players often denounce the importance of pre-flop play, but eventually, the tight-aggressive standard that exists in online high stakes cash games will transfer over to live play as well. Information and overall increase in skill will always be slower live than it is online, but as more and more online players start playing live, the gains in information will transfer over.
Fourth, there will be an increased reliance on math and computer programs. As we come closer and closer to that unattainable “optimal” style, situations will become more and more complex. Many of the obvious edges will no longer exist, and the smaller, more mathematical edges will become a larger part of the best players’ profits. Computer programs will continue to help players understand when they are not properly balancing their play and their ranges. As technology increases, computers will become better and more efficient at analyzing our play. Even today, I think these aspects are much underutilized, but as time goes by, they will become more and more necessary, rather than simply being beneficial.
As time passes in any game, there is a growing trend towards the existence of more skilled players. We will see some exceptions to this, as poker becomes legalized in other areas and there are huge influxes of newer players to the game; but these will only be short-term deterrents in the overall growth of poker as a skill game.
I really believe that if the ten best players in the world were to fall into a coma for five years, and were put into the toughest cash games when they woke up, they would be very significant underdogs. They would awaken to groups of players that are more advanced than any they have ever faced.
Mostly I have been talking about No Limit cash games up to this point, but what I am saying still applies to other forms of poker. While no form of poker is solvable, Limit games are generally simpler, and it is easier to classify a play as correct or incorrect. Regardless, there still isn’t a single player out there who can play ANY Limit game without constantly making mistakes.
There is also a misconception that tournament poker is easier to play. This is not the case at all. It only seems that way because the fish happen to be attracted to tournament play. In reality, there are so many more variables and different situations that exist in tournament play that it is significantly more complex than other forms of poker. Many people point out that the average stack size is smaller in tournament poker, but this isn’t true for the early levels. All the skills that are necessary in cash games are useful during those first few levels, even if they become less and less important as the tournament progresses. Basically, to become the best tournament player possible, you still need to know all the skills that cash game players need to know, as well as knowing all the other skills that are unique to tournament play.
Although we will see the trends I listed above be applied to tournament poker, they will be slightly less visible, simply because there is so much appeal in tournament poker for the casual players who will never take much time to better their poker game.
A lot of players will read this and then say “So what?” Personally, I think these trends are very important to any serious poker player. I will never be content with the way that I play, because I understand that even if I were to become the best player in the world, I still wouldn’t be playing anywhere close to optimally and will always be able to go through a huge amount of improvement.
So as I said at the beginning, everyone sucks at poker: even you and even me. Personally, I see this as a great thing. The game is infinitely complex, and that is why I love it. I know that I will never reach my maximum potential and will always be able to learn a great amount. As the years go by, we will see players become better and better but, as long as we are just plain humans, the game of poker will never come close to being perfected.
-Justin Bonomo
