Basics
The wrong approach to the learning process creates the preconditions for psychological problems in play. Bridge, problems of motivation, fear and confidence can be eliminated by gaining a better understanding of how to learn and how to apply that knowledge.
This chapter describes the three theories that form the basis of an organised and logical development framework. This is followed by a client's story of how he used these theories to solve his Bridge problems.
Three main theories:
- The adult learning model: describes four different levels of the learning process
- The Kirmin Concept: showing how improvement happens over time
- Process model: facilitates continuous improvement and play at the highest level
In the short term, understanding how to learn better may seem very complicated, but later on you will acquire information that will make it easier to solve psychological problems in the game. These three theories can also contribute to improving your poker skills (not your psychological skills).
Adult learning model
When learning a new skill, the process itself is predictable and has a clear beginning and end. While players differ in some unique aspects of learning (e.g. how fast they learn, what information they absorb easily, where they get stuck the most), the whole process is more or less the same.
The Adult Learning Model (ALM) is a simple theory describing four different levels of the learning process. The four levels are:
- Level 1 - Unconscious not competence. You don't even know what you don't know yet. In other words, you may have no idea what skills you still lack. For some players, ignorance is bliss.
- Level 2 - Deliberate non-competence. Now you are becoming aware of what you do not yet know. This doesn't make you proficient, it just means you now know which skills you need to improve. Becoming aware happens because of your own discernment, or when someone from the outside shares their discernment.
- Level 3 - Deliberate competence. If you have reached this level, it means you have put in enough work and/or repeated the same action enough to acquire the skill. But the point is that to stay proficient, you have to think about what you have learned... otherwise you will lose the skill.
- Level 4 - Unconscious competence. At this level, you have reached a stage where you know something so well that it becomes automatic and requires no thought. Unconscious competence is the Holy Grail of learning and the most important concept in this book.
These levels make sense when you think back to your experience of learning poker or anything else in life. A great example of SMM in practice is learning to drive a car. Think back to when you were a child and thought about driving a car. At that time, you didn't know much about what a car was at all, let alone how to drive one. That is unconscious incompetence. Then, as a teenager, you understood much more about driving. Perhaps you were annoyed by the very fact that you did not know how to drive. You became conscious of your incompetence. Now think back to the first time you got behind the wheel. To drive a car you needed to learn how to drive, to press the accelerator, to keep your eyes on the road and the radio on at the same time, to adapt to the speed of traffic and to learn how to deal with thousands of different situations. You had to concentrate and think about all these factors to avoid injuring yourself or other road users. This is conscious competence. After a few years, you no longer need to think about each of these factors to drive a car. It has become a natural skill that requires very little effort. Without much thought, you can drive, listen to music, talk to passengers, deal with situations on the road such as bad weather, etc., all at the same time. Driving has reached a level of unconscious competence.
The disadvantages are skills. There are flaws and old habits in the psychological and technical competence of your unconscious poker playing. Basically, you are good at using your bad habits, but you don't want them to continue any more.
Before you start looking at how SMM applies to poker, take a minute to consider a few things:
- How much knowledge did you have when you first sat down to play poker?
- The complexity of your thought process before making decisions now and when you were just starting to develop?
- A mistake you've recently discovered you're making?
- Decisions that are made automatically during the game?
- Mistakes that won't happen again.
A good example of the application of SMM in poker is the starting hand (starting hand) Selection. When you first started playing, you probably hadn't heard of the starting hands table and played too many hands. Even when you had some knowledge of it, you probably didn't realise why it is a mistake to call a 3bet with QJo when you don't have position. So this was a weakness of yours that you were unaware of, regardless of whether you were completely or partially unconsciously ignorant of the concept of opening hands.
Let's jump to a few weeks or months after you've started wondering how to play poker, and especially how to choose which hands to play. You may have got this information from a friend or from a book that highlights the value of certain hands in different positions against different opponents. Perhaps the information came from an opponent who berated you for playing badly with two QJs, or perhaps you yourself have noticed that you are losing money in the long run by playing QJs in this way. So far you haven't figured out what hands you should play, but you have figured out that something is wrong. Just realising that you were making mistakes in the hands you were playing didn't make you good at it, but it was a sign that you needed to work on it. You will realise that you are deliberately not at the level of competence when you first notice your mistake.
As you continue to play and improve, you will understand the pros and cons of all possible starting hands. It will seem like you're improving, that you're in control of the hands you're playing, and that everything is going well... until you lose concentration at the end of a long session, or you get frustrated after losing a few big pots... and then suddenly you're back to your old habits, playing with hands that should be folded. Although these mistakes become obvious later on, it only confirms that you don't really know which hands to play as well as you thought you did. At this stage of the learning process, you still need to think about which hands to play with, otherwise you will make mistakes.
With more experience, more work and more practice, your work is finally done. Now even tiltindami you are able to shrug off weak hands without much reflection. It's a new habit where the decision is made automatically. It has taken a lot of work to get here, but the result is worth it. Now you don't have to think about what starting hands to play with, and your mind is free to learn new things.
Whether it's starting hands or emotional control, your mind has a limit to how much information it can process at any one time. You can only work on individual aspects of your game at a time. It is therefore critical to know where your SMM skills lie. This is the only way to know where to focus your development. If you no longer have to think about how to be good at an area, the mind is free to take on another weak point in your game, and move from conscious non-expertise to unconscious excellence. However, if you are still reverting to old habits, you need to put in more work, even if you don't think that way.
In reality, the learning process has many more small steps than the SMM describes, but the theory is simpler and particularly relevant to your game.
This series of articles is based on Jered Tendler's book on the psychology of poker, The Mental Game of Poker. If you would like to purchase the original, which is available in English, you can do so at amazon.com
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