Poker is the ultimate art form. Traditionally, the concept of art is limited to things like painting, music, etc. But occasionally you hear people talking about a beautiful baseball toss or a stunning mathematical proof. In poker, we also talk about beauty, although we use other words to describe it, such as "sick game", "soulread", etc. The way we perceive beauty in poker is the highest form of excellence.
Where does creativity come from in poker? What is its role? And how can we develop our creativity?
In fact, it's natural to be creative. When you first started playing poker, everything you did was creative. You experimented, you made choices that you hadn't made before and you weren't afraid. It was only after a certain period of time, when you had learnt not to do things you would rather not do, that your creativity was stifled. Then you became a fully-fledged disciplined player. Now you don't even see how limited you are by your own conditioning. So you can no longer see all the possibilities available. When you face AA preflop, you don't see limp as an option, it has been completely ruled out.
For a second, imagine poker as a wide field. Your "game" is the template of the beaten track within it, limiting the space available to you. Instead of allowing yourself to roam freely in this field, you now only follow the paths you have mapped out. And this does not happen without reason. This is how you try to protect yourself from negative EV. These structures become a self-imposed map that insulates you from losing money.
But once you've built a solid foundation of knowledge, you realise that the model you've constructed is not perfect. You realise that the path you've mapped out may be in a better shape, in the shape of a perfect poker game, but your path never becomes one. You suspect that it is too short in most places and too long in others.
Where does creativity come from? It comes naturally, through trial and error, play and learning from the results. And while you're still developing your poker structure (while you're still figuring out how to draw the grid) it's very easy to be creative, to test your boundaries. That is the easy part.
Once the template is created and deeply embedded in your consciousness, it becomes a real challenge to create. If you perceive limp-in to AA as an unacceptable choice, if you have eliminated it from all potential choices, how do you even hope to clarify the fact that limp-in is the best choice in this case?
You've probably already started wondering why such a blunt example is used: 'after all, limp into AA is never the best solution'. That is why it is a very good example. We all know that open limp into AA in cash is never a good solution. But it is outside the templates we have built for the game, and such a model will probably fit well with a positive EV game. However, you never know which of the templates you have is no longer compatible with positive EV, and sometimes it can be as obvious as this one that says not to limp into AA. Since it's already a deeply ingrained part of your game, it passes in silence, like an unasked question, a tactical assumption.
It's usually obvious when you overstep your boundaries. When you make bluffs that don't work or play in a way that's easy to counter, you immediately get negative feedback, so you know you need to back off. It's hard not to notice those places in your game. But most of the time, the EV that we bitch about in the bad spots is hindered by the EV we could have. Of course, we know nothing about this EV. Our minds don't get any clues about EV that we don't even know exists.The only sign of overstepping the boundaries is a lower winrate.
You don't know where you overstep your boundaries. That's the nature of a poker player. You lack value, but you don't know where. So to be creative is to go out and find that value. And the only way to discover new spaces is to go beyond the old beliefs of the mind.
How does this manifest itself in reality? What does it mean to "go beyond old beliefs"? Transcending mental beliefs manifests itself in fear, a feeling that something is wrong, discomfort. It is the same feeling that stops you from overbetting a pot with two buys, even if someone tells you to do so. It's not that you think silently to yourself "this is a negative EV", even though you might be able to convince yourself that you are thinking about it, but actually you decided before you did any mathematical calculations, your body reacted itself. Here are the physical, mental
reflexes should be our focus.
Sometimes they are called emotional pain. This pain occurs when a potential game scares you. It is a lump in the throat. And it doesn't matter what you call this feeling - fear, discomfort or something else. If you're a poker player, you know what it's all about. Of course, emotional pain is sometimes extremely useful. It keeps you from playing badly. Without this pain, you would probably start doing stupid things just out of boredom or curiosity. It is a subconscious method of regulating your game. When the conscious mind disagrees with you, you feel stupid; when the subconscious mind disagrees with you, you feel emotional pain.
You also feel this pain when you try to cross the network of established paths in your head, so you have to go through it in order to develop your work. You have to accept that lump in your throat if you want to go beyond your boundaries. That feeling is just a signal that your subconscious thinks you are making a mistake. That's what it is, it's a signal that your mind has forbidden you to play like that.
But you know that your model of play is not perfect and, moreover, if you want to move forward towards the best possible game, you have to introduce yourself to this emotional pain. To feel it is to knock on the door of creativity. If you play creatively, if you do something you have never done before, that "stone on the heart" is a sign that you have approached the limit of your old playing template. You have to be willing to feel that pain. Fear, pain, discomfort, that's the only measure to recognise your progress. You have to surrender to it. And finally, when you are ready, you have to go beyond the old pattern and start creating a new one. This is the only way poker evolves. It seems that there have always been rules that were unshakeable - how to play preflop, what the bet sizes are, the selection of hands - but gradually they have been rebuilt, daring to do more, to go further.
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