{"id":487,"date":"2013-02-16T18:22:49","date_gmt":"2013-02-16T17:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/holdempokertrainer.com\/wordpress\/?p=487"},"modified":"2026-01-27T20:10:44","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T19:10:44","slug":"lazy-poker-players-beware-of-this-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/holdempokertrainer.com\/wordpress\/lazy-poker-players-beware-of-this-post","title":{"rendered":"Lazy poker players beware of this post&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Are poker players in general lazy?<\/p>\n<p>How much time are poker players in general putting in to improve their game compared to other fields? I would say that the answer is VERY little.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s discuss how chess players improve their skills in their game. Chess and poker has enough commonalities to make the comparison relevant. I know most of you are not playing chess but I hope you get my point anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Here is how a fairly regular chess amateur with slightly above average ambition has developed his skills in the game over the years:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Started in a chess club at the age of 7<\/li>\n<li>At the club there was a weekly theory session of 1 hour followed by some exercises and game practice<\/li>\n<li>Has spent hour after hour to memorize opening moves (boooooring &#8211; at least that&#8217;s what I think;-)<\/li>\n<li>Has practiced many variations of endgames, for example with 1 pawn, two pawns, bishop vs bishop, bishop vs knight, etc, etc<\/li>\n<li>Has practiced finding combinations on time<\/li>\n<li>Takes notes during each game<\/li>\n<li>Analyzes the game afterward with his opponent<\/li>\n<li>Analyzes the game when he comes home with the help of the computer<\/li>\n<li>Reads chess books<\/li>\n<li>etc<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And a fairly regular poker player at a similar level:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Play poker<\/li>\n<li>Play poker<\/li>\n<li>Play poker<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You get the picture&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And you know what is so hilarious about this? The chess player above has not earned a cent from his hobby. And the poker player might have earned many  thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n<p>So you are trying to defend yourself by saying, &#8220;But everyone knows that chess players are nerds, and anyway poker is a game of intuition. I know what to do, I just feel it! And I am not a nerd!&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, intuition is a big part of poker. But so is tactics and strategies and analysis. I will not get into debate here about which part is most important, more on that in later blogs. Right now I will only argue that there are lots of things that can be studied and practiced in poker, just like there is in chess.<\/p>\n<p>So now that you have realized that you have been lazy, and want to change all that &#8211; how do you do that?<br \/>\nWell, you can always start here. Try the different<a onclick=\"javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('\/outgoing\/pokertrainer.se\/Poker_Training.aspx');\"  href=\"http:\/\/pokertrainer.se\/Poker_Training.aspx\"> poker training exercises<\/a>. And try to improve your results. And don&#8217;t just give up because it is not super-fun all the time. You think Kasparov gives something up after a couple of minutes just because it wasn&#8217;t entertaining enough? Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I certainly hope you enjoy the exercises and I know a lot of people who do. But all parts of your poker training does not have to be equally entertaining as playing is.<\/p>\n<p>Good luck on your road to true success in poker!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are poker players in general lazy? How much time are poker players in general putting in to improve their game compared to other fields? I would say that the answer is VERY little. Let&#8217;s discuss how chess players improve their skills in their game. Chess and poker has enough commonalities to make the comparison relevant. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25],"tags":[73],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/holdempokertrainer.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/holdempokertrainer.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/holdempokertrainer.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/holdempokertrainer.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/holdempokertrainer.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/holdempokertrainer.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":498,"href":"http:\/\/holdempokertrainer.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions\/498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/holdempokertrainer.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/holdempokertrainer.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/holdempokertrainer.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}