This weeks theme seems to be how much time does one spend studying poker? I have been asked this question no fewer than four times this week which is something of a record. I am going to quote PokerTracker again in this post because it is highly relevant to both areas of poker and this is the playing of it and the study of it. PokerTracker for me is the industry standard that every other tracker needs to follow or to match and this is a serious reason as to why so many poker players have advanced their games in a very short space of time.
The ability to use computer software to analyse your performance has been used in other fields to great effect and so it was only a matter of time before the same thing happened in poker. It is no coincidence that a record number of Chess Grandmasters rated at 2600ELO+ are active now in the Chess world. But the balance needs to be right with regards study time and playing time.
Let us say that you have a projected earn rate based on 120k hands of ring game play at NL50 of 7ptbb/100. This is giving us a dollar figure of $7/100 and if this player is multi-tabling and seeing 300 hands/hour then our PokerTracker stats are showing us that this player is making $21/hour from the games. Now imagine that this player can only manage 20 hours of poker or study a week due to work commitments. This player would have a weekly projected earn of $420.
Now look at the situation if they spent 10 of those hours studying or doing other non playing activities. This would reduce their weekly earn by $210/week. This is fine if your study is an investment that will return more than this figure. But if you are a winning poker player then everything that you do that is not connected to actually playing poker is theoretically costing you money unless that extra knowledge is an investment to make you more money at some future point in time.
This is a crucial side of PokerTracker that is rarely discussed because if you know your earn rate then you can measure how much studying is actually costing you and whether you are making an investment or simply wasting money.
The Dean now plays poker at www.pokerstars.co.uk
