There are several main characteristics of any successful system in gambling and system design is an area where game theory comes to the fore and this is probably my main field of
expertise and one that has allowed me to be able to make money in poker. It is for this reason why there have been so many analogies with other fields throughout my blogs. This is because they are not separate entities at all but linked conceptually in numerous principles.
In poker than any system has to fulfill several key functions to work. It first has to be theoretically sound and the plan of making money and the objectives for how to achieve this and how that is going to happen need to be clear and concise and this will be addressed in the SNIPER on why I have selected No Limit Texas Hold’em ring games.
The system also has to work in combat…….many systems fail that are theoretically sound in the actual field of play which kind of leads me to think that they were not theoretically sound at all…….a main cause of this failure is over complication.
The third criteria is that the system has to be relatively easy to operate. The final criteria is that the system if at all possible must not be in widespread use by other people if in the process of being so it nullifies the effect of the system. We can see here how “you” play a part in all of this. It is up to you to find a system that is theoretically sound and many go down blind alleys. Ditto for criteria number two as if a system is theoretically unsound then it is hardly going to work in reality.
Criteria number three is often seen all over the poker world, players try to learn a system of operation either from some book or online poker coach that they themselves have trouble replicating. This is often to do with what I call the “understanding gap”……this means the gap between what the author or coach is trying to teach or say and what the student actually takes in and comprehends (or in many cases only using the parts that they can be bothered with).
This is often done wrongly and leaves the student with some “warped” version of what the coach intended and they only have to change that version slightly without conscious thought and suddenly they are playing in a way that isn’t the same as what was shown to them.
This is a huge problem with coaching complex methods and systems, the information overload problem means that the true concepts are often lost in translation if you attempt to do this too quickly. The result is that it takes a certain amount of time for complex systems to be taught and then absorbed and this is time that your average player simply does not have.
