How much time did you put in before you got good?
Annie Duke: I’m still waiting to be really good. I’ll let you know; stick a pin in that one. I’ve been playing for 15 years. I’m waiting. The fact is that has to be the case because poker is a game of decision making under conditions of uncertainty so that you don’t see your opponents cards. You can’t ever become a master of the game because it’s not mathematically solvable.
You can get better at solving it. You can get closer to a solution. You can get better at behaving properly toward the range of hands that your opponent might be holding; mathematically properly in terms of equity decisions. You can get better at narrowing down the range of hands that your opponent could be holding which obviously allows you to behave more mathematically, properly toward that range. In an ideal world, we get it down to one hand and then we would always behave perfectly but we can’t do that.
I am much better than I was when I started but I will never have it solved, you just can’t. That’s what allows us to grow as players and it’s what allows us to continue to become better because I don’t think that I’m great. I am striving to become great and I’m going to be striving toward that goal for my whole life. The realistic answer to your question is I started in ’94 and I started being really successful at the game around 1998.
What’s the best advice you were ever given?
Annie Duke: When I first started playing, I was very focused on the bad things that happened to me that were out of my control. My brother had to give me this advice over and over again. It took a few years to really sink in; we call it “moaning.” You’re moaning about your luck. You’re moaning about your hands. He said to me, “nobody want to hear your moan” which is true because we’ve all seen every bad hand that’s happened like I don’t need to hear it.
The piece of advice that he gave me that was so important was not so much nobody wants to hear you moan, it was, “What productive thing is coming out of moaning? In what way is moaning productive? Because if you think about it, he is totally right about this.
All you are doing when you are moaning is bemoaning your bad luck. “Oh, I had the best hand and he had the worst hand and he won.” You’re not doing anything to analyze the hand; you’re not doing anything constructive. Did I do something wrong in the hand? Could I have taken a different line of play? Should I have been involved in the hand in the first place? All those things that might actually help you become a better poker player.
When you’re moaning, all you are doing is focusing on things that were not in your control as far as you know, at least you are not exploring whether they were in your control which is bad. You’re just focusing on the one piece of bad variance that happened and there’s nothing productive that comes from it at all.
What’s the worst advice you were given?
Annie Duke: When I first started playing, I was very focused on the bad things that happened to me that were out of my control. My brother had to give me this advice over and over again. It took a few years to really sink in; we call it “moaning.” You’re moaning about your luck. You’re moaning about your hands. He said to me, “nobody want to hear your moan” which is true because we’ve all seen every bad hand that’s happened like I don’t need to hear it.
The piece of advice that he gave me that was so important was not so much nobody wants to hear you moan, it was, “What productive thing is coming out of moaning? In what way is moaning productive? Because if you think about it, he is totally right about this.
All you are doing when you are moaning is bemoaning your bad luck. “Oh, I had the best hand and he had the worst hand and he won.” You’re not doing anything to analyze the hand; you’re not doing anything constructive. Did I do something wrong in the hand? Could I have taken a different line of play? Should I have been involved in the hand in the first place? All those things that might actually help you become a better poker player.
When you’re moaning, all you are doing is focusing on things that were not in your control as far as you know, at least you are not exploring whether they were in your control which is bad. You’re just focusing on the one piece of bad variance that happened and there’s nothing productive that comes from it at all.
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