Work on your strengths rather than your weaknesses in poker

Let me give you a real world example of how this concept works that has nothing to do with poker: In one of my previous professions I was a salesman for a health club -that is, I would tour people and sign them up-and I was very good at sealing the deal. The problem I had was generating leads, and getting people into the club; I hated making cold-calls, and just as much I hated soliciting businesses, and pretty much any of the other lead generating methods. What I did to make up for this was work on my closing, not on my lead generation!

I focused on the quality of the lead, not the quantity, and closing the deal, because I knew it was far more likely that a person walking into the gym on their own volition was more likely to sign-up than someone I cold-called. The following numbers are simplified, but for me it was better to have an 80% closing rate on 20 customers -16 sales– than to have a 50% closing rate on 30 customers -15 sales. Not to mention the extra time I had, since I wasn’t randomly making cold-calls and such. Sure the person seeing 30 customers is doing 50% more tours, but the quality just isn’t there -not to mention they are doing much more leg-work than I am.

Well, in many cases this same principle holds true for poker players. There are so many choices and options in poker that you can really work around your weaknesses if your strengths are strong enough -just like I did in my sales experience. For instance, if you have a hard time stealing blinds you can find a game that is looser, where blind-stealing is less of a factor: If you have trouble reading opponents you can play online: If you suck at PLO don’t play it! You can still work on these weaknesses -in fact you should-but you don’t need to focus on them, they simply just aren’t that important to your long-term success.

What I’m saying is that it’s ok to have certain weaknesses, and you shouldn’t spend every waking hour trying to plug an unpluggable leak in your game; just knowing what your weaknesses are will help you avoid situations that bring them to the forefront. The better tactic is to work on the areas where you already show some talent. Nobody is going to tell Peyton Manning he needs to get faster, because his strengths override this weakness in his game -and you can bet that if he spent the entire offseason working on improving his 40-yard dash time he would indeed be faster, but what would that really add to his game? And how much would his other skills suffer from being ignored?

So, just like Peyton Manning is better off increasing his accuracy 2% than becoming 10% faster, most poker players will also benefit more from exploiting their opponents pre-flop than they will  by spending every waking minute trying to work on their thin value bets -or whatever your particular strengths and weaknesses are.