How good a poker player am I?
by PokerAnon ~ March 17th, 2009. Filed under: Bankroll, General poker strategy, Goals and plans.
I don’t link to a lot of other sites, but I really like this post by Ed Miller.
Ed talks about the eternal questions for poker players; How good am I? When should I move up? I pretty much knew where he was heading with his answer ’cause I remember elsewhere he mentioned his decision to move up in, I believe it was live limit poker in his hometown, even though he was a breakeven player at that time. He believed that he could beat his level, and was ready for the next level based on his play and his observation of his opposition, even though his bankroll change and statistics didn’t verify this at the time.
The easy, objective, qualitative answer is missing from Ed’s article. That’s because there isn’t one. There are guidelines out there, in terms of bb/100 over minimum number of hands, or number of buyins in your bankroll to protect you from downswings hitting you too hard emotionally or bankrupting you. But that’s all they are, guidelines. Your answer for the question depends on you, right now, at the level that you’re playing at. Three months from now the answer will be different, for you as a player then, relative to the level that you’re playing in three months.
There’s lots to like in this article. Poker as a solitary pursuit. Poker as a lifelong learning project. Poker as a psychological test. Money as irrelevant. The best players as humble. It’s one of the reasons that Ed’s one of my poker heros.
