How to Become a World-Class Poker Player

Skill development expert profile — Phil Ivey

With the fake ID ‘Jerome Graham’, Phil started playing poker at the casinos in Atlantic City when he was 16. He was the last person to leave the tables every night. Except when he went bust and had to sleep under some cardboard boxes until the bus came the next day. This earned him the nickname, ‘No Home Jerome.’

Since then, Ivey has won ten World Series of Poker bracelets, has an estimated net worth of $110 million and is known as one of the best and most feared poker players in the world. In his largest ever win, he beat billionaire Andy Beal for an impressive 16.6$ million in a single day.

Phil is an intimidating opponent at the tables, always darting his eyes around to pick up information from the other players. His style of play is methodical and involves thinking through hands carefully, before making accurate and deliberate decisions. What can we learn from Phil Ivey about what it takes to perform a skill at the highest level?

Don’t be predictable

If you act like a machine and play hands the same way every time you’re in the same situation, your opponents will start to notice and use it against you. It’s good to have some guidelines to follow when you’re learning how to play. But as you progress to higher levels, you sometimes need to break these rules to become less predictable.

If you’re only betting when you have a hand, you become very easy to play against. Your opponent can then fold every time you bet, unless they also have a very strong hand. They have an easy decision to make. Only a weak opponent will fail to recognise if someone always have a hand when they are betting. To balance your play, you must sometimes bet when you have a weak hand or nothing at all (bluff). When your opponent is unsure whether you have what you represent or not, they will start paying you off more often when you catch a good hand.

It’s also possible to be too predictable by playing every hand and bluffing all the time. Although you’re technically not that predictable, as you could have any two cards at any moment. Your opponents will notice if you try to win every hand and will in this case try to trap you with a strong hand and let you bluff your money away. They may also call you with an average strength hand, as they simply won’t believe that you have anything. Playing like this is one of the fastest ways to lose all of your chips and money.

World-class players are much more difficult to play against. They will play fewer hands, which means they usually have a stronger starting hand. At the same time, they will play enough hands that they occasionally will have a weaker holding. They will bet when they have strong hands, medium-strength hands and sometimes nothing at all. They may also check when they have a strong hand to pretend to be weak. They will play hands in ways that may confuse you and force you to make a difficult decision about whether to keep playing the hand. And because they are so unpredictable, you may never get to know if made the correct decision.

Adapt to the environment

‘Everything I do is really player dependent, on how I am playing and how they are playing.’ -Phil Ivey

Every time you sit down at a table, there will be different players, with varying playing styles and patterns of play. The most profitable way to play is highly dependent on how people around you play and it’s critical to adjust your playing style accordingly.

Against an aggressive player, you must be more selective when taking a stand, as they will often try to bluff. Against a timid player you can bluff a lot, as you know they will only continue if they have a strong hand. If you’re playing with a group of opponents that you can outplay after the flop, you can usually play a wider range of hands. If you’re up against top-level competition, on the other hand, you need to play more solid and fundamentally sound, as they will punish your mistakes.

It’s important to pick up on how a player plays on a given day or at a certain time in a session. Their game may vary dependant on how they’re feeling, whether they are winning or losing in the game or if they’re calm or irritated. What makes poker interesting is that there is not a ‘correct’ way to play a hand. It always depends on who your opponent is, the current game situation and the past history you have playing against your opponent.

Be aware

‘You need to almost understand your opponent better than themselves. That’s when you know you really got them.’ -Phil Ivey

Ivey is famous for always being on the lookout for information that can reveal something about the hand of the opponents. To play at a high level, awareness of yourself and your surroundings is essential. You continually need to make adjustments based on your opponents play.

You also have to be aware of how others perceive the way you’re playing. If the other players have noticed that you have been bluffing a lot lately, it may not be a great time to bluff again. But this situation could be an excellent opportunity to get them to call if you have a strong hand.

How other people perceive your play may not always be accurate however. If you get several good hands in a row, people may think that you are bluffing like crazy, as they can’t see your cards. Try to continuously observe yourself from the outside, and be aware of how your opponents perceive you.

Some players may try to project an image of playing wild and reckless, by dressing in a certain way or talking as if they are always in there gambling. Be aware of how people are actually playing, not what they want you to believe.

‘A lot of things are out of your control. The cards you are dealt, the cards that come on the table. So, you got to focus on the things you can control. What you have in front of you. Being emotionally present. Staying aware. And playing your best. All the other stuff. Bad beats, being unlucky, whether you win or lose. That’s out of your control. Focus on making the correct decisions.’ -Phil Ivey

Bluffing

‘When you’re playing against a really tough opponent, you know that they know that you don’t have anything. But also, you know that they don’t have anything. So, then it comes down to who’s willing to go the extra mile.’ -Phil Ivey

Bluffing and getting caught bluffing is part of the game. If you don’t have bluffs in your game, it becomes a lot easier to play against you. Don’t have regrets if someone calls your bluff. Even if you lose one hand, it may pay off later in the session, as people know you are capable of bluffing. Remember to only bluff players who are capable of folding. Some people just love to call and can be very difficult to get off any type of hand.

Be mindful of when you are bluffing. If you’re bluffing when a card that couldn’t have helped you comes on the board, it doesn’t make any sense. In these situations, you are very likely to be called, especially by strong players. If the story you are telling them doesn’t make sense, their intuition that something is weird will immediately tell them that this could be a bluff.

When playing a hand, try to get in your opponent’s head and figure out what their thought process is. What are they trying to represent? Do you believe them? Does it make sense that they could have the hand they are representing, from the way they have played the hand up until that point?

You can also make money by inducing and catching bluffs. By checking, you give your opponent a chance to make a mistake by bluffing. If you put them on a draw, and the draw didn’t materialise, check and let them bluff.

How to study away from the table

‘Think about the hand and what you could have done differently if a similar hand comes up.’ -Phil Ivey

When you leave the table for the day, there is still work to be done. To improve, you need to think about how you played the hands. You should think about what your opponent was thinking and the different amounts they bet in different situations. What can you do against them next time? What did they think of me as a player? Do they think I’m playing tight, aggressive or that I’m bluffing a lot? What ways can I play against my opponents the next time I play against them? Asking yourself all these questions is crucial to improve and perform at your best the next time you play.

By remembering how your opponents played in specific situations, you may use this information in future sessions to have an advantage if you face them again. You may have learned how they like to play in certain situations or when they like to bluff. Just be aware that a highly-skilled opponent may try to trick you by playing hands in a different way the next time.

Put in the hours

‘I practised a lot. From the time I was 20 years old, I played probably 14–15 hours a day for ten years.’ -Phil Ivey

To become one of the best players in the world, you need to have a good work ethic and be willing to put in the hours. This means analysing hands after your games, why certain hands went well and recognising which hands you played less than optimally. If you misplayed a hand, consider the loss as a lesson that can help you become a better player in the future. What you don’t want to do is forget all about it and make the same mistake again next time.

‘I’ve never played a session, where afterwards, I said I played perfectly today. There are so many variables. There is always something that you could have improved.’ -Phil Ivey

Both on and off the table, you need to pay attention to what’s going on, thinking about different strategies and different ways to win. Studying how other top players play hands and creating strategies to use against specific types of players is very important. Phil also puts in many hours of exercise every week to stay in the best possible mental shape, which helps to make correct decisions at the table.

‘I’m not a prodigy. I just work at poker very hard. I always think of how I can get better at it.’-Phil Ivey

Mental game

‘It’s not how you’re playing when you’re winning, but how you play when you’re losing that’s the mark of a champion.’ -Phil Ivey

It’s easy to play well when everything is going your way. But when you start losing and getting a few bad breaks, it can be challenging to hold it together. It’s easy to start taking higher risks in an attempt to win back what you’ve lost. This strategy will most likely only lead to more losses.

When things aren’t going well. It’s easy to get down on yourself. Same at the poker people, when things aren’t going well, it’s easy to start questioning how you play and make bad decisions.

You have to keep calm in these situations and accept that you will have losing streaks. It’s part of the game. If you played a hand correctly, and still lose, those hands shouldn’t make you feel bad. On the other hand, if you make a mistake, even if you win. You should work on improving those hands.

‘I don’t let losing bother me. I don’t let it affect my game. Some players, when they are losing, they play terrible.’ -Phil Ivey

Strategies for success

• Study how the best players in the world play. Especially hands they play differently from how you would typically play. Implement the best ideas you find into your game.
• Have a group of peers to discuss strategy with. Learn from others. There are always parts of your game that can improve, even if you’re already a great player.
• The only way to get better is to play against people who are better than you. To improve, ask yourself what they are doing well and how you can beat it.
• Experiment at lower stakes. Find out what works, where making mistakes doesn’t cost you that much.
• Don’t play in a game that affects your livelihood or your family. Play at a level where you’re having fun and can compete.

Take home message

To become a world-class poker player, it’s not enough to learn the rules of the game and hope for the best. It’s a game where the sharpest players win over time. To make it difficult for your opponents, its essential to play in an unpredictable way. You constantly want them to question whether they are making the correct decisions against you.

It’s crucial to constantly adapt to how the players around you are playing and change strategies accordingly. Every little detail matter, so if you can pick up on something your opponent does, it can help you out at a later point. Even when you’re not in a hand, you should watch the other players, to study how they are playing.

Becoming world-class depends on putting in a lot of work and attention while playing and between sessions. It’s a game that is continuously developing, and the strategies that worked three years ago, may not be the optimal way to play anymore.

Whether you are a poker player or not, the ways elite performers are thinking about improvement can hopefully give some inspiration and ideas for the skills you are trying to improve.

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