How To Become An Expert At Poker

Allow me digress for a moment from Poker. It’s been said that to become an expert at anything, it takes 10,000 hours of relevant activity. I’d have to say that this is a pretty reasonable figure. At 40 hrs per week, it would take about 5 years to achieve expert status in something.

Consider, then, based on this definition, how many true “experts” there are at Poker, say particularly in Texas Hold’em tournaments. If you’re in your thirties or older, and you’ve been playing weekend games of poker with the buddies for the past 10 years, it’s quite likely that you’re more of an expert at your chosen form of Poker than, say, some of the youngbloods like, oh, pick any very young tourney player.

Like they say for Texas Hold’em: it takes a few minutes to learn the rules and a lifetime to master. But that said, suppose that with poker, it’s not 10,000 hours that makes you a master, but 10,000 hands played. How long would that actually take?

Well, obviously it’s hard to say because this depends on other players, whether you’re playing live or online, how many other players there are, and how fast or slow people are playing. But let’s just say that you can 4-6 hands per - an average of 5. That means 10,000 hands might take about 2,000 hrs to play.

Now unless you’re already wealthy, a complete bum, or somehow fortunate, you’re not playing poker 40 hours a week, every week. But maybe you can manage to get in 10 hrs/wk playing 2-4 days a week. That means you’ll need to play hands at this rate for 200 wks, or approximately 4 years.

Four years to become an expert at poker? Hmm. Now that’s a bit more manageable, and rather seems to be in line with the experience level of some of the younger professional players. Something to think about. And four years of TIGHT playing online might just earn you a tidy sum, if I’ve interpreted the advice of experts correctly.

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