Saturday, December 11, 2010

Texas Holdem: 10,000 Hours to Achieve Greatness

I'm listening to the book by Malcolm Gladwell, called "Outliers".  In his book, Gladwell points out that throughout history, greatness has come from, among other things, 10,000 hours of practice.  He names several important historical figures that became great after 10,000 hours of working on their trade.  To this point, the most interesting 10,000 hour story that I've heard is Bill Gates of Microsoft, but plenty of others come to mind fairly easily:  Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Brett Favre . . . . Doyle Brunson.

I've only been playing poker for about 3 years.  Gladwell says that it takes at least 10 years to hit 10,000 hours, but that's about 3 hours per day, 7 days per week.  3 hours per day isn't easy.  Most of us have very busy lives.  And 10 years?  I don't know if I can stand to wait 10 years for greatness.  Anyways, I haven't put in 3 hours per day.  Gosh!

I've played live and online probably about 12 hours per week and I've watched poker on TV about 2 hours per week.  That's just 2 hours per day.  And, now I'm reading books on Texas Hold'em.  For what it's worth, I think about poker probably about 16 hours per day, on and off.  I even dream about it sometimes, but not about winning or losing.  My dreams are usually about playing specific hands - kind of hard to explain.

Anyways, I'm pretty sure that thinking and dreaming about something doesn't count towards my 10,000 hours, so I probably have about 12 long years of consistent practice before I achieve greatness in poker.  Bummer - 12 years of playing poker.  : )

If anyone wants to put together a regular Texas Hold'em game, count me in.  I need the practice.

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