Eugene Katchalov has live tournament earnings of close to $10M, having collected numerous wins on the European Poker Tour, the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker, among others.
In any field of life, when someone comes up with a novel approach it can be jarring and difficult to comprehend. The true measure of innovation comes afterwards, as what seemed confusing or strange becomes accepted, understood, and imitated.
An example: In 1901, aged just 19, the artist Pablo Picasso held a solo exhibition in Paris which divided critics and the public alike. His style was new, disruptive; it wasn’t for everyone. Over a century later, he is lauded as a visionary. New thinking isn’t always easy to understand.
Decades into my poker career, I’ve been witness to plenty of change and evolution within the game. Sometimes change happens so slowly and gradually that you barely notice it; other times it comes at you with such speed and force that it leaves a mark you don't forget.
When you’re confronted by a new way of thinking, what you do next can be the difference between growth, and stagnation.
The lesson from Nick Schulman I won’t forget
I remember one day, some twenty years ago or so, I was playing in my regular cash game at an underground club in New York City. My good friend Nick Schulman was in a hand, out of position against a preflop raiser. I don’t recall the exact details of the hand, but I’ll never forget when Nick, who had been calling along, led out with a big bet right into his aggressive opponent.
They call it a ‘donk bet’, because the accepted wisdom was always that it would only be made by terrible players, or ‘donkeys’. Even back then, Nick was far from a terrible player.
These days the donk bet isn’t disparaged in the same way, and that day I learned why. Nick had read his man, and his lead bet from out of position was designed to get all the chips in the middle - something that probably wouldn’t have happened had he gone for a check-raise instead, but which he orchestrated successfully thanks to his unorthodox play.
Nick and I would talk poker strategy constantly - in the absence of training videos, online courses, solvers and pro coaches, it was one of the main ways we would work on our game. Part of the process was understanding the accepted wisdom, and why it was what it was. The other part was challenging that accepted wisdom, ripping it apart and finding profitable ways to zig when everyone else was zagging.
Nick saw that the optimal move in that situation, against that opponent, was to donk bet, no matter what the prevailing trends at the time might have said.
Going against the grain can often lead to totally new perspectives; in fact, I would say that it is absolutely crucial if you want to be one of the best poker players.
The need to innovate
Over the past 20 years, the people who really broke through and became wildly successful often seemed to be doing something ‘strange’. Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Tom Dwan, Viktor Blom, Dan ‘Jungleman’ Cates - at the time many people thought they were doing unexpected and ‘weird’ things with their game. Then, with time, more and more people started actually catching up and applying some of the things that they were doing.
It's crucial to do things in your own way and sometimes those can seem unnatural, even though there is always logic behind them. But that's the only way to really break through. It’s a game that rewards pioneers.
If you study, and do all the things you’re supposed to do, you can get good. Very good. But if everyone around you is doing the same thing, you’re on a path to grinding out a small win-rate; you can become good, but not necessarily great.
Solvers and GTO tools have without doubt been one of the biggest changes in poker in recent years. They’ve made it easier than ever before to go from zero to a high level of understanding fairly quickly. But - especially as you move up in stakes - you’re going to be running up against more and more players who have done what you’ve done, and know what you know.
It’s kind of ironic, at a time when such advanced tools are available to so many, that the poker dream of starting with freerolls and running it up to a million dollars - which it feels like used to happen quite a bit back in the day - is much more difficult today.
Putting it all together
So how do you ‘break through’? Not everyone - barely anyone - is a true original thinker who is able to disrupt the prevailing wisdom of their age. But those thinkers are out there, and it’s crucial to pay attention to what they’re doing, and understand why.
If I were starting out in poker today, for sure I would study GTO and the solver approach. It’s definitely needed and necessary for a base level of understanding, because it teaches you optimal play from a statistical perspective. But there’s another element, and that is: how do other people see poker?
That's a very important piece of the puzzle. Understanding the math is a crucial first step, because without that understanding how can you possibly start creating your own personal exploits? But then you need to understand how others see and play the game - both the good and the bad players - to devise and use those exploits, to use that knowledge to zig when the others zag.
At the end of the day, people are still people and nobody plays perfectly - in fact, one of the things I love the most about poker is that there is no perfect solution for any one situation. The solution will be different, based on who your opponent is and the exact scenario you’re in. There's no 100% correct answer when it comes to what to do with a specific hand, in a specific situation, versus a specific person.
So learn the rules, study the solvers and work on your mathematical understanding. Then study the unusual lines, the unpredictable moves and the players who seem to go against the grain in ways that make you sit up and take notice. Take everything you learn and apply it to your game, your hand, your opponents.
GTO is a science, but poker is an art. We may not all be Picasso, but when we learn from the masters, and add our own individual ways of thinking, we can all express ourselves at the poker table in our own unique ways.
