The Broken Compass Effect

I used to work 1:1 with a PLO player. We’ll call him Jamie*.

Jamie was a winning recreational live full-ring player who wanted to learn heads-up PLO. He had found a good opportunity, and despite having no idea what he was doing, felt he was probably already a winner.

We were reviewing 3-bet pots out of position.

As we discussed some hands he’d played, I noticed a lot of confusion. He was stacking assumptions on top of guesswork on top of random bet sizes. And in doing so, he wasn’t focusing on reading his opponent properly. He wasn’t using the logic and hand-reading skills that I knew he was capable of using – at least not using them well.

I realized that this wasn’t at all what he sounded like when he discussed full-ring hands. He was lost.

He needed help finding his way back to his normal thought process, and he needed it fast.

I solved this by utilizing what I’ve decided to call “The Broken Compass Effect.”

*​BTGers​ recently laughed at the fact that I only have 3-4 names I use, so I’m broadening my horizons!

Lost

Imagine being dropped into the middle of a huge forest.

On one end of the forest lies an exit – your path home. On the other three, cliffs, mountains, and other obstacles line the irregular boundaries.

For weeks, you try finding your way. You try to walk in one direction, but you get confused. As you navigate around bushes and trees, you second-guess yourself.

“Was I walking this way or that way?”

Eventually, you stumble upon a cliff. You turn and walk back. More weeks pass as you wander, mostly aimlessly. You reach another cliff, but it looks the same.

“Did I go back to the exact same spot?” you wonder.

Mental exhaustion sets in. Tracking your path becomes impossible, so you surrender to aimless wandering, hoping randomness might accidentally lead you home.

It doesn’t work.

Getting Un-Lost

Imagine now that I hand you a compass. You’re thrilled!

Unbeknownst to you, the compass needle wavers unpredictably, moving as much as 20 degrees off in either direction.

You are motivated, and you now have something to follow. You start by heading “North,” where you encounter the same cliff you saw twice already.

This time, you’re undeterred. With your newfound confidence, you start noticing landmarks.

You head East, and while you zig-zag your way there, you finally make it. A mountain.

Excited that there are only two sides left, you zig-zag your way South, walking way out of the way this time, before finally hitting the southern border.

It’s the exit! You’re home free. All thanks to your broken compass.

That Beautiful Broken Compass

Despite the compass’s inconsistency, it allowed you to orient yourself. The task of keeping it all in your head before the compass was excruciating. Debilitating, even.

This broken compass was much better than no compass at all.

You weren’t always heading where you thought, but you were in your mind. And you were close enough that you were generally making progress.

You freed your mind up to notice other things you didn’t previously have the bandwidth or the confidence for.

Jamie’s Compass

Now that you’re out of the forest, let’s head back to the poker table, and to my call with Jamie.

In a matter of 5 minutes, I gave him his first broken compass: A full, oversimplified flop c-bet strategy in 3-bet pots…

25% Pot your Full Range on:
Monotone Boards
Straight Boards with no cards under 7
Paired Boards with at least 1 card 9 or higher

50% Pot your Full Range on:
Double Broadway Boards
Axx Boards

Check your Full Range on:
Three Cards under 9 (paired or not)

50% Pot or Check (mix):
All other boards

This strategy – Jamie’s compass – wasn’t great, but it was fine. It was, at least, a strategy.

And it was relatively easy to execute. Decisions on most boards were automatic, and on the ones where they weren’t, bet sizing was.

Jamie wrote it down and quickly committed it to memory.

A week later, he told me that this had made a massive difference for him. He was thrilled. He felt so confident in himself in these pots. He knew his strategy, he knew what his ranges were, and he got used to seeing what his opponents did.

He was able to hand-read again. He could think and talk through hands in the same way he could in full-ring previously. And his results (over a small sample… but they continued after!) were great.

We went on to define simplified strategies in other common parts of the game tree, and his game grew from there.

Why The Broken Compass Works

The key to the Broken Compass Effect is the paralysis of uncertainty vs. the confidence of direction.

The level of confusion Jamie felt before getting a foothold with this strategy didn’t allow him to make any decisions confidently. He was guessing, and he didn’t feel good about his guesses, and this led to more guesses on future streets. Without him entirely realizing it, he probably often checked out mentally during the hand – threw up his arms and shrugged, looked at his hand and the board, and just clicked a button.

The new strategy also helped with decision fatigue. Not only because some of the decisions were now automatic, but because the future decisions got a lot clearer and simpler. He wasn’t burning the same level of mental energy trying to navigate the never-ending jungle of his confusion.

We freed up mental bandwidth, we added confidence, and we got him back to playing his game, just like he did in full-ring.

Because here’s the thing – Jamie’s full-ring strategy wasn’t close to optimal either. But the key is that he knew it. He knew his baseline strategy, whether he had it spelled out the same way I did for him or not.

And that flawed strategy had always been enough to leverage his intelligence and intuition and beat the somewhat soft games he was competing in.

Your Next Steps

Many of you reading this are well-studied professionals, and many of you aren’t. Either way, the same concept applies, albeit a bit differently.

When I played my Galfond Challenges, I had an oversimplified strategy compared to the solver (which I fully broke down node by node in ​This is PLO​). I always will, because I think it’s ideal. I want to have a foothold in every situation I find myself in, so that I never feel lost, and I can always leverage my intuition, hand-reading skills, and focus.

Wherever you are in your game, here’s what I’d urge you to do:

1. Find any spot where you don’t have a clearly defined strategy.

2. Create one!

Use the 80/20 principle. Get your v1 strategy locked in.

Some pros like to spend 40 hours studying solvers before deciding on a strategy for a given node of the game tree. If that’s you, fine – do that – but only after you have your v1 strategy figured out in every relevant situation.

While you wait for perfection, you’re leaking EV through guesswork in all of the areas you haven’t had sufficient time to study.

And for the majority of you – those who don’t study to that level of intensity – figure out what the 20% effort scales to for you. Maybe it’s simply picking a bet sizing based on a training video. Maybe it’s asking a coach to cobble together your own broken compass, as I did for Jamie.

Do It

90% of you reading this, even if you loved the piece, will still walk away and not do anything.

90% of poker players are losers.

So be the 10% today. Go take a step. It can be an easy step!

Just go define and solidify a strategy in one scenario that you don’t currently have locked in. Then you’ll get to experience the difference and, my hope is, the value you gain will give you the motivation to take the next steps.

Sometimes we need to knowingly and purposefully accept imperfection to make progress.

Go be imperfect.