Online poker focus sessions are great for building skills and improving results. I give you 5 tips to improve your focus session productivity.

Listen to SPS Podcast Episode #501 as you follow along below:

I use and recommend focus sessions for ingraining skills into your game and working on new strategies.

Focus sessions are where you play to learn, not to earn. It’s just 1 or 2 tables of online poker for about 1 hour. Limiting the number of tables and time played help you stay focused on your chosen strategy and your mind stays fresh.

I’ve recently used focus sessions to work through a 5 buy-in downswing:

I was 5 buy-ins down at 1,000 hands. Focus sessions helped me slowly win this back (and then some).

By staying focused on using key exploitative strategies (like check-raise bluffing, overbet bluffing and river value betting) during each session, I’ve slowly built back from 5-buy-ins down to now 1.5 buy-ins up over 5,300 hands.

5 Tips for Effective Focus Sessions

I’ve been using focus sessions for a long time, and I’ve got 5 tips for you here.

Before every focus session, you can use these 5 tips as a simple 5-minute warm-up. Write ’em all on a piece paper that you can refer to as you play.

One of the strategies I focused on recently while working through my downswing was check-raise bluffing.  As I cover the 5 tips here, I’ll reference that strategy as an example focus.

1. Choose ONE Strategy to Practice for the Session

A focus session is most beneficial when you’re practicing ONE specific strategy. If you’re trying to practice 3betting preflop, check-raising on the flop, and double-barreling the turn… that’s a bit too much at one time. You’re better off separating these 3 different strategies into 3 separate focus sessions.

People think they can perform well when multitasking.  But, I’ve been a firm believer for years now that multitasking isn’t. I believe in “One Until Done… with Action!” We do better and improve more quickly when we’re focused on one strategy at a time.

Write your chosen strategy at the top of a piece of paper.

2. Know the Strategy Components

Write these on that same piece of paper for quick focus session reference.

What is “good strategy” around your focus? What situation do you need to put yourself into to use the strategy? Which board types help with the strategy? What player types are great for using this strategy against? What HUD statistics or player tendencies will help you use the strategy effectively?

I’ll cover each of these quickly with the idea of practicing check-raise bluffing.

1. The Situation – You need to see the flop OOP, preferably against 1 opponent. This will often happen when you defend the blinds, you open-raise and get an IP caller, of you face a 3bet and call from OOP.
2. The Player Types – You want to target TAG and LAG players who can read strength in your check-raise and are capable of folding draws, Ace-high hands and underpairs. Trying to check-raise bluff fish and gamblers is tougher as they’re more likely to stick around with marginal hands and draws. You also want to target players who respect your OOP raise, so look for positionally aware players. Again, TAG and LAG players fit the bill here.
3. The Board – Dry and unconnected boards work well, like J62r and K73r. There are less strong pairs and draws likely for them, so their IP bet is easily a weak hand trying to bluff. They’ll be quicker to fold versus your check-raise.
4. The Statistics and Tendencies – Just about any online poker strategy you’re trying to practice will have some related HUD statistics that you can use to find good opportunities. For check-raising, you want to pay attention to your opponent’s Flop Cbet and Fold Cbet to a Raise stats. Other tendencies would be their flop aggression (Flop AF, how often they bet or raise), because with high aggression = more bluffing.

3. Set a Goal

I love setting a goal for the number of times I’ll use my strategy. Often, it’s 5 or 10, a nice round number. The more difficult the situation, the lower the goal. If you hit it today, tomorrow set a bigger goal to push yourself even further.

For check-raise bluffing, I would set an initial goal of 3 times. Next session, go for 5 or 6.

4. Tag Relevant Hands for Later Review

Create a new hand tag related to your strategy focus. “XRbluffTest” would work well in this instance. Every time you put yourself in a spot to XR bluff the flop, tag the hand. Every time you make the play, tag it. If you have the opportunity to XR, but you don’t, tag the hand.

You can quickly pull up these tagged hands in your next study session to analyze and refine your strategies.

5. Record Game Tape (optional, but highly recommended)

I love recording game tape of my play. Game tape (the #1 poker strategy you’re NOT doing) is where you use a screen capture software and a microphone to record your play as you speak the logic behind every decision.

Imagine your coach is watching this later, or you’re streaming to your adoring fans. Your job is to make great decisions, and they all want to hear the logic you’re using.

I’ll say things like, “Okay, I’m calling here with a normal folding hand because I want to try check-raise bluffing this frequent flop cbet bluffer. On a dry and connected board, I’ll check-raise 3x his cbet.”

The ability to verbalize the logic behind your decisions is a great sign you understand the strategy, and this practice helps you stay focused on the strategy.

Challenge

Here’s my challenge to you for this article:  Play 3 focus sessions while practicing ONE strategy. Pick a strategy you’re trying to develop, and play just 1 or 2 tables as you look for every opportunity to practice the strategy.  Write out the strategy components ahead of time for easy reference, set a goal and tag key hands. And try recording game tape for at least one of the sessions.

Now it’s your turn to take action and do something positive for your poker game.

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