The reason poker works so well to illustrate this theory is because poker is an organic game. It changes continuously over time and it never stops moving. It's a game of imperfect information and "best guesses".
To begin, we take poker as a whole and boil it down to it's basic concepts and/or theories. For arguments sake we will say a concept is stand alone and a theory is the culmination of certain concepts. To further simplify this model, we will say that if you were to break all concepts and theories down, there would be exactly 1000 concepts in poker.
Any player at any given point in time knows x number of concepts in poker. Beginning players know that two pairs beat one pair. Novice players know that aces are the best starting hand. Advanced players know that you can semi-bluff. Expert players know that you have to blend ranges. So we'll say beginning players might know 10 concepts, novice players 50 concepts, advanced players 200 concepts, and expert players 800 concepts.
This may seem very straight forward but how come there are novice players who are winning players but only know 50 concepts and there are expert players who are losing and know 16x more concepts. How is this possible? It's precisely because poker is an organic and ever changing game. Like chess, there are counter strategies for every strategy. If you only know 50 concepts and can deduce anywhere from one to five different strategies, you can still be a winning player if you play against the right opponents who have inferior strategies when facing your specific set of strategies. However, if you were put up against an opponent who's game is great against your game, you will get crushed.
Many winning poker players fall into the trap of getting comfortable with what they know. They find a winning strategy based on some theories which are based on some concepts and they go in blind so to speak. Their thinking is, "If I win, it's because they are obsolete and I am better. If I lose, it's because they got lucky." After a theory or strategy has worked for so long, how could it suddenly be wrong? Going back to the 1000 concepts, it is surely possible as long as your combination of concepts fails against your opponents combination of concepts.
As you grow as a player, you eventually hit a point where you realize poker is beyond you. In other words you will never solve it. Once you reach this point, you can do either one of two things. You can be stubborn and stick with what you know, hunting players who have inferior strategies. Or you can become a student again. And again. And again. It's an ongoing process that will never end and you should never expect it to if you want to beat your competition.
Truth is you will never know all 1000 of poker's concepts. This is because some of them may not have been discovered yet. Likewise, you can never know all possible theories and strategies since they are always evolving. Furthermore, even if you were able to know all the concepts of poker, you would have to decide what combination of concepts to use and how to apply it. There are plenty of contradictory concepts in poker so often times, using one means you can't use the other. A simple example of this is some players believe you should never limp preflop while others believe you should never raise preflop.
The reason I think this theory of 1000 concepts is very captivating and thought provoking is because I myself always want to learn more. I want to know what I can improve in. I am learning everyday from different players. Some players apply concept #957 better than I do. Some players implement a theory better than I do. Learning from them helps me develop a forever changing strategy. There is only a right and wrong in a specific set of circumstances, but not as a whole. My game must become organic and free flowing as well. I'm doing things today that I would never done 3 years ago and I did things 3 years ago I would never do today.
You can never play perfectly so why lie to yourself into thinking you are? That's the most frustrating thing in a poker player. Players who feel like they only lose due to some dumb stroke of luck by their opponents but all their moves are so well thought out and calculated. The truth obviously lies somewhere in between, but your mindset should never be complacent. You can always learn more concepts or combine them in different ways to form different theories. The day you stop adapting is the day you start becoming obsolete.
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