I'm a donkey

You might find the Donkey IQ Test interesting. It's geared very much to NLHE, with a mix of cash and tournament questions.

I'm not going to post my score because, frankly, it's embarrassing. The test is apparently timed and they judge your "computational speed". I scored lower than primordial ooze in this category. I strongly suspect that's why my overall score was so low. In many of the other categories I did quite well.

I've always had a problem coming up to speed with poker situations that are described in written word. My reading of Harrington's books was very slow due to my inability to "feel" the situation after simply reading what someone else thinks are the relevant facts. Trying to work my way through the maze presented in "Why You Lose at Poker" took me forever. It doesn't help that the online donkey test is not consistent in the way it presents the information. At least Harrington went out of his way to do all the examples in the exact same way.

I don't generally suffer from computational slowness in a real game. Assuming I'm not giving most of my attention to the TV or some other distraction, I generally grok the game at an almost subconscious level. Having spent hundreds (thousands?) of hours four-tabling limit hold'em I've developed a pretty keen ability to follow multiple tables and decide upon potential actions in my head. "If it folds around to me I'll raise. I'll call if there are three or more limpers ahead of me. I'll fold to any raise." Plotting these actions usually takes only a second or two.

So I rather think the "computational speed" factor in the donkey test is measuring something that has no true parallel at the poker table. In real world, or even virtual, poker, you don't jump around from scenario to scenario without any context of the situation. You've either been paying attention or you haven't. There's no primer you have to read to bring you up to speed.

Or maybe I'm just whining because I didn't do as good as I thought I should.