Effective Poker Training

Do you want to improve your poker skills? Most poker players do, yet most fail to get results. This article explores different ways to learn and improve your poker skills and explains the pros and cons of each option.

Obviously, the first step for anyone is to understand how their poker game of choice works. Read about the rules online, in a book, or just watch a youtube video that explains it. Before considering any strategy, you should play the game for at least an hour or more, just to get the feel of it. Go to your favorite poker room and try it out with play money. The goal is not to win, it’s just to get comfortable with the game mechanics.

Now that you understand the mechanics of the game, focus on developing a specific skill. Trying to do everything at once doesn’t work. Things you could focus on include:

1. Table position concepts
2. Table image concepts
3. Reading the board cards (in games like Texas Holdem)
4. Betting
5. Reading opponents
6. Bluffing

In fact, it is recommended you learn the topics in this order. You can’t read opponents effectively if you don’t understand table image and betting. So how can you go about learning things relating to these general topics?

1. Read poker article online
2. Read a book (Daniel Negreanu wrote several good ones)
3. Watch videos
4. Get a poker mentor/ Join a poker school
5. Watch other players play – online or on TV
6. Join a discussion forum and ask questions
7. Join a poker league
8. Play regularly

To become a good poker player there are plenty of things you can do, but there is one thing you MUST do: play and gain experience. The problem with reading a book is no one can tell you if you truly “got it”. If you misinterpret a concept, you’ll apply it incorrectly in the real world. By attempting to put the theory in practice, that is where you’ll learn. The same goes with poker articles.

Poker schools and mentors are great, but they cost money. There are some good ones, and some not so good ones. Joining a school means you have access to a live person. It’s not just you watching videos and learning on your own, it’s getting an observer to coach you and give you personalized attention. Again, this is beneficial, but not cheap.

Watching videos is certainly less boring than ready dry content, and if the poker training video is well done, it will be much easier to “get”. You’ll learn by seeing actual examples shown in the poker training videos. In fact, you can learn poker strategy directly from Daniel Negreanu and other poker pros. Check out the Daniel Negreanu Poker Training program, it’s quite good. Of course, quality comes at a price and the program isn’t free but you can learn a lot in no time. About 50 new poker training videos are added each month so.

Watching other players can be a great way to learn. One thing you can do is fire go to your favorite poker rooms join a table not as a player but as an observer. Try to identify the table image of all the players. Try to anticipate how a particular player will act before he does, and try to identify patterns. An example of a pattern can be related to how a poker player will act in certain table positiosn, like the button. Some people always raise on the button. Some always call. Poker is a game of patterns and humans are creatures of habits so the two go hand in hand.

Discussions forums can be good or bad. It’s great to have the chance to ask someone what they think about a poker topic, but you don’t really know who you’re dealing with most of the time and you might just end up getting bad advice.

The last point was about playing regularly. Truly the best way to learn is to play. Strategy is important, but there’s only so much you can learn by reading and talking to people. At some point, you have to sit down behind a stack of chips and put those concepts into practice. Learning poker strategy isn’t really that hard to do. The challenge lies in knowing when and how to apply strategy. This is because poker strategy is contextual. The best poker strategists are those who can accurately assess their environment, and react accordingly. That only comes with experience.

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