Thoughts on learning poker

[TheWorstPlayer]

Jason said this in the MSNL [censored] thread and it got me thinking:
[ QUOTE ]
Another brief note on prices: coaching is not the shortcut to winning 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars. There are other resources you should be maximizing your use of before you seek a coach. Read poker books. Read 2+2 and post religiously. Speak with other people over PM/IM about poker. Join Cardrunners and watch some videos. While coaching isn't a last resort, I don't believe it should be everyone's first resort, either.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have coached around 25 2+2 students over the past year+ and have given a lot of thought to learning poker. So I thought I'd just write out my thoughts, in case people found this useful. If all of this is obvious (or wrong) feel free to ignore or correct me.

Thoughts on learning poker
There are many ways to learn poker and many tools available now, both online and offline. I think it's important to use all of the available tools to your advantage, but it's equally important to know how to use each tool to optimal advantage. I think the most useful tools right now are books, friends, 2+2 forums, and coaching and I'll address each in turn.

Books
I think books are most useful for learning the deep theory and the most basic fundamentals. Books like Theory of Poker are great for really digging in deeply to the most fundamental concepts of all forms of poker. Why do winning players do what they do? Why do those things work? Other books like Harrington on Holdem are good for learning some solid fundamentals, but they don't go into enough detail about enough situations and it can often be confusing if the plays they advocate are right for the games you're playing in (or any games!) And books are absolutely no substitute for experience and personal interaction. You might learn all about the math behind semi-bluffing, and you'll know that you need your opponent to fold 30% of the time to make your bluff effective, but how will you know whether or not he will do so unless you've spent a lot of time at the tables and seen similar opponents take similar lines so that you can determine their hand range and how they will react to your bluff? You can't get that experience from books.

Friends
Hopefully every poker player has friends who also play and with whom they can discuss hands and theory. Maybe these are old friends or maybe new friends made online, but they are an invaluable source of information. If you have seen a situation only a few times, maybe your friend has seen it many more. And vice versa. You can get the benefit of sharing your experiences. It's like you play twice as many hands, by sharing your views between the two of you. Friends can also act as sounding boards to help you refine your thought processes. But sometimes you have disputes with friends - how do you resolve them? Which perspective is correct? And sometimes your friends don't have time when you need them, or one of you feel like the information sharing is too one-sided. These situations can be difficult and purely poker friendships can be hard to maintain.

2+2 forums
The 2+2 forums are a great resource and are where I mostly learned how to play. Some of the biggest winners in the world post there, and you will be sure to get solid advice when you post interesting and difficult hands. However, isolated hand analysis is only aspect of learning poker - and probably not the most important! How to understand and take advantage of your image, how to avoid tilt, table selection, etc. are all important aspects of the game and are basically never addressed on strategy forums. Additionally, some of the advice is confusing or just bad and it's not always easy to separate the wheat from the chaff - particulary for new players. Also, some hands might never get any responses which can be frustrating and is hard to control.

Coaching
I think that coaching is really a terrific tool and I have been coached by several excellent players (including JKrantz!) which has really improved my development as a player. Coaches really pull the whole package together. They can provide solid advice on fundamentals as well as in depth explanations of the mathematics and reasons behind the winning plays. They also have a tremendous amount of experience in the games that the students are playing, so students can benefit from their personal knowledge of hand ranges and opponent tendencies. The coaches are also proven winners in the games, so you can rely on their advice as having a track-record of success. Additionally, coaches can tailor their advice specifically to the way that you play, giving advice on game selection, tilt avoidance, bankroll management, and all of the other necessary aspects of being a winning poker player which rarely get the attention they deserve.

So to summarize, I think it's important to make use of all of the resources available to a poker student today. But coaching can be an integral part of the picture. It is certainly expensive, and it might be best to take a one-month-on, on-month-off approach or something similar, but I think that coaching more than pays for itself in the long run and can be a tremendous catalyst towards becoming a big winner.

[fslexcduck]

thx for the spam

[TheWorstPlayer]

umm...you're welcome? for the record, I'm not coaching now and haven't been for months.

[JKratzer]

experience/actually playing

you can learn a lot playing poker and by analyzing your sessions afterwards.

[MychCumstien]

comment on books:
Sklansky's "holdem' for adavanced players", is by far the best strategy book on holdem I've read to date.

[Isura]

IMO the most useful tool is self-review (through pokertracker). Reviewing sessions, and using the PT notes feature is how I really improve my game. I find it useful to review my notes on certain hands months later. I really gives perspective and helps to maintain my A game.

Good post.

[TheWorstPlayer]

ya, maybe i should have mentioned that but i guess i just thought it went without saying. i kinda mentioned it in the 'books' section but yea... definitely PT and just thinking about the game yourself (and doing some EV calcs on your own) is invaluable.

[cts]

[ QUOTE ]
experience/actually playing

you can learn a lot playing poker and by analyzing your sessions afterwards.

[/ QUOTE ]

yea agreed, this is how I most improve my game.

[Melchiades]

When reviewing a session after you have played it. What are you looking for? Biggest losing hands? Surely you are not going thorugh and analyzing a couple of thousand hands after every session?

[KRANTZ]

on self analysis:

this is so key if you really want to take the game seriously, especially in this new, tougher age of online play. even the best of us don't do it as much as we should be.

figure out where you could have saved money after EVERY session. make a .doc of all those hands that you misplayed. after a week or two you should have a pretty long file unless you're a phenomenon. see if you can find any common threads or themes. do you play piss poorly in reraised pots? stop calling 3-bets so light. are you making too many big river calls OOP? tighten up from the blinds. those hands are the summation of your primary leaks.

rinse, repeat.