Kinda OT: How to teach a total novice poker

[A_C_Slater]

I've taught a few people who didn't even know the hand rankings before they started. The best thing to do is to start them off playing limit hold em and give them a starting hand chart. If they deviate from it at all and start playing hands they shouldn't you must then berate them mercilessly for their lack of patience. Make sure they are betting top pair+ and their flush/str8 draws. Then move on to letting them know when it's correct to draw to inside str8s and such by explaining pot odds. After that it starts to get more difficult and they will either totally ignore everything you've taught them and play how they feel or they will conform and end up being slightly above break-even in the micros.

[Highn]

I would teach him sng's and not limit. Let him memorize brystmar's pre-flop starting hand chart on cardrunners somewhere. And let him watch you two table and tell you what the nuts to like fifth nuts are on the board and which potential draws are out there.

[THEOSU]

ansky,

i would let him go to town on a few freeplay sites for a week or so before i started teaching him anything. either pokerpages, the freeplay on stars or ft work.

once that's happened, then you can teach him some basics. i dunno, i think it's easier to learn limit, but that kind of makes the transition to nl difficult, but you at least learn the basics. i do think limit cash --> nl cash is actually easier than limit cash --> nl tournament, but i may be wrong there.

i've had some experience advising some of my friends who are just catching the bug. in some ways it's actually a lot of fun to watch them get better. in other ways it's mindbogglingly annoying, because there's really not much worse than sweating someone at 25nl.

[THEOSU]

also,

all this advice telling the noob to memorize [censored] straight away is lame. let him fool around for a while, give him general guidelines and whatever, but i find people learn best from experience, both good and bad. i don't think i ever actually got better from studying a chart.

[Yuv]

micro stakes sngs is def the way to go.

[Ship Ship McGipp]

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micro stakes sngs is def the way to go.

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i think he said he wantd to teach him poker

[nath]

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Let him memorize brystmar's pre-flop starting hand chart on cardrunners somewhere.

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BRIMSTARRRRRRRR

[Bond18]

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Tell him

"Don't do it, life is worth living"

and walk away

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Winnah

Seriously though i've tried this a little before it will be quite hard. I guess starting him off with SNG's might be easy as their pretty straight forward at LL and will give him some good basic experience.

[Foucault]

I'm surprised people are recommending SnG's, since so much of SnG strategy is completely non-intuitive ICM stuff that won't help very much in transitioning to other forms of poker. I'm going to be doing this in about two weeks, and I considered starting with Razz, since that is basically the simplest form of poker there is.

But if you're going to go with NLHE, I would give him a little talk about the objective at micro-stakes (flop TPTK or better and bet the hell out of it) and then turn him loose.

Talk over his decisions with him occasionally, and once he's got some experience doing this, then show him his PT stats and how he is doing better in position than out of position. Introduce the idea that he can play more hands in later position and talk about how the actions of others ahead of him influence how he should play his hand. Then turn him loose again.

Basically I like what OSU said about the need for him to learn by doing, but I think he'll learn a lot more quickly if he has a sense of what he should be trying to do. Not a starting hand chart, just a strategic guideline.

[Ansky]

The problem w/ me teaching him sit and goes, is that I have played probably 100 sit and goes or less lifetime. I have absolutely not the slightest clue about about ICM or bubble play.

Also, he is not a very math oriented person at all, so I doubt I want to start him off by calculating his ICM and bla bla bla all that [censored]. Also, as aejones said, I want to teach him poker.