Poker Education Tips
Poker is a game of information. If you are good at understanding the information your opponent’s give to you then you are a favorite in the game. Improving your poker education is a great way to speed up the learning process.
The following tips are designed to teach you how to spend your time efficiently when you are studying the game and also how to strike a good balance between study time and play time. After you read through this article make sure you check out our top 5 no limit holdem tips if you are a holdem player to get some advice tailored to the NLHE game.
Top 5 Poker Education Tips
1. Poker is Work
This tip goes beyond poker education. It is always a good idea to take your play sessions seriously, keep track of your mistakes, give yourself regular evaluations to make sure you are playing well etc. Basically treat poker like it is your job. As it relates specifically to your poker education however, it can be incredibly helpful to take your note taking well beyond the tendencies of your opponents.
Take notes on yourself. What can you improve on? What are you doing well? What light-bulb moments have you experienced that have improved your game?
Take notes during your study sessions. Save links to particularly informative articles, take a few notes on instructive moments in poker videos that you watch. This will help you form ‘muscle memory’ at the poker table much quicker saving you dollars in the process.
2. Study Your Preferred Game
Experience and playtime are certainly important, but many players don’t spend enough time studying their game(s). Poker is a difficult game to master and a few hours spent mindfully studying the game can save thousands of dollars later on.
Strategy content goes beyond just helping you plug leaks in your game. You will also find excellent proactive tips teaching you how to take advantage of players with particular weaknesses. You will learn how to spot those weaknesses and categorize player types. You will learn how to put yourself in excellent positions allowing you to win more uncontested pots by pouncing on the mistakes of others.
3. Complement Your Studies with Practice
Once you begin to watch poker videos, study, and learn about the game, studying the game can become habitual. You find that you always have more to learn and so you spend more and more time studying. However each time you learn something new, especially if it is something very different from what you are used to doing, you must spend time playing poker and trying to implement the new strategy into your game if you really want it to stick.
Check out our Top 5 Poker Sites and choose your favorite online casino! You can practice in the free money rooms to become acclimated before diving into the real money games.
Studying is great, but you should spend at least 1 hour playing for every 1 hour studying even when you are first learning the game. As you become more confident at the poker table you may want to study less and less. This is fine, but make sure you spend some time reviewing your playing sessions in poker tracker or holdem manager after each session. If you made any mistakes, figure out how to fix them.
4. Check Out a Quality Poker Training Site
Paid poker training sites should be considered an investment. Just like college is an investment for people looking to enter the professional world, a good poker training site can serve as a kind of college for your poker career.
Poker videos give you a chance to get into the mind of poker professions with years of experience and get an idea of what goes through their mind when they are making decisions at the poker table. What weight do they give to their perceived image, their history with an opponent, their own hand, their position, and a host of other factors?
You can also get feedback on specific hands and tournaments from professionals on the forums. Our favorite paid training site is Cardrunners. Check out our poker training sites article to get information on other training sites including the free poker training site Pokertrikz.
5. Actively Watch Poker Videos
It is important to watch poker training videos actively. It is an easy thing to sit back and watch a poker video the way you would a movie. However if you want to get the most out of your time watching poker videos, then engage with the video in an active way.
Take notes on particularly interesting points made by the poker professional in the video. Pause the video and take a moment to think through the decision you would make, then unpause and compare your line of play with that of the instructor.
