POKER LESSONS :

Study the game :

•  Learning poker will take a whole lot of playing it, but what separates the experts from the novices is often the time spent on studying the game away from the table.We are not just talking about reading books (although that is surely a big part of it) because lots of people read books but never excel at poker. No, you need to study the books, not just read them. There should be no real trouble following the lines of reasoning about integrals and derivatives of what the author is saying. But if all you do is read it, you'll going to flunk the test for sure.You need to practise what you've learnt to fully absorb it. Few poker books do this, which is not just enough ,you need to work harder than just reading the books. In fact, without a stern teacher and an upcoming test you may flunk, mustering the motivation to force yourselves to study at all may be hard.

Learning more about the game is the way we come to the point where we can beat it. And so the problem is not that we don't understand that we'd be better off if we study hard, the problem is that hard work is often not fun. We need to be motivated to pull it off, and making a habit out of studying takes time and discipline . That's the core of this lesson: Realize that learning takes time and plan accordingly.

•  Furthermore, we must realize that studying doesn't end at some point; we don't graduate. The money that we make in this game come from the mistakes of others and our job is to make fewer mistakes than our opponents - or more specifically, less costly ones - which is how we show a profit. Competition at its finest . But our opponents aren't dumb - well, not all of them at least, and the dumb ones become fewer and more far between as we move up in limits - and they learn more about the game for every day that passes, too. In order to keep our win-rate where we want it to be, or even keep winning at all, we need to stay ahead of the curve. We need to know more about the game than they do and we need to work harder than they do so that we can keep outsmarting them. For this reason, there's no end in sight, no light in the tunnel, no day when our job of studying is done. Learning is a continuous process in poker.

Bankroll

This lesson is about taking into account that building a bankroll is, or can be, a slow and tedious process as well. Some people take a shot and win a (relative to their bankroll) huge amount of money in a tournament which allows them to move up very quickly. Many more people take shots and lose their stake; hopefully they realized that this was the more likely outcome. Some other people refuse to take shots and simply grind their way up, moving up in the ranks no sooner than their bankroll is good for it. I'm one of those people, although I wouldn't presume to say that it's the only - or even necessarily the best - way to work one's way up. Different things work for different people.

unless you're an exceptional player who just happens to be a bit short on money right now, the average time it will take you to reach higher limits will be about the same regardless of if you take shots or grind yourself up. If you know that you're a lot more skilled than the opposition, playing higher games than you're technically bankrolled for is alright, and so you may be able to save yourself some time by taking shots.

But if you move along the usual path of progression, learning as you go and therefore ensuring that you're ahead of the curve already before moving up (and thus keeping a solid win-rate), I have some interesting numbers to show you:

In conclussion: Building a bankroll the conventional way takes a lot of time. Don't expect miracles, because miracles by definition don't happen very often. Instead, take this slow advancement as a good time to learn more about the game and practise hard. At the higher limits, the challenges will be much greater, and you will be able to make good use of the experience you amass here, once you get there.

Improve Your Learning

This lesson we want to dedicate to sharing some ideas on how you can improve your game more efficiently. Reading the books and playing lots of hands is great and all, but with only a little bit more effort you can get so much more out of it. Let's start by looking at the books.

You will probably want quite a few books in your poker library. The catch 22 here is that you won't know beforehand which of them will be useful to you, so you will still need to pick them up and read through them to form your own opinion. Of course, you can practise some selection,. But the greater point still stands: You likely have a lot of reading to do.

The human brain is a fascinating piece of machinery, and it's clever enough to automate anything that needs (or even can) to be automated. This automation is called "reflexes." One of the reflexes that's ther for sure is that every adult that can read has, is the automatic eye-movement when reading. Have you ever been reading a book and suddenly realized that you have no idea what the last two pages contained?. What has happened is that your mind took a stroll down some memory lane, but your eyes kept scanning the text. When you reached the end of the page, your finger turned it over, without you really having to think about what you're doing. Sure, some of the words stick, but in general you have no idea what you've just read. The eyes are so used to reading that this behavior becomes automatic. You have to consciously think about what you're reading in order to make good use of it. There are many ways to do this, and I think most people who have studied on any higher level of education will have heard or read about at least a few of them; taking notes, making mind maps, trying to visualize what you're reading, etc. There's nothing that could help than your oun vision..ask yourself everytime, tip your decision between limping, folding or raising & you'll always get your answer.

But reading, while practically a necessity to become a good player, is only a small part of how you'll spend your time with poker. Your long hours will be spent at the table, playing hand after hand after hand. The more you learn here, the better, that goes without saying. But how do you maximize your learning while playing? Again, there are many things you can do and ultimately you'll have to figure out what works for you. But here are a couple of pointers:

Make conscious decisions. When you decide to bet, call, raise or fold ask yourself "why." Don't just raise, raise because of something.

Think through non-trivial decisions. It's very easy to think but when you find yourself wondering, if only for a split second, what the proper action will be, take some time to think through the hand

Make a mental note of difficult situations, so you can review them later. If you're playing online, just look up the hand history and review it when you're done playing. Reviewing and analyzing hands away from the table is a very powerful tool for learning, but you should already know that. Still, as obvious as it may seem, this is something that almost no one does enough of. What should trigger a later analysis isn't whether or not you won the hand, but whether or not you had a difficult decision to make at some point. Compare to the non-trivial decision making above; all the situations where you realize that you need to mull it over, even if just a little, are things that are worth a review at a later time. Very often, you'll get checkraised on the turn, let's say, and decide to call anyway. Turns out the guy was overvaluing his middle pair and your pocket kings held up, and so you just shrug and move on. But if you had to think about it at the time, it's probably worth reviewing later on. Something in your mind told you that what he did was out of the ordinary, and you'd do well to check up on things like that

Reinforce the good habits and plug the leaks that you get from bad habits. It's a lot of work, but it's very rewarding.