Rolled On The River

At the end of April I started staking and coaching a friend of mine (who had no exposure to poker whatsoever) from the ground up on two conditions:

#1 – that he would blog his journey with weekly entries

#2 – That he would watch at least three StoxPoker videos a week.

He has diligently been blogging whilst learning and I think his most recent entry provides some valuable insight into the path of learning via videos. With his permission I have included it below:

Poker videos come in two flavours, theory and practical. Theoretical vids show the math and psychology behind the games, and the practical ones show the teacher playing games and putting the theories to use in real situations, I started my little poker life watching mostly theory videos in the form of Ed Miller’s classroom clips, and slowly moved on to more practical ones. I would reccommend a combination of both, the theoretical ones are so valuable, they could replace almost any book, giving step by step instructions on the variety of plays out there, while taking the time out to crunch the numbers behind certain decisions and certain situations.

The practical ones take a coach on his thought process during a session, and the audio is usually (not always) recorded during the sessions, so you can get a grasp of what the coach is thinking on the fly. What I’m saying here is that both types of video should bring your learning full circle, which is the impact I’m beginning to feel. On one hand, you learn a bunch of theories you have try to match to the practical situations in which they apply (see Ed’s Art of Misapplication vid), on the other, you are watching the hands as they come up, and trying to work out what the most relevant information you should base your next move off.

You may be 3-bet with AJ, your decision has to be one of position, stack size, and player statistics. You also have to consider any history you have, and a few other situational factors. Watching practical videos will show you, for example if the guy was short-stacked and prone to 3-betting, you should put him all in, because thats what you saw a coach do. While on the other hand, the theoretical videos will give you the numbers behind stack to pot ratios, the advantages of position, and the ranges of players with a certain percentage 3-bet percentages.

Though this may seem like an absolute plethora of information to process in a short amount of time, continued theoretical and practical study sessions prove to help make the right theory stand out when you’re faced with a problem, the culmination bringing about better, faster, more informed decisions for you at the tables.

I’ve found both to be vital in moving forward so far, and I’m sure I’ll continue to in the future.

You can view the original entry here