Making Use of Training Tools
I am no stranger to getting completely hooked on poker. When it was first introduced to me (right around the same time as the poker boom), I did what so many others do and rushed right out and bought every poker book and DVD I could find. My collection now numbers well into the double digits, and I have completed almost all of them, however right at this moment I wouldn’t be able to pull any specific lesson plans out of more than say half a dozen or so. Why? I blew through the content too fast without taking the time to implement the teachings into my game on a slow and patient basis.
This problem affects many poker players. They’ll completely overload on poker information such to the point to where they can’t possibly retain even 20% of what they have learned. It takes more than one retelling of a technique or strategy before you’ll be able to call upon it while you’re actually playing poker, and even from there you’ll still need many more hours of using those same strategies in games until it becomes ingrained in your mindset.
My advice is, don’t make an effort to learn every poker technique on the planet all at once. Try to find someone who plays a style that matches yours (or at least that you would like to have) and then find the best ways to learn from them, whether it’s buying their book, DVD or just reading their blog. Keep a little journal of tips/hints that you learn from these sessions that you think will benefit you, this way you can glance at them frequently, permanently entering the knowledge into your poker repertoire.
It might be fun to tell your friends that you’ve read over two dozen poker books, but can you play like all two dozen of the pros that wrote it? Probably not even close. Cut down on the amount of resources that you’re trying to learn from and instead focus on mastering each technique one at a time. Then, when it’s finally an asset to your game, you can then move on to another tool to learn from and repeat the process all over again.
By: Chris Iaquinta
