Monday, May. 12. 2008

Heads-Up: Study Poker First or Jump Right In?

The idea: pit two veteran poker players heads-up on either side of a contentious poker topic (not necessarily the one they agree with) and let them have at it. This week's topic: Is it better to study poker first or jump right in?

It's a Waste to Play Without a Foundation By Sean Lind User rating: ( 1 vote )

Poker is one of the most in-depth card games in the world. Bridge is the only game I know of comparable in difficulty and strategy. I don't play bridge myself, but I've heard some good things from gold-card-holding seniors at the Legion.

Poker being as in-depth as it is, it's ludicrous to think you could jump into the game and play it with any sort of competence without at least a moderate understanding of the theory and rules of play. To best explain what I'm talking about, I'll use a race car analogy:

You could technically climb in the window of a Nascar car and race the Indy 500. The gas pedal is still on the right, brake on the left. But without significant driver training, study and practice, you will never come close to winning. In fact, you would have to be lucky just to finish the race.

Just because you know how to play Gin, Crazy Eights and Go Fish doesn't mean you can learn poker on the fly. By trying to learn the game as you play, without some serious good luck, you will have lost all your chips before you have a grip on basic betting principles and play structure.

Playing poker at a basic beginner level still requires full knowledge of the hand rankings, betting structure, game and house rules, poker-specific terminology and general starting hand selection. Without having a solid foundation of knowledge in all of these topics, you will be forced to make random arbitrary choices.

It would be somewhat like playing pinball with your eyes closed. You're at the machine, you're hitting the buttons, and you're getting points with all three balls, but you're not actually playing the game. Even if you break the high score, you still wouldn't be considered to have played the game.

It is a waste of your time to play poker without gaining a foundation of knowledge to begin with. You should peruse a beginner guide on the rules and betting structure, and you should join an online poker site to play a bunch of free hands.

Once you know how the game works, and have an idea of what hands to play, and how to play them, you'll be able to sit in real games and start to learn the more intricate strategies and theories of poker.

Skip the Books and Jump Right In By Daniel Skolovy User rating: ( 1 vote )

Learning the game of poker can be a formidable task. There is so much to learn, and so many different ways to begin that long hard road to becoming a winning player. Whether it's best to study poker books before taking the plunge or jump right in and play real-money cash games is an ongoing debate.

Although studying first is a completely viable option, it's not the best option. You can study all you want, but if you're not familiar with what a flop is or have never won or lost a stack, it's going to be extremely difficult to absorb what it is you are reading about. Essentially, your knowledge will remain abstract.

Instead, the method that I suggest to players wanting to start out is to deposit $50 at your favorite poker room and play the lowest stakes available. Many sites like PokerStars and Full Tilt offer games as small as .5¢/1¢ No-Limit.

It is here that I advise newbies to get their feet wet. Playing any sort of real-money games, no matter the stakes, will give a new player the foundation to build upon.

You should view this $50 as expendable. Chances are with little poker knowledge you're going to flounder around and eventually lose it. This is to be expected. Almost every player starts out losing money.

However, if you're just wanting to start out, your timing is good - back in the day there were no microstakes games online, so that learning curve would have to be overcome at real-stakes games.

Many newbies therefore lost hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Luckily for you that's no longer the case; you can take your time and get your feet wet just playing these small-stakes games.

After a few thousand hands and most likely a few dollars lost you will likely start to get the feel of the game. This is the benefit of starting out playing. It is now that you should go out and buy a few poker books.

I advise Getting Started in Hold'em by Ed Miller - it's a great beginner book. With your experience gained at the penny tables you should have very few problems taking in and understanding what the author is talking about.

Conversely, if you had decided to jump right into studying these books, you might have found yourself overwhelmed with information. When you are overwhelmed it's often difficult to study and actually retain information; that's why I don't recommend taking the study-first route.

As you now begin to study you can continue to play your small-stakes games, gradually becoming more and more comfortable with the concepts you are learning. Eventually things will start to come together and you'll understand what you are doing and why.

The road to becoming a winning player is a long and winding one. The learning curve is steep. It becomes even steeper if you start out with little poker knowledge and attempt to understand somewhat complicated poker books. This can lead you to getting frustrated with the game before you even start playing it.

Hence, if you can afford it, you should jump right in to some small-limit games to feel the game out before you sit down and study.

Of course just playing is no replacement for studying, as poker is a finicky, results-driven game. You can find yourself learning the wrong things and developing bad habits if you limit your poker exposure to just playing. View studying poker as an ongoing process throughout your poker career if you wish to become a winning player.

Poker is such a complex game that if you ever become complacent you're going to fall behind and find yourself losing money. Playing is never a replacement for studying but when starting out it's a good idea to splash around at the smaller stakes before hitting the books.