6 Things I Wish I Knew When LEARNING POKER

There are so many skills to learn in #poker, but these are the 6 things I wish I had learned when I first started playing. Learning these poker concepts early, and implementing them well, sets you up for success. With these things understood, you can find more +EV bluffs, minimize tilt, and reinforce the strategic elements that actually matter.

0:00 Tips For Learning Poker Quicker
1:03 Tip 1 - How Often Hands Hit vs Miss
4:15 Tip 2 - Basic Poker Math Is Simple
5:48 Tip 3 - Exploitative Play Makes The Money
7:32 Tip 4 - You Only Control These Things
8:58 Tip 5 - Stop Projecting Your Thoughts Process
10:25 Tip 6 - The Edges Are Here

*JOIN THE CORE POKER COURSE*

*BOOKS MENTIONED*

*RELATED CONTENT*

*FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL*

[markabradley]

Such a well explained poker video. You know you’re stuff when you can so eloquently and easily explain it.

[CookTheBruce]

The "Projection" advice is timely for me...I think other players are overbluffing and see that I actually overbluff and combined with trust issues, I believe the villains are always lying! Awareness of this issue has improved my game a lot...

[Notorietypulp]

Projecting is a super easy mistake to make. Like if I'm plugging a hand into flopzilla, and I working through the action, I say "theyd probably fold these holdings to this bet" but I know from the showdown that they didnt fold that combo. It's been eye opening realizing how often my opponents play extremely different ranges and strategies than I would.

[jppagetoo]

Even if your opponent has one out card on the river that will happen over 2% of the time. If you play enough hands, you will eventually lose to a one outer. Smile, say "Nice hand!" and move on. You can control your mental game. You got your money in as a good as you could. You can still lose. It is why some people play the game, they want the "big fish" story to tell. Let them have those, you meanwhile use your mathematical advantage to win much more often and smile when they tell their big fish story.

[mattxgreen]

I struggle with the term GTO being used synonymously with (Nash) equilibrium. Game Theory Optimal is playing optimal vs your opponents strategy. If your opponent always throws rock, and you throw 33% of each, this is not Optimal. Optimal strategy would be to always throw paper.

[MrJabbafett]

The control advice is huge for me. I am a bit of a control freak and tend to get emotional on long bad runs. I start to ask how is that fair, and if the universe is against me. Realizing that the only thing I can actually control IS my emotions sets off a big light bulb for me. I really appreciate that.

[paulboyd]

This man is excellent. Most important factors in my game are
1. GAME SELECTION, if I don’t have very bad players at the table, I quit and go to another table
2. POSITION I rarely play hands in early position
3. HAND SELECTION
4. AGRESSIVENESS
that’s it folks. But I play once a week sometimes twice and only on the weekends and at night. Games are better and I’m not looking to make a living. Very successful.

[FranciscoLetsGo]

Yeah I did CORE during the pandemic lockdowns and it was really transformative for my game.. I was 10 NL losing reg at that time

[philipgali]

The thing about projecting is spot on. I have found myself very often thinking to myself "he (or a she, ofcourse) probably doesn't have that hand" and so I make up my mind that their range according to their preflop play is similar to mine. However, I have run into players calling my 3bets and even 3betting with things like 79s or 67s. And I'm talking 8x BB 3bets. Only to be shocked when they cbet the flop in the lower to medium range and me raising their cbet thinking their cbet is a bluff because the flop is 'not their range'. Well, lets just say I have lost quite a bit of money thinking the players range is not on the flop. So, with that in mind...I have a question. - Instead of projecting, which is obviously not good, what should you do? When you are playing online poker and especially while multi-tabling, mental capacity is limited to keep track of everyone, and even the hands that go to showdown are few. So how do you actually tell someone's range? If that is the right question to ask, ofcourse. Any insight would be helpful, I'm super passionate about this, and I've been playing poker for about 2-3 months now.
Thanks

[mildredcordero]

Excellent video, thank you! I identify with so much of what you covered and I believe this is the right course for me. I played poker many years ago while working abroad and I did well. Now, semi-retired I'm playing again and it's a different animal. I struggle just to be a break even player. I'm surviving because I watch every hand even when I'm not in it since most people bluff, defend and value they pretty much fall into patterns especially when bluffing. That made me some money back then but this is a different game now, since I'll be playing mostly online. Again, thank you so much for your content.

[gwoody]

Thanks for the lessons, its been pretty helpful.
I have never played for enough money to be fully tilted to where I am breaking stuff 😆 I play mostly live cash games with friends for $100 buy-ins.
These lessons have been helpful, however most of my crew make it really hard to nail their range or know what they got by how they bet. Especially after several beers. They get a little maniacle. They play a small pair the same as a full house so who knows what they got.

[jlaux]

When I first started, I wish I paid attention to stack depths and understood the importance of them, especially in tournaments.

[MC-gjfg]

Phil Gordon's Little Green Book was hardly crap. It may be a bit dated at this point and missing the most up to date information, but much of the info is still valid, its language is plain, it's an enjoyable read, and I'd recommend it to anyone just getting started in the game.

[andyd]

New to poker, Thank you so much for your videos and help, also gonna be buying your poker workbook!

[PeterParker-vqcz]

tip 5 is huge. I've seen plenty of poker verbal fights start based off of this.

[CR_Chitown]

The lack of note taking by players at the table is amazing to me. Seeing a player take notes on his or her phone after a hand seems more the exception than the rule especially in lower level games. I think it is only done by the higher level players in general and only a hand few of lower level players. I think this is one very easily skill that a new player starting can do that can set him or herself apart from other players. I mostly take notes on my phone but to change it up I bought a note pad to take notes by hand. It became the talk of the table (and not in a good way). Players acted like I was an alien from another planet. Taking notes and using them to review spots, find my strengths and weaknesses, areas of study etc, has helped me tremendously. When a fellow player asks me why I take notes, I give the analogy of think of professional sports like the NFL, NHL etc. How crazy would it be if an NFL team didn't review game tape and instead "flew blind" like many poker players do. Or imagine if you took an exam in school and your teacher just gave you a grade but didn't let you look at your paper to see what did right or wrong preventing you from improving. Yet, poker players routinely sit at the table never taking one note. I sometimes wonder if the poker vloggers have inadvertently harnessed the advantage of note taking. They have to take detailed notes and then review their hand play as part of the putting together their vlogs.

[vinblack]

I remembered reading TJ cloutie book 15 years ago lol

[kristermister]

Awesome vid & I like the sound of that workbook.

[UncleJoeLITE]

All great advice btw. 9:23 yeah.
I've queued up a bunch of your videos.
2300 here so I'll probably fall asleep. Comments to be backfilled for the algorithm.😂

[hornetguy]

#1 is a big one. You even see now, many of the “old school” dudes who got their start around the same time as Splitsuit use such dated poker advice. I remember once that I check raised an overpair on J43tt against a solid reg who called button (who was the second caller). Some old school regs jumped down my throat because apparently “no strong reg is calling that raise with a Jack”. Because that’s how they played against passive opponents back in the day; you just make huge folds constantly. With zero realization that you’re setting yourself up to get obliterated by solid players when you’re folding this much.

I’m not sure if it’s different now, but there was definitely a folding obsession a decade plus ago.