Which Help Should You Get?

You want to play better poker and improve your bottom line. You may need help, but don’t know which help to get.

You’re lucky to be playing now, because so much help is available. The old-timers had to learn through experience, a slow and expensive process. With today’s learning tools, your learning curve can be immeasurably steeper.

But there are so many tools that it’s hard to choose the right ones. You can read Card Player and books, watch videos and DVDs, sign up at training websites, use hand-tracking and other software, go to boot camps and other classes, participate in online forums, join discussion groups, swap help with a poker buddy, or hire a personal coach.

Naturally, you want to select the tools that are right for you. That choice depends upon your goals, strengths, weaknesses, and other factors. Many people waste time and money by choosing the wrong kind of help.

This series of columns will improve your choices. I’ll start by discussing five general rules:

1. Apply learning theory.
2. Be prepared to work.
3. Carefully determine what you need.
4. Select the right tools.
5. Use those tools properly.

Apply Learning Theory

Thousands of thorough investigations have produced many solid principles. You should apply at least two of them:

1. Learning activities should occur in a rational order.

2. What the student does is much more important than what the teacher does.
Most properly trained teachers from kindergarten through grad school apply the first principle fairly well. They teach basic principles first and then slowly add more advanced ones.

Math has the most rigorous sequence: counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and so on. It’s nearly impossible to understand advanced concepts without first learning more basic ones. The same principle applies less stringently to nearly all subjects.

Unfortunately, many poker “teachers” (coaches, writers, speakers) have never studied learning theory. Despite mastering poker strategy, they don’t know how to teach it. They are particularly likely to make errors in sequencing.

For example, many books, videos, and courses are a confusing jumble of basic, intermediate, and advanced principles. One video course on no-limit hold’em actually begins by discussing when and how to go all in. It’s extremely important, but it doesn’t belong in the first lesson. It’s like trying to teach calculus to people who haven’t studied algebra.

Since material is not well-sequenced, you should organize your learning activities. Avoid tools that don’t fit your skills or situation. For example, don’t try to learn from television broadcasts that show how great players make extraordinarily sophisticated moves on each other. That won’t help you.

In fact, some moves can cost you money. You’ve probably seen top pros call raises with terrible cards. Because of their immense skill and unique situations, they can play those cards profitably, but if you copy them, you’re just throwing away money.
Most teachers of any subject don’t understand or apply the second principle: What the student does is much more important than what the teacher does. Instead, teachers focus on their own actions:

• Which points should I make?
• Which examples should I give?
• Which stories should I tell?
• Which pictures should I show?

They don’t ask the critical question: What are the students doing?

If they looked, they would see that the students are just sitting there passively. They can’t learn much that way.

Why don’t teachers help students to learn more actively? First, they don’t understand learning theory. Second, it’s hard work to design and conduct active learning exercises. It’s much easier and more pleasant just to talk.

Be Prepared to Work

Since your actions determine how much you learn, you obviously have to work. Unfortunately, most people don’t want to do it. In fact, too many people believe that self-improvement is easy.

Our educational system and culture constantly reinforce that delusion. For example, many students get much higher grades than they deserve, and books, magazines, radio, and television promise that you can quickly and easily lose weight, get healthy, learn Spanish, get rich by stock trading or real-estate flipping, and so on.

Poker authorities rarely make such extreme claims, but they may suggest that you can easily make unrealistically large gains in your skills and results. Naïve people naturally expect that they can quickly “move their game to the next level.” They are almost always disappointed.

So, what do they do? They go shopping for another quick and easy solution. They hope that another book or class or coach will suddenly give them the results they “deserve.”

People also naively expect self-improvement programs to be fun. You can’t reasonably expect to make big improvements by watching entertaining videos or superficially reading well-written books. They are passive, and you gain the most by learning actively, by working hard.

You also must work intelligently, which is the subject of my next three principles.

C*arefully Determine What You Need*

People waste time and money by skipping this step. They just buy a book, take a course, or hire a coach. It’s like telling a doctor, “Give me a prescription for penicillin.”

Competent doctors won’t prescribe anything without getting information, not just about your current symptoms, but also about your medical history. That information helps them to diagnose your problems and treat them more effectively.

The same logic applies to improving your poker. You should thoroughly examine your current “symptoms” (the apparent causes for your disappointing results) and your entire pattern of strengths and weaknesses. Future columns will help you to make this examination.

Select the Right Tools

Books, videos, software, and so on are just tools, and all tools are useful for narrowly defined purposes. You shouldn’t hammer a nail with a screwdriver, and most people wouldn’t try.

But, when it comes to improving their poker, many people are much less sensible. For example, they pay a coach to teach them basic odds and strategy, but they can learn them more quickly and cheaply from books. Conversely, they may try to analyze their strengths and weaknesses by reading books, even though a coach or poker buddy would be much more helpful.

Use Those Tools Properly

Selecting the right tools won’t do you much good if you don’t use them properly. Unfortunately, many people don’t learn how to use instructional tools, or they won’t work hard enough to use them properly.

For example, many books contain quizzes, but most readers don’t complete them. And hardly anyone discusses his quiz results with other people, to understand why he got certain questions wrong and what his answers suggest about his abilities, attitudes, and development needs.

That’s work. Worse yet, it’s painful to look critically at yourself. So, most people put down the book, check it off their list of things to do, and move on to something else.

The rest of this series will help you to apply these (and other) principles to improve your skills and results. It won’t be easy or fun, but if you’re willing to work, examine yourself, and think critically, you will probably be pleasantly surprised by how much you’ll improve. ♠

Dr. Al (alan[email protected]) answers your questions at his blog at CardPlayer.com. He is David Sklansky’s co-author for DUCY? and the sole author of The Psychology of Poker, Your Worst Poker Enemy, Your Best Poker Friend, and Poker Winners Are Different._