Learning All About Poker (2 Popular Ways To Stay Up To Date)

Welcome to my personal blog for CoinPoker! After a special series of blogs about aggressiveness in poker that we just completed, I noticed that I received questions from amateurs’ players that just discover the wonderful world of Texas Hold’em No Limit Poker. As such, we are taking a momentary break from the blogs about best openings in Open Face Chinese Poker in order to go back to the roots of No Limit Hold’em play. Shuffle up and deal!

The best ways to play poker and the optimal strategies keep evolving, year after year, decade after decade. In the first days of No Limit Hold’em, nobody knew what a 3-bet was, until someone discovered the strength of this move and took advantage of this kind of aggressiveness.

Then people learned to do it more and more, and players adapted the way they played accordingly. The game kept evolving and some players became even more aggressive using 4-bet or 5-bet with any two cards. So, players adapted their game again and again, and so on. 

Whether you are new to this game or a regular, what I want to emphasize is that if you want to be a good poker player, you have to keep learning and to adapt as well.

Otherwise, you will never be able to adjust your game and be profitable. A technical move that was true some years ago may be totally wrong and EV- today. As such, you need to stay on top and up to date, and we’ll see the best ways to do so over the next blog posts!

HOW CAN I LEARN AND STAY UPDATED?

Books

Books and eBooks are one of the most traditional ways to learn about poker. I personally learned a lot back in the days, thanks to power books such as poker bible “Super System” written by my good friend and godfather of our beloved game, Doyle Brunson.

I must admit that when I started playing and learning all about poker, the digital world was not an option, so the books were a big deal and very useful for beginners.

I would still encourage new players to buy or borrow poker books but do pay a lot of attention to the year that the book was released. If you buy a 2010 poker book, there is a big chance that some of the strategies outlined will be outdated. Once again, the game keeps evolving.

But if you just want to learn the basics of the game, the poker 101 with questions such as:

– What are suited connectors?
– What is the hijack position?
– Does a straight flush beat quads?
– When does a split pot occur?

Then you can use any old book. These questions should be answered.

Masterclasses

Another way to learn online is to pay for a poker masterclass. Phil Ivey has one, Daniel Negreanu has one, and many other pros offer these kinds of classes.

That’s a good way to learn from some of the best players in the world, but sadly just like with books, the lack of interaction and the impossibility to ask questions could make this kind of investment a little frustrating for your poker skills.

However, I am positive that these online classes will remain entertaining and can certainly help some parts of your game!

There are a lot of ways to learn, improve and stay up with trending strategies. We’ll go on and get an overview of all available methods over the next blog posts! 

Good luck at CoinPoker tables!

Meet me at the tables on CoinPoker to practice your skills and enjoy the action. Open yourself a CoinPoker account today!

Isabelle “No Mercy” Mercier

WPT Champion

OFC “Progressive” World Champion