Learning All About Poker (Talking With Other Players)

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!

As we saw over the last 2 weeks, the best ways to play poker and the optimal strategies keep evolving, year after year, decade after decade.

As such, if you want to be a good poker player, you have to keep learning and to adapt as well, or 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.

You need to stay on top and up to date, and we covered over the last blog posts some of the best ways to do so: Books, eBooks, Masterclasses, Live stream on YouTube and Twitch, getting a Personal Coach, using online Coaching Platforms and Poker Forums.

WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO LEARN AND STAY UPDATED?

Talking with other players!

Never neglect other poker players as a source of information and a way to learn about poker.

If you ever played in a live tournament, you have certainly noticed what happens when the breaks come: people talk about the most remarkable and questionable hands they had, and how they played it.

They will tell their friends about their unbelievable bad beat with their top set flopped that cost them half their stack because a damned runner-runner flush that appeared and destroyed their hand.

They will ask questions and review all the action during a particular hand. Talking about hands is a very natural thing to do and a very good way to learn.

A good thing to do is to talk about your hands with more experienced players than you. Just explain what happened, how you played the hand, what was your position, you stack size, the size of the blinds/antes, and let them talk.

Make sure you remembered all available information, because good players will tend to ask you for precise details and they will be less motivated to help you or to share their opinion if you don’t remember in which position you were for example, or if you can’t describe precisely the betting action on a particular street.

Usually, they will naturally share with you their thinking process and let you know if they believe you over-played your hand, or on the contrary, if you missed some value.

They will probably tell you how they would have played your hand if they had been in your seat and why they would have played it this way. By definition, they have more experience than you, so they have been in this situation before, with this kind of hand, probably many times.

They know that ace-seven offsuit in early position is not a strong hand. They know that a very tight player (a rock), that never plays a hand and studently becomes very aggressive, holds a strong hand (a monster) 99% of the time, and that in this case you should just fold your hand and wait for a better spot. 

Talk to other players yes, but don’t just take what they say for granted. Poker is a game you can agree to… disagree on.

There is not always one unique answer and a hand can be played in so many ways. That’s the beauty of poker, it’s a subtle game, a discipline of incomplete information. Listen to the good players, but never forget to make up your own mind through your own experience.

I’m very aware that today, live tournaments are very limited, but when the situation is back to normal, you will be able to use dinner breaks to challenge other players.

Whatever you do to learn about poker, don’t forget to play. Learning game theory is important but playing gives you experience. Have fun! 

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