[QUOTE=WickedChippa;42063309]Poker books are irrelevant if you are phil ivey or think your the next phil ivey
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xe3...nd-tips_school
Poker is just a crazy game. I've never played a perfect session where at the end of the day I said "man I played perfect today" . When I play a session, I always make mistakes. Theres so many invariables of Poker. Poker is definitely a game where you have to live in the moment. No matter how good of a player you are , or how good of a player you think you are there are just going to be days where you can't do anything right and your going to lose. To be one of the best players in the world your going to have to put in time. Theres weeks where I put in 100 hours playing poker.
You can read all the books you want that doesn't really matter. Once you get to a certain level in poker it comes down to whether or not the guy actually has the hand he's representing or not. " I had you " Im not a prodigy I just work at poker very hard. Im always thinking how I can get better at it. - Phil Ivey. The ****ing King.
Wow. Phil Ivey . Mind blown . Heres the thing he's saying once your at a certain level. I would assume 90% of players are not on this "level " he's describing. He didn't say I've never read a poker book. He is personally beyond them.
WARNING YOU ARE NOT PHIL IVEY. YOU JUST THINK YOUR ON THAT LEVEL. YOUR NOT. He is always thinking about how he can better. Are you? or do you just brush off someone shipping Quads and you boating up calling a river bet a cooler? Do what suits you.
From my personal experience : All the good players ( people playing for income) I spoke with discuss HH constantly******** and read literature whether it be on 2p2 or books. if reading books by famous and wildly successful players is a waste of time then surely reading a 2p2 post by an relative unknown has zero value as well right?[/QUOTE]
+1
Many pros spend 50% of their poker time studying. Andrew Robl was described by a friend as "fanatical about studying the math."
Those who succeed in almost any profession are always working at fixing leaks and getting better. An obvious example is doctors who read several medical journals.
World-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma has appreared all over the world, from the White House to The Simpsons. What does he do with his free time? When he's on the road he has been known to practice scales for six hours straight in his hotel room. That's some serious grinding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-Yo_Ma
Once my wife got a degree, then worked for 25 years as a medical transcriptionist, she certainly knew what she was doing, but she didn't stop learning. While many of her co-workers were whining about how hard it was to keep up with medical developments and changing technologies, she made a decision. She wasn't going to be left behind. She got subscriptions to trade magazines that discussed things like medical transcription and coding, voice detection and editing, electronic medical records, and medical privacy issues and laws.
She has now been doing transcription for over 35 years. Two years ago she was promoted to a position as quality analyst for the transcription department. Now she rates the work of transcriptionists who didn't put in the time to get better, and the whiners still whine--when my wife gives them a low rating.
Whenver I see a "Could I made it as a pro" thread, I always look for one thing. Does the OP say, Do I have to (fill in the blank.) Do I have to know odds and outs? Do I have to know the math? Do I have to pay attention to bankroll managment, or should I move up where they will respect my raises? (The last one isn't posed that way, but it's really what is being asked.)
You really do need to learn from books (and/or videos and/or coaching sessions.) But there are some things you need to learn on your own. Here's an example:
I remember when I first read that to be successful as a player, I needed to put an opponent on a range, and then play hands in the top half of his range. OK, that makes sense, because I will have the better hand more than half of the time.
If I pay attention, I can tell that villian is raising with about 10% of his hands. That means I have to respond with the top 5% of hands. But I didn't know which hands were in the top 5%! I realized that I had to learn that somewhere else. Of course, that meant that I should also learn the top 10%, top 20%, etc.
That lead me to think about other such problems. Did I need to memorize a table of every hand against a random hand? What about if I'm in the button and I want to know how my hand ranks against
two random hands (SB and BB)? In poker, the more you know, the more you know you don't know.
Of course, poker decisons are about more than math. If the blinds fold a lot, I can raise the button with all but my worst hands. The point is that being good at poker, or anything else, takes work. There are all kinds of charts and tables online (pokersyte.com is a good one) where you can find out things like, if I have an ace preflop against n players, how likely is it that I hold the only ace? But how many players actually study things like that?
Andrew Robl probably does, if he hasn't memorized most of it already. You (most of you reading this thread) don't. You are probably annoyed that I said that you should.
You won't be a winner, because you won't do the work.
Last edited by Poker Clif; 02-05-2014 at 03:07 PM.
Reason: spelling