Originally Posted by jspill
i do know most of the major ones yeah, not affiliated with them or anything, just a bit of a junkie for training videos. i got cardrunners/the old stoxpoxer free from the full tilt rakeback program, dragthebar from partypoker rakeback, a month on bluefire from a random poker site sign up promo (now expired), used the free trials on deucescracked, leggo and pokersavvy, and bought a few one $30 one month subscriptions here and there.
i can't really imagine any negatives from watching a bunch of videos. obviously they won't magically transform your game, but there should always be something beneficial to be gained from watching someone play, talking through their thought process, seeing how the games play at certain stakes, etc. because of how competitive the sites are now and how knowledgable the average viewer is, there really aren't many poorly made/unhelpful videos anymore, which used to be the case in the past. there's a bunch of excellent free content out there too, some of which can be found in the 2+2 videos forum, so training sites really need to make an effort.
i guess the only negative would be if you paid for a year long subscription or something and then didn't learn actively enough, i.e. didn't get involved in forum posting, session review, ask questions, etc. all the major sites have pretty decent forums with a good signal to noise ratio where you can directly pick the video makers brain about something. i think that kind of thing is equally as important if not more so than watching videos, as video makers often seem to hold back a little, saving their best info for private coaching for example.
in one of matthew janda's (he's a game theory expert and winning 400nl reg, his vids are about balancing your range, optimal 3bet ranges, etc.) recent vids on cardrunners he makes an interesting point that of all the poker players he knows, there tends to be 2 schools of thought, one is the 'let's approach the game super academically and really break it down, study, and try to make the best decision at all times by spending a lot of time thinking away from the tables', and the other is 'just put in tons of volume and therefore you'll figure it out through experience, and the results will come as we get to the long run quicker'. he acknowledged that some naturally talented players don't need to study as much, but emphasised that almost anyone can benefit from leaning more towards the first school of thought, even though it can be tempting to be lazy and neglect that.
but yeah, tl;dr, i can't see any negatives with training sites, given how cheap/free they are, and the average quality + relevance of their content
