Hey everyone,

My girlfriend is interested in learning how to play NLH but I have no idea how to go about doing it. If anyone has experience with this kind of thing I would greatly appreciate your advice! General questions: What kind of game format should I stage (hu cash or sng style? how many BB's to play with)? What to teach first and how much detail should I go into the rules, positions, math, general strategy, etc?



Thanks!

Hi mate, I’m new to poker and although I’ve known the rules for ages I never really knew how to play. If you go on YouTube there’s channel called ‘everything poker’ just showing the basics, i.e starting hands etc. That’s how I started, alternatively if you don’t mind investing around £80 buy the dnegs masterclass like I did and that has plenty of great information for her and everything is very simply explained. Ranges, pot odds, c betting etc. Once she’s done all that I’m sure she’ll have questions to be asking you and then your good to go, hope that helps!

Red Chip Poker CORE
It's amazing!

everything poker isn't a youtube channel, it is a video series made by pokerstars. thanks for the recommendation though.

My bad mate! Watched it a while ago now.

For an absolute newbie I would recommend MTT play because there you play all kinds of situations (from 100BB cash-like full-ring spots to 10BB HU play) It's also the most dynamic and fun type of play for beginners (if they have enough time, of course)

Regular full-ring SNGs would be similar but do they still exist?

As to what to teach, once the rules are clear and a few games have been played, I think what a player first need is:

- A basic grasp on preflop ranges: she doesn't still need any charts or anything, but she should understand why raising J5s UTG is a bad idea (and why doing it form the SB is not). In short: hand strength and positional awareness.
- Speculative play in limped pots (everyone limps at the smaller stakes all the tim after all)
- Basic postflop actions (c-betting, semi-bluffing... and most importantly, getting tons of value from fish!) Also, identifying when it makes sense to bluff and when it does not is critical (does my hand have showdown value? do I have equity if I get called? You know, those types of things)
- Push-or-fold shortstack play

I think that if she understand these ideas, she'll be way ahead of the average player, even those who have been playing poker for years.

By the way, I think it's a better experience if you try to share your knowledge with her yourself rather than say "hey, here you have these videos/books". It can even benefit yourself as you put your understanding of poker fundamentals to the test

I would personally suggest Upswing Poker because its really well structured content and spoon feeds you a basic "advanced" strategy. This would be the best thing for online poker. For live I think there are probably some other options. Crush Live Poker and Red Chip both come to mind. I havent seen their content personally but I've heard its good and they have some free stuff on youtube I would watch when I was starting.