I have a reasonably intelligent friend who wants to learn how to be a winning player and asked me to help him out. He knows the rules, what beats what but not that much more. I was thinking I should definitely start off with limit and that hu might be a fun way to start. What I have been doing is having him sweat me playing some low stakes, explaining my reasons for making every particular raise/call/fold then I ask him to make the decisions for some hands and I tell him why that particular bet raise fold is good/bad. Any better methods for teaching hu? Maybe fullring would be easier to teach or perhaps sit and gos...

One thing I've noticed is that he (and everyone else I've tried to teach) has a horrible memories for hands. I can go to the hand history and go back just 1 or 2 hands and they can't remember the action for the life of them. Ways to improve this?

I don't think starting at huhu is a good idea cause it will be much harder for you to focus on the basics. You will be throwing an avalanche of marginal decisions at him and this will just be too confusing.

Start with full ring LHE and it's not close. Get him to understand what poker is about by teaching him first about equity and value, about value-betting, pot-odds, implied odds etc.

The memory thing is just something you pick up with experience. Don't sweat it.

I agree with wolfram, its better to learn clear decisions with the narrow ranges at fullring tables, then widening the ranges step by step with 6max and at the end with hu.

This. Specifically, I'd follow the way Lee Jones taught in Winning Low Limit Hold'em.

Seems like the easiest way would be to teach them to play FR and then move to 6max and then huhu

Yeah but if you start teaching him full ring he will die of boredom so it's a balancing act. I would probably start 6-max.

Mess him up for life and start with HUHU. Have him open raising at least 85% of his hands and then invite him to your NL home game. Profit.

Seriously though it would be cruel to try to teach him HU first. 6-max is alot but doable.

YT