Hi all,

I want to start studying poker, and I'd really appreciate your advice.

Some background about me: I've been playing recreational poker for ~8 years now. I've made some modest profits in low stakes online tournaments, with buy-ins of approx. $5-$30. Also, I play the occasional live cash game.

However, I've never really studied the game. I did watch lot of youtube videos, read quite some articles on strategy and lurked around on this forum, so I think I understand most poker concepts. At the same time, I never went further than this 'passive consumption'. I want to change that. I'd like to get better.

My ideas on how to approach that are as follows:
- Start playing online 100BB NLH full ring cash games, because:

• Easier to study. Hands happen more in a vacuum. No ICM.

• More fun to study. Not having to remember all kinds of re-jamming ranges, for example.

• Less variance compared to tournaments. Easier to track if I'm making progress.

• I've less free time than before, so it becomes inconvenient to play these long tournaments.

- In the beginning, fully focus on playing GTO. Even when I'm pretty sure I could profitably exploit a player, just take the GTO line.

- Buy some software with which I can analyze GTO play, like PioSOLVER. Also buy a complete pre-flop guide for 100BB NLH cash games. Do you guys have any recommendations on such guides?

- Play zoom, where taking GTO lines comes more naturally.

- In the beginning, just play ~50 hands as good as possible. Then analyze each and every one of them with the tools described above. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

- Play on PokerStars, but I'm just saying that because I like the lay-out. Should I play cashgames on another site?

- Start small with a seperate $200 bankroll for cash games, and play 10NL. Move up when losing the buy-in would leave me with a 25x buy-in bankroll for the lower stakes.

What do you think of this approach? What should I do differently?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

PS: sorry for posting in the high stakes forum instead of the medium/micro stakes one. I did this because I thought your advice would be more valuable, as you probably didn't get to these high stakes without some active studying yourself.

What is are your poker goals? What do you want to accomplish in 1-5 years playing poker?

I ask because that determines how you should go about studying

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All of your ideas are heading in the right direction. Although, I will say that beating recreational players should be your number one goal. Understanding basic GTO approaches will help that to a certain extent, but at times it can also hurt.

Check out that book The Myth Of Poker Talent. He uses a lot of the software not including Pio. Once you get comfortable with equities/board textures, etc. then you can move on the Pio. Pio would be overwhelming for you at this point in your study imo


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the real goal of poker is to take the most EV line u can given your circumstance which u estimate with varying degrees of probability. If you have a read with a high degree of probability you must act on it. And this is the skill you should focus on developing (which u gotta use to develop) so imo you should just go with your read and it will surprise you
GL ^_^