I wasn't really sure what to call this but it has been twirling in my brain the last couple of days. It's regarding when to learn about poker from outside sources vs learning from playing.

So say a beginner starts playing and jumps right in and play 50k hands and shows improvement and at the end of 50k hands he shows like a 4bb/100 winrate at 5nl...he then reviews and does another 50k hands and wins for 8bb/100.

But what if the player read/studied everything he could at the start, before playing, and then jump in and beat the games right away for 8bb/100 for the first 50k and then move up and yada yada.

So say the knowledge you gain pre-hand 1 will be applied to hands 1-50,000, which if u just jump in, you miss 50,000 hands worth of compounded knowledge, and consecutively you can then improve on your knowledge post hand 50,000 to gain X knowledge from 50,000-100,000 which you would not have had before...if you get what im saying. So i guess we could put knowledge as a number factor and multiply it by our hand size to see a "quality of play" index?

Do you guys think learning from text material at the beginning makes a huge difference in the gap of winnings/skill by the time you get to say a million hands? This is a really rough concept and im not even sure it makes sense...but i know a lot of people are just eager to play...they lose on their first go and eventually after a lot of bad play they realize they need to actually study...now im thinking much of this could be overcome by just studying at the start and not playing quite as much.

i have a timetable where i mix study/review/ play. Where I have free hours during daytime I study or maybe spend an hour writing notes going over situations I encountered the night before. I also play a good mix of sngs, mtts, omaha nl and draw. If you have poker tracker mark hands you are unsure about during play. If not, have a biro and paper beside you and write it down. You can expand your thoughts on this later. Try and review your play for an hour after you play but I don't think it's neccessary to get too deep into it here. Your brain will be frazzled, and you canc do that next day.
I don't think there is any point reading and not playing or visa versa. You will play better after reading one chapter of any good book. You will be more focused on the game and your brain will have been stimulated. There is no point ploughing through books when you have absolutely nothing to relate/associate the information with. Your brain will not easily recall everything you have learnt.
Theory of Poker is the most important book you will read. Its a tough book but stick with it and you will get your reward.

+1

You can't really come up with a precise formula as to how to balance studying poker, playing poker, etc, etc, etc, it just comes with time.

But lets just say that getting good at poker by simply playing, and ignoring the studying aspect of the game (studying the theory, studying hand histories, studying other aspects of the game) would probably slow down your improvement process.

Personally, I don't think you could beat the micro-stakes even with 100k worth of hands, without additional study time etc.

Pardon my nature vs nurture parallel but just look at life in general. If you weren't shown how to do many simple things would you ever think to do them on your own? I know i'd be dumb as a bag of rocks if I had to figure everything out from scratch.

I think experience in poker is more important than knowledge. A beginner reading about complex concepts is like a drummer learning advanced polyrhythms before he knows how to hit a snare drum. I think if you could go either study-50k-50k or 50k-study-50k you will be far more profitable in the second. when you read the concepts you will understand them in relation to an actual poker situation as where someone without this experience will have no clue what situations turning equity and semi-bluffing a busted draw on the river are good.

I think all you should teach a basic beginner is don't overplay medium hands, learn the importance of position, what bet-sizing means and you don't have to play every hand. While those concepts sound simple so many people juts don't even have a solid understanding of the core mechanics of the game and teaching them anything else is a waste of time. That's why I think it's kind of backwards, some people try and learn too much at once before they understand the basics and they don't know how to employ the knowledge they have gained and they end up shooting themselves in the foot. Lord knows how many times I've been needled by people who think they are experts when I call their river shoves with bottom pair and they flip over air, trying to explain to them how I knew they didn't have a pair on the flop because of all their numerous mistakes is just a waste of time because they don't understand position, bet-sizing, protecting a made hand, pot control, board texture or fold equity.

I can see everyone's point of view sometimes I see some graphs of people going like 200k hands or something and either having a very small winrate or being losers. And i think it is obviously possible to make it in poker with enough study and play, its just a matter of maximizing utility and finding a good balance I guess.

The one thing I did just think of is habits. When you play 50k hands off the bat you/I develop some bad habits which are HARD to get out of. Things like over valuing top pair or playing too loose preflop OOP. I have payed around 80k hands and I still have trouble with SIMPLE concepts, just because I have gotten into the habit of looking people up even tho I know the baluga theorem is out there.

And at the micros the concepts which make you a simple player are very...simple. Playing position, value betting and not bluffing often are basically what you need. A simple understanding of hand ranges and usual passive/aggressive tendencies will get you past being a losing player. Its at higher levels where you have to really dissect your own play and start adjusting, etc...

Thoughts?

Thoughts? I think the long term losers have two weaknesses, A: poor emotional control, and B: way too high of VPIP statistics. I find those are two of the biggest leaks of lifetime losers. You are 100% correct in my opinion about people not folding and bluffing too often. I think this because I used to be a lifetime loser. For maybe 4 years I played poker every once in a while, maybe once every two weeks and my graph permanently went down. I started studying the game and found that I had picked up some really bad habits and that I would tilt way too easily. Now that I actually take the game seriously I have almost made back all the money I lost in 4 years and I don't plan on stopping. What I think helped the most is taking those insults people throw at me when I do something stupid, and take the advice I can find in it, people are never afraid to needle you on a stupid play.

Its all about getting the right information at the right time. I mean you have to have SOME information to play such as hand rankings. You need to read and study books appropriate to your skill level. Then test what you learn by comparing your knowledge with experience.

I think its just plain impossible to win 4bb/100 over a 50K hand sample without having some clue as to hand rankings, position, and knowing that aggression pays. That's beginner information that you need before you sit down at a table. That being said the more you play the more you need to study something. Of course there is that rare 1% or less that figure things out on their own just by watching a good player unedited. That's still knowledge they acquire during and or before hand one.