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.