Hello. So... I am virtually completely new to Texas Hold'em (Trying to get better at specifically 6 player No Limit Texas Hold'em cash games at the moment)...However, I do have a mathematical background (bachelors in math / previous college math tutor).

I mean, know all of the rules, all of the lingo, and stuff like that. I'm almost done reading: "Essential Poker Math" and I also purchased a few other books that I plan on reading (Them being: "Harrington on Holdem vol. 1 / Every Hand Revealed", and "The Theory of Poker")

I am familiar with Equilab, I'm using Pokertracker 4's HUD / other features at the moment and I plan on comparing it to Hold'em Manager 3 to decide which I'll purchase, and I also purchased Flopzilla.

So...here are my questions:

• What method(s) do you guys think I should use to best spend my time improving?...Spend 1 hour playing for 2 hours of study? If not, what, and what kind of studying? Equity training? Book reading? etc.
  
  
• Also, what goes into the thought process of a good poker player? For example...what range does my opponent have, what range does my opponent think I have, what are my pot odds, implied odds, what pot odds am I offering, what is my equity vs current pot / implied odds, etc...What am I missing here?
  
  
• Are there any other programs I can use to improve more quickly?

Thanks for any input in advance. =)

love, understand

This might get you in a lot of trouble

Harrington on Holdem and Every Hand Revealed are tournament books, so I would get a book on cash games instead.I liked Harrington on Online Cash Games, but there are other good options by Ed Miler




I would play more than I study. Go through the session afterwards. Also subscribe to a training site and also watch other people play on twitch. Just remember that most peoples games are full of leaks

Gl.

I'm a beginner too so while I think the following has helped me feel free to disregard it if someone more experienced tells you it's rubbish.

The best book I've read is The Grinders Manual which is, as far as I know, only available as an ebook. What I like about it is that it teaches you how to think rather than just dumping a ton of charts on you and saying "do this".

I've also found a lot of value in following Jonathan Little's content on youtube, in particular his weekly poker hand series which you can use to test your knowledge. If you want to splash out on a training website I'd highly recommend his pokercoaching.com which has literally thousands of quizzes (interactive videos) as well as the usual lessons and courses you get as part of most sites. It's pricey though at $99 a month and unfortunately I was only able to use it for around a week as part of a promotional trial.

Other free resources I like are Blackrain79 for microstakes play and ThePokerBank for more theoretical based content. Both are on youtube. A few of pokercoaching.com's coaches are also on youtube like gripsed and assassinato.

In terms of play I think a zoom format is great because, although a bit nitty, you can get way, way more volume in than you could playing regular tables and experience is a huge edge. However you'll have to keep in mind if you move to a different type of game that play style will be different so you can't just port zoom strategy over to regular tables though I think most of what you learn will still apply.

The biggest benefit I've found from using tracking software (I use HM3) has been in analysing your own play and in figuring out how the player pool plays. So try to stick to one game type and get a good sample size on both you and the pool.

I'd also say that something that seems be neglected in a lot of training material is when to make tight folds. Learning more about how and when to do that has seen my bb/100 skyrocket.

Good luck!

Depends on how you learn best. Some are visually inclined. (Graphs and range grids are your best friends)

Others are more conceptually inclined(go to theory forum and go to the bottom. Select show threads from the beginning of time. Select sort by views. Voila you have a plethora of the theory forums most viewed threads).

Step 1 is memorizing ranges. I think beginners ranges should be pretty tight.

Then study 3+ bet ranges.

Then learn some postflop stuff. I suggest reading "the special definitions of flop texture" in poker theory. Shoutout to arty.

Then learn river math.

With a similar background, I'll say the same as I say to anyone that goes all "I know math/do I need to know math" re: poker - the single thing that I learned at university level that was applicable to poker was how to read Russian so I could see when people were openly colluding in chat. Nothing else I learned had any application whatsoever.

Don't look for shortcuts.