Hello everyone,

So my story. I have played poker on the free to play sites on and off a few years back. Recently I have wanted to get back into poker but for real money.

My question is where am I best starting? My expertise in poker is very limited, I know what hand would bet what, but when it come to the more technical thing, like pot odds, EV, outs, when to bet, how much to bet, raise fold call limp (I'm sure you get it), I have no really knowledge of this. Where is best to learn this from, am I better getting books? If so can people name a few that I can sit and study? Am I better payin for coaching and havin someone teach me, that's if they would teach me the correct things.

As the statement about says I'm a complete newbie and it come to the real game and would like help/advise on where I can become a good player on the poker tables in months/years to come.

Would appreciate everyone's input where did some of the better players start? How did you learn the game, I will take every ones comments and hopefuly can get started.



Looking forward to reading some comment, and good day to you all

Hello and welcome to the forums.

I suggest that you rack up a few thousand posts with a signal to noise ratio >2:1. It's ok to be wrong. In fact, I've learned more by posting bad strategy than I ever could by posting good strategy. Post in many different forums, not just this one. Stick your nose into conversations and ask questions. Sometimes you might get some tough love here, but don't let that get you down. Just keep posting.

Check out this thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...015-a-1517751/

Welcome and good luck ...

Live or online?
Cash or tournament? (how much time per session can you commit?)
USA or other?

You will find a lot of books/forums/posted information that will help you with the basics of the math involved with 'all' of poker. Then you will want to study the type of poker you are gong to play. We could suggest a book that wont apply to you the best since it's geared more towards something else.

You will find the 'free' poker is much different than 'real' poker most of the time so don't read to much into your 'results' in the free world.

Don't get caught up in what others are doing .. observe yes .. but only do what you are comfortable doing. Add things to your 'play book' slowly as this will allow you to mentally keep up with your progress and also keep your opponents off guard as to you style. GL

Thank you for your reply.

Sorry I didn't include what I would like to focus on.

I would like to play online, in the UK, I have account with pokerstars, and was wanting to go into the tournament play.

The times of play I would be playing would be evening after work for like 4-5 hours each evening and then all days on weekends if wanted.

Hi. I am also from the UK and love Multi table tournaments. In fact its all I play and I also play on pokerstars. Im quite a new player myself but I have the time to put in a lot of volume and study and am pleased with my progress.

The main things that helped me so far are training sites and personal coaching. While coaching can be expensive, you can subscribe to a training site for a comparatively small amount.

For tournaments, I recommend checking out Tournament Poker Edge for $29.95 a month. Also, go on twitch and watch free streams of poker players. My favourite is the big dog but there are many streamers of all different types.

I also recommend products by Jonathon Little. I recently purchased a ton of his videos where he trains his students, all of differing experience levels.

There are other sites and even books to help but the above are what I have found really useful.

Good luck!

Thank you for the reply fish,

It's nice to see that there is someone else in the same postion as myself, I will certainly look into the suggestions that you have said and hopefully make some sence what it all is.

Thank you

Along with being active on 2+2, picking up a couple of books and subscribing to a few YouTube/Twitch channels, I'd recommend joining PSO (it's free for Pokerstars users) and doing the beginner's courses.
Note: I used to work there, but outgrew some of the resources, but I still think it's great for people transitioning from playmoney.

You might find it helpful to join a study group. It could make your learning experience smoother imho. Click here.

I would consider starting with the "Harrington On Holdem" Tournament series of books. Most people would say this was a bit dated now, but it would certainly give you a nice basis in the math needed, as well as some of the thought processes.

Personally, I think if you started today with those books, you would still do quite well in MTTs, and it would give you a great foundation to learn and grow from. I think he has written a new tournament series as well, although I have not read those yet.

Started playing 20 dollar local tournaments and never even thought I would be playing 330 dollar tournaments on a wednesday night after work - now i can't play the smaller tournys unless I'm playing with some friends who live locally and want to go play some cards!!

Practice and practice and practice. Play as much as these small games as you can. READ! - Loved reading the Kill Phil and Kill everyone books, as well as others from a few pro's.. I remember even reading books and going to tournaments on unplanned nights to test theories and strategies!

Watch videos online, youtube things, read up about hands played in forum

As you get more skill/confidence - you can build up and you will see yourself get better.
Remember what people said, remembering hands on tv how they played out etc I remember when i used to watch poker videos online i was amazed at the cards and thats it - now days I'm trying to work out the size of the bet and who what where why how in the play!

GOODLUCK!

I recommend you give Sharkscope Desktop HUD a go, it's all you will ever need imo.

Start with $12/m and go for $26/m (1K searches/day) when you start mass multi-tabling.

Make free account on Pokerstars and play playmoney to train basic poker skills.

Half of this forum will try to sell you some HUD, software or ebooks

Here is free poker tracking program (to keep database of your hands, producing graphs and statistics about your and other players game-play. HUD is quite broken tho):

- "Free Poker DB" (Google for link as for some reason its blocked on forum):

and simpler to use:

- "Poker Equity tool": https://github.com/alexyz/poker


Unlike "professional" and costly software - those 2 programs works perfectly fine offline, so you are 100% sure that they are not sending your hands somewhere to internet. Most "commercial" software requires you to be connected to internet all the time - I would not trust them for that reason alone.

Most "professional" software requires administrator right on your computer to install and often even to run(which is totally insane!), so such software can install deep backdoor in your system and you will never even know about it. With administrator right they have direct access to all memory, disk and hardware - very spooky. There is no rationale in 99% of cases why such software should have direct access to system files or hardware unless its very bad design OR ability to control your PC.

Those 2 programs mentioned before works without administrator rights.

Even banking apps, Excel, Matlab, VisualStudio, Blender or Pokerstars client doesn't need administrator rights, so why would you need them for some silly poker tracker? Be careful. Ask every Computer Forensic expert or someone with Phd in computer science, they will agree that such fears are very rational - especially that we are talking money here.

Good luck and be careful.

ps. I would have no problem for paying for HUD that does work offline and can be installed and run without administrator rights.