Filtering Poker Advice

Filed Under Poker |

These days, poker advice comes in many forms: you can get it from friends, books, DVDs, television shows, online tutorials, online forums, blogs and live casino opponents. It is a resource that grows everyday, a reminder that poker has hit mainstream American culture to stay.

How to make the most of all this advice going around? While most of it certainly has its merits, poker advice is often misused and misapplied by beginners. Filtering poker advice can become an excellent strategy for you to extract its true value.

There are many types of poker advice, but most of them can be divided into two categories: fact or strategy. Fact-related advice refers to concepts such as number of outs, starting-hand-win percentages and current odds. These are things that are not ambiguous - either they are true or they are not. Facts refer to concepts and rules of poker that you must master in order to gain a certain advantage in the game.

The second type of advice is strategy related. This type of advice is subjective and as such depends upon personal experience and is biased by the person’s own judgment. When you get strategic advice, please keep into account that half of the players out there do not have a clue on what they are doing. Most poker players approach situations in a different manner, and strategic advice usually targets different areas of the spectrum. There is no harm in taking advice on how to improve your game, but keep in mind you also need to do your own research before taking advice from someone else.

Try this simple experiment: ask your poker comrades what they think about their own game. You will discover that it is tough to find one who does not think he or she is an average or above average player. Most people believe they are better players than what they actually are, and therefore they think their advice is also above average and to be followed seriously.

Let’s be honest here: many poker players clearly lack good self-awareness. The vast majority of poker players are losers and they have no clue how true that statement is. This is obviously true, and is the reason why casinos make a good margin of profit in rake: more money stays on the table than what players actually take to their homes.

Poker advice can be highly beneficial to your game, as long as it is taken as a guideline and not an ultimate command - you must be able to adapt the tips or strategies given to you according to your game and your opponents. Remember that however good the advice may be, experience will always be the best learning tool you have: learning from your mistakes is the slowest but surest way to become a better player and to actually build a bankroll. That said, poker advice can help you improve your own game and introduce you to concepts and strategies that probably you might not be aware of. You gain insight when you introduce these new concepts to your game, as well as a fresh perspective on how an opponent will look at the same situation.

Treat poker advice like a tool, not like a dogma to be followed unthinkingly. Remember poker situations have a whole range of multiple possible answers, so try to understand the logic of what they tell you, but do not apply it if it does not seem right. It is important that you search for ideas and concepts, and type of scenarios and situations, but not for an ultimate “Golden Rule”.

Finally, let me pitch in with some advice of my own, and one that you won’t hear often, since most of the poker advice going around focuses on strategy and not on everyday situations. Consider this: nowadays online poker makes it incredibly easy to access the tables. Poker books will tell you to avoid playing when you are not at your best, but I’ve discovered that life is full of such situations and learning to play then can be a very profitable strategy. In other words, the reality of life means that no player is at their best all the time, but the key element is to know how to handle this.

For example, if you are not feeling particularly sharp (maybe you had more than just one glass of wine over dinner or you are feeling tired), then you should not play short-handed tables, where your thinking time is shorter and you will be forced to concentrate more. Instead, you should favor ring games with at least 7 opponents to give you more time to consider your decisions, and pick tables with fish you already know. Another logical suggestion is to avoid No-limit games when you, psychologically speaking, are not all there. But one thing is even worse than having a few drinks too many or feeling tired: playing when emotionally upset. And here I give you the only golden rule I know that must always be applied: you should NEVER play when you are emotionally upset or depressed.

As you play and improve, you can learn from all the poker advice available in websites such as ours, from reccommended books and DVDs; and from other poker players, but always remember that poker is such a complex game that it must involves everything in a holistic manner. Ponder your advice, apply it selectively, and keep in mind that the most profitable game is one played with a cool head and always gaining insight from experience.