I think its a step by step process..  I started playing the game about 3 and 1/2 years ago at a friends house for a friendly 5$ buy-in amongst 6-8 guys.  About 6 months later, people told me about the games in the bars.   So I went to a place with 75 people and finished 2nd.  The funny part is,  I had no idea what I was doing.. I played ever ace, I limped weak out of position, I would call all-ins with any two face cards.  But I knew I liked the game and needed to learn more about it.

So I bought Harrington on Hold'em Volume 1, read it, and took what I read to games.  I was getting more points, and some wins, but I really don't think my game was solid at that point. 

I think its when I started taking mental notes and playing the other players and not just my cards where I started to win... alot... 

I still don't know everything.. I still make tons of mistakes.  I still overestimate the chances of my opponent folding King Queen for half his chips to a reraise.   But I'm getting better, and I feel like I'm more and more in synch with whats going on around me in the game..Â

I don't know what the next step is in the game.  What is the natural learning progression?

 

 

"How do you learn to learn the game?"

Am I missing something, or is there a typo in the subject and in your post?Â

Did you just mean "learn to play" or did you actually mean "learn to learn to play"?  Because both can be valid questions, with very different answers...

Jim,

Im not sure if this is what you want to hear but here it goes. I started in my early teens playing gin with my aunt and uncle. My aunt had an incredible memory and remembering cards, I wanted to learn that. So I just started throwing cards out and trying to memorize them one by one and trying to guess the last four cards or so. So I guess it started there, because up until that point, I really just played the value of my cards.

When I started NLHE, I was consumed by the mechanics ans rules of the game. And just played again, the value of my cards. dropped anything that looked mediocre. Then I started playing cash and met a friend, Mike. Mike had a very odd betting strategy and after playing LONG sessions with him almost every night for about 2 months, I realized that he used alot of tools I didnt. He also played some very odd cards that i didnt get....but I learned how he did it. At the end of the night, Mike and I were usually up, but he had usually surpased me in profit, almost every time. So I decided to relearn the game.

To this date, Im still trying to perfect this. For about 3 or 4 months I tried to play every two cards that had potential. I guess the only cards I dropped were cards that had no straight potential (2-10off) or flush. I was stunned at how many times these cards hit. Up until this point, I was playing about 1 in 10 hands and just being aggressive with these, but came to realize lize that I made no opportunities to get in the small pots to feed my blinds and stack. Still respecting the raise when it was in early...things like that

Thats where Mike help me. I literally had to relearn to game by exploiting his play for a few months and see what worked and what didnt. Im still trying to master this without getting in trouble. I also went back and reread  Slansky's Hold Em Poker for Advanced PLayers. He covered some of this too.

It has impoved my overall game, but Im still learning the threshold on what cards I can play against raises, position, agression..etc.

Charlie