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HOW I LEARNED POKER: PART I
No university offers poker play as a major. You will not find a neatly organized curriculum or specific syllabi to follow. The serious student of the game is left to structure his learning in whatever way he pleases. This happens to be one of the things I have always loved about poker.
Either studying or playing, you are on your own, free to make decisions and to act on them, with no one to answer to but yourself. On the other hand, this lack of any standard learning method can make the process of acquiring poker skills a frustrating one. Though I will not attempt here to provide such a method, I will share some of the steps I took and resources I used to learn this complex game. I will focus mostly on those tools I found valuable. That is not to say there were no counterproductive efforts, or other missteps along the way. Here in Part I, I will cover much of the foundation of my poker education. I will focus in Part II on subsequent phases and more “advanced” aspects of my poker learning process. I hope you will find ideas that will help in your own journey toward understanding this fascinating game.
A FATEFUL TRIP
I began playing poker in the summer of 1987. A weekend trip to Las Vegas piqued my curiosity about poker and blackjack. But since I was attracted to competitive strategy, poker quickly took over as the game that held my interest. I was a graduate student at the time, working on a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. It was only natural, therefore, that I took a student’s approach to learning poker. That meant looking for books to study. Disappointed by the poker books then available in standard bookstores, I ordered Doyle Brunson’s Super/System: A Course in Power Poker after seeing it mentioned in a magazine article. I then decided that I might find other good poker books by looking for works by Brunson’s collaborators. These books marked my introduction to the serious poker literature.
I believe the first good poker books I read were Super/System and Sklansky’s Winning Poker (Now The Theory of Poker), and Holdem Poker. For someone who had barely played a hand of poker, this was a slightly overwhelming introduction to the game. I was still hazy on the basic rules and the semi-bluff and the strategic differences between limit and no-limit poker. Today, however, a player just starting out can work his way up, beginning with good quality introductory texts such as the Fundamentals of Poker by Malmuth and Loomis. As a result of my experience, I recommend that anyone just learning poker first seek the help of someone with some experience to guide him through the basic routine of play.
When you know nothing whatsoever of the game, it’s hard to learn from books. The first time I gathered some friends together (who knew as little as I did) to try playing for nickels and dimes, I referred constantly to a weak poker book I’d found at a local bookstore, checking on rules and procedures as we progressed. The book’s instructions were confusing and we interpreted its discussion of structured limit betting to mean that if we were playing, say, 5¢- 10¢ limit, we could bet any amount on a 5¢ betting round as long as it was in multiples of 5¢! In other words, we played a funny little form of no-limit poker. Eventually, of course, we straightened things out.
"The Best Player I' ve Ever Seen " / The Hit and Run Follies / An Illusory Winner /
On Randomness, Rushes, Hot Seats, and Bad Luck Dealers / Bad Beat? Think Again
Why Learn to Beat Tougher Games? / Practicing Game Preservation
Short-Handed Play: Don’t Miss out / How I Learned Poker: Part I
How I Learned Poker : Part II