Poker Training Lesson No 1 - Pay Attention To Poker Stories
I have found you will find definitely options for poker training whilst listening and learning from opponents, especially when they are sharing their poker stories. I know it often gets monotonous playing the same old voices bragging about their talents or degrading other opponents play. How often do you come across a poker player that really wants to tell you how close they got to winning, but just got lost to a bad beat? Or even poor play from another opponent.
You should not simply consider this idle chatter... this is poker training.
These poker stories are an extremely valuable opportunity for you to learn about your opponents. Whoever is telling the story is actually divulging information that you can use against them. They truly are providing information such as:
what hands they like to play
the value they think certain hands are worth
what they might look at a good fold or an undesirable fold
what they consider is an acceptable raise
what may hook them up to tilt
what they believe is bad play
how they respond to other players actions
and much much more....
Can you see this information is gold, it's a read, they're poker tells on your opponents. They may be friends or strangers, and regardless whether you get the opportunity to make use of this information on that particular opponent, you should store these poker stories in your 'poker vault'. Your poker training is to develop this vault to gather a huge range of understanding of poker personalities and perspectives. You can and can start to see patterns develop amongst players and this is often formed through conformity, players reading similar books and players swapping techniques and telling each other what they believe is correct.
BUT do not start to believe everyone will act the same. This is the beauty of Poker, no body player can define the right or right way to play.
Every hand is like a fingerprint, they are all different. WHY? Because human emotion is involved. Any poker hand may and will be influenced by a wide variety of reasons, such as for example past hands, reactions to opponents, chip stacks, limiting beliefs and sometimes even something unforeseen like a fight with a girlfriend in the home the night before. You can never play the same hand dominoqq online the same manner twice. How will you tell? How will you know? What type of poker training can help you learn these things? Well the clear answer isn't in the cards, it's in listening to your opponents and the poker stories they so often want to openly share with you. All you've got to do is ask the whole table, "what's the worst beat anyone has ever seen? " I guarantee, someone will pipe up and open the flood gates of sit back, listen and enjoy and remember to simply take mental notes of what's said. Of course, if you want to simply take it to the next level, watch if the other players are listening too. Ask yourself if someone else is listening the way you are, are they that 'switched on', are they learning as much as you, are they someone to look out for too. You will always learn more from listening than talking, which reminds me of a different one of my favorite quotes from the past US president, Richard Nixon:
"I learned that the people who have the cards are usually the ones who talk the smallest amount of and the softest; those people who are bluffing have a tendency to talk loudly and give themselves away"
I've found this to be oh so true. The loudest are often the worse talented players (provided their volume is not deliberately to annoy or intimidate).
Can you imagine there was more to learning about poker than just reading books. Poker training and information could be gained from a whole selection of sources. Hearing poker stories is just among these techniques, but they don't just have to be poker stories, they can be any kind of stories. A tale told by an individual has a personal spin to the story, therefore that person will provide you with insight into how they want to tell the story. How they recall the story, thus you learn more about them and how they think. Live poker is about knowing people and how they act and react in numerous situations. The afternoon you stop learning about people is the day you will minimize improving your poker game.
Take it from me, any poker player at any level can always learn from this type of poker training, go forth and listen and you may indeed learn something. Good luck.
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