Message Board : Getting Started

Congratulations, that's a great book to start with. I had read SSHE and a couple of other books before GSH, but it still felt very worthwhile. It's the best representation of the fundamental concepts of successful limit playing. (Well, as far as I know, I'm just a beginner myself .)

The chapters about learning the game and understanding the variance are also very important to understand and something that's missing from many poker books. They all mention short term variance and the humble attitude you need, but I think GSH explains it the way that a beginner could understand.

As for suggestions for teaching software, I don't know of any myself, though I'm sure there are many, but I think it has to be very specific in nature. Playing against artificial intelligence opponents isn't very useful in my opinion.

But one thing that I think would be useful, is a software that would just simulate nine other players and you would have to train to make right decisions without ever seeing their cards. That is, say, you would train preflop play by dealing out two cards to you and make the other players act some consistent but random way (ie. two limpers, a raise to you). It's of course impossible to give 100% correct decision with just this information, but you could just train basic preflop play. (To make sure that you always folded KJo after a raise )

Such software could also simulate in similar fashion flop play. Not the "whole package", but some specific part, say, counting outs/odds against pot odds. Not something like "you should always call here with flush draw", but "you have 9 outs, 1-to-4.1 and the pot is giving 5-to-1, you have the odds".

I have some rudimentary Javascript code to implement something like this, but I've been to lazy to make it more than a prototype. I think too many people, including me, don't have the discipline to train the fundamentals like this. We "know" all these tidbits, but haven't practiced them enough.

Ed Miller said:

I'm planning to write some web-based tools for the site when time permits, but I probably won't have an interactive playing sim with AI and stuff (at least not unless I get very ambitious).

What sort of tools are you thinking of writing?  Equity calculators and things like this?

Hey Jeff,

Yup! Ed's da man. My copy is very well worn. All I play is low-limit and I can say that I can beat loose low limit games at a steady pace.

A little advice for ya…

You ain't gonna learn it all at once, but don't sweat it. If your book doesn't have white marks on the binding, if the pages on the side of the book aren't dirty in the middle from your thumb ruffling through it, you ain't read it enough yet to worry about not getting it yet.

On some subjects, you may read, study, re-read, and still not "get it", read some more, study some more, re-read yet more, and still not "get it", then one day, you wake up, have your coffee…and get it as if you had it in your brain the whole time. It's kind of like a "poker osmosis". 

I think that learning and understanding pages 65-75 about Pre-Flop concepts is much more important than trying to memorize the pre-flop charts on pages 80-83. Of course, Ed says that the pre-flop reccommendations are not rigid and you do not need to memorize them. I am stating this because I did try to memorize them and it slowed my learning curve considerably. Once I just concentrated on leanring pre-flop concepts, things went much easier.

Once you get playing, you may get confused in certain situations that you believe were not covered in the book. They are, just do the quizzes in the back of the book. (Especially for turn and river play) 

In a little while, you may want to get his DVD set to so you can get away from the book for awhile and learn from a new direction. I would get the whole set right off the bat. The DVD "Advanced Pre-Flop Concepts", actually is good even for semi-beginners. It's kind of like pages 65-75…extended. Really good.

As far as software, Poker Academy is what I used before I hit the sites. The basic program (which is more than enough for anyone) is only $10-20 at Best Buy (and maybe even less) It has terrific tools to get you started and even when you've advanced. I'm sure it's no subsitute for real people at the higher levels. But that's long and far away for you right now. So invest the $20 to save yourself $100 from making large mistakes in .25/.50 games until you feel a little comfortable. 

Good luck 

Thatjimguy