Hatsoff - A lost noob who wants to learn how to learn
First off, I'd just like to thank anyone who takes time to read this post and reply. Your insight is much appreciated, I'm well aware none of you has to spend time helping a noob like me.
Hello 2+2, recently I've embarked on the journey of playing/learning poker, and it's fair to say I am a bit lost.
For context I'm not completely new at the game, I did play MTTs from 2018 to 2021, even bought some courses like RYE and other stuff. I never got any good results in MTTs mainly because my approach was terrible, I would just play play play and suck at the game, barely studied etc.
Now I'm back, playing cash games this time. My approach is much different, I started from (almost) the bottom at NL5.
Here are my results so far:
So yeah pretty happy with the result, for now I studied with RIO courses, I bought both their NLHE courses (Foundations and From the ground up). Crushed NL5-NL5z, played some NL10 but I want focus on NL10z because I just prefer the zoom format overall. Yes I know my winrate is much lower there but I'll explain later.
I'm very motivated to get better. I don't care if I need to study 80% and play 20%. But the problem I have is I don't really know what to focus on. It feels like everyone's opinion is contradictory in the poker world and I simply got no clue who to listen to.
There are so many different opinions on how to study:
- Video stuff (RIO, Upswing)
- Solvers (PIO, GTOW, drills)
- Tracker stuff (Review hands, find leaks)
- Coaching or CFP
- Some even say "Just play a ton"
- A MIX OF ALL OF EM!
I like the idea of grinding GTOW drills but it doesn't apply to micros much, I'm not calling a 5b jam BU vs SB no no no. But again some people argue that "Knowing GTO is essential if you want to exploit bro". But some people say GTO is useless under NL100 so... yeah.
I like videos, I learn a lot of theory from them. For now I have good results with them. I plan on re-studying "From the ground up" to make sure I retain the information. But it seems like most people study with solvers nowadays. Am I missing out on something?
I try to review hands, think about what villain could have in this spot etc, I use flopzilla too. It does help in spots where I overestimated the strenght of my hand, or underestimated the strenght of villain calling range.
As a microstakes player, no way I'm paying for a coach or CFP.
So essentially my question is:
What should my study routine be? Now I study more than I play. And it's mostly 80% videos, 10% studying preflop ranges (made my own drills on freebetrange), 5% reviewing hands and 5% messing aroung in GTOW basically clicking button and having the solver scream at me that I suck. Is it fine? Should I lean to something else in the future at NL25-NL50+?
More questions:
Site selection: Pokerdope has GGPoker and Pokerstars pretty much equal in the rake/100 metric. I read somewhere it doesn't account for rakeback and that GGPoker rakeback is terrible... Is that true? Should I even care at micros?
Game selection: I like zoom, playing 2 tables of zoom = playing 4-5 tables of regular. My mind is a lot less cluttered on 2 x zoom than on 5 x reg tables, I can think more and also I don't fall in the auto-pilot mode where I stop marking hands etc. My approach is to "Play to learn" so zoom is more hands/h + I mark more hands for review etc. So... is zoom fine since I want to improve not maximize profits?
Is there anything I'm overlooking or redflags in my approach to the game?
Again, thanks to whoever read through all of this and replied 😀
