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Don't shy away from your poker mistakes! They're a great path to growing your skills and success. Here are 4 things I love about each mistake I make and why I use my own mistaken hands in my coaching.

Watch this podcast episode #530 on YouTube:

Listen to episode #530 as you follow along below:

I Want to Learn and Grow From My Mistakes

“You manifest a ceiling when you shy away.” – Shy Away by Twenty One Pilots

Hiding from mistakes = NOT learning from them and you put a ceiling on your own poker growth.

I like to consider my mistaken hands as friends; they tell me what I need to work on. It's just critical that I notice them and review them later during my poker study time.

Get My New Course:

YOU Can Learn From MY Mistakes

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself” – Eleanor Roosevelt

When I share a poker mistake in my coaching, I discuss why it was a mistake and what I should've done instead. Take notes on what I'm telling you so you can work to avoid the pitfall I stepped in.

“If Sky did this, but he shoulda done that… I'LL DO THAT NEXT TIME!”

Mistakes Help You Consider Your Options

“Whenever you find a pitfall, it makes the road easier to walk the next time.” – Sigmund in Spy x Family

Avoid the pitfalls; go around, jump over, take a different street, or just exit the street altogether.

We're NLHE players, we've got options: Bet, check, call, fold, raise. Plus, being “no limit”, we can bet/raise anywhere from 1bb- 1,000bb!

Consider all your options and decide on the best play to avoid the pitfalls.

Mistakes Lead to Exceptional Performance

“Extraordinary results aren't built solely on extraordinary results. They're built on failure too… When we fail, we stop, ask what we need to do to succeed, learn from our mistakes, and grow. Don't be afraid to fail. See it as part of your learning process and keep striving for your true potential.” The ONE Thing, pg. 94.

Michael Jordan was never afraid to take the buzzer-beating, game winning shot. Thomas Edison didn't make 1,000 mistakes, instead, he “found 1,000 ways to NOT make a lightbulb.”

Take ActionDon't delete or shy away from mistakes. Embrace 'em, review 'em, learn from 'em.

Create a “Mistake” tag:

• Use it when you make 'em, review 'em all later.
• Goal: Learn from mistakes!!!!
• “Why did I make this mistake?”
• Was it a strategy issue? Pay attention issue? Mental game issue?
• Figure it out and commit to NOT making that mistake in the future. Sidestep, avoid or jump over the pitfalls!

The post Learning From Mistakes Is Crucial For Poker Success appeared first on Smart Poker Study.

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Here's the 28-day plan you need in order to grow your skills and set you up for lifelong poker success!

Watch this episode on YouTube:

Listen to podcast episode #526 as you follow along below:

Get the 28-Day Poker Skill Growth Plan and 2 more free items:

Choose Your Own Adventure and Grow Your Skills2 Designs: A 7-strategy plan (left) or a 3-strategy plan (right) for 28 days of purposeful study and play (mix and match).

After you've downloaded the 28-Day Poker Skill Growth Plan (through the form above), print the design of your choice and follow along below.

“What skills MUST I learn, over the next 28 days, to propel me further than ever before?”

How do you answer this question?

1a) You already KNOW what you need to learn. Write 'em down.

1b) Analyze your statistics and win rates from the most recent 5-10K hands.

• 41 Stats & Win Rates Tracker
• Analyze your stats: “Where am I easily exploited?”
• Analyze your win rates: “Where am I losing money?”

Get Help Filling Out the 41 Stats & Win Rates Tracker:

2) List the strategical skills you want to grow in order of importance.

3) Whip out your Poker Journal (get it through the form above) and get to work on #1!

Daily Study & PlayThe plan helps you grow your skills simply: You repeat the same 4-day round of purposeful study and play:

Day 1: Study & take notes in your poker journal…. Play a 1-2 table Purposeful Practice session…. Tag key hands for later review….

Day 2: With your journal open, warm-up by reviewing your notes and analyze the tagged hands. Take note of any lessons learned…. Play a 1-2 table Purposeful Practice session…. Tag key hands for later review….

Day 3: Re-study the same item, and with your new experience, update your notes with new thoughts and strategy insights…. Play a 1-2 table Purposeful Practice session…. Tag key hands for later review….

Day 4: With your journal open, warm-up by reviewing your notes and analyze the tagged hands. Take note of any lessons learned…. Play a 1-2 table Purposeful Practice session…. Tag key hands for later review….

Repeat any strategy focus as necessary (Choose Your Own Adventure) for your next 4-day round of purposeful study and play.

Take ActionDownload these items via the form above:

• 28-Day Skill Up Plan
• 41 Stats & Win Rates Tracker
• Poker Journal

Get to work and make the next 28 days the best yet.

The post The 28-Day Plan You NEED to Grow Your Poker Skills appeared first on Smart Poker Study.

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If you feel buried under an avalanche of study content, this article (with 2 podcasts!) will help you avoid that all-too-common poker overwhelm.

Ditch Poker Study Overwhelm with These 3 StepsListen to episode #513 as you follow along below:

Maybe it feels like you're always overwhelmed with your poker studies and the things you’re struggling with:

• I need to improve my 3betting skills.
• I get angry too easily and MUST learn to control my emotions.
• I still can't hand read.
• I can't use my HUD properly.
• I don't know when to double-barrel bluff.
• I keep getting distracted by new videos, and I'm not able to complete the work on my current course!

Been there, felt that… dozens of times over.

That is, until I decided to get beyond overwhelm and devised these 3-steps for myself (and it totally works!).

Step 1. Commit to ONE strategy per week or even… ONE per day.“One until done with action” is my learning mantra, whether it's for poker study, improving my membership site or doing projects around the house.

Fact: You've got the rest of your life to improve your poker skills.

Fact: You can’t rush improvement; it takes time and intention.

So, embrace these facts by choosing ONE strategy to focus on this week.

So, if that list of 6 bullet points above are the things you're struggling with, just choose the one that seems the most important.

And, if you don’t know which is most important, flip a coin or roll a die. It doesn’t matter which of the 6 you target first.

Put all your focus on that ONE thing, then next week, choose another one. After 6 weeks, you'll have studied each topic and you're going to be so much better for it.

Imagine if you had started this 6 weeks ago… you’d be done and moving on to strategy #7!

2. Embrace JOMO (the joy of missing out)Great, you chose to work on cbet bluffing this week! All of your studies and play will be dedicated to this.

But, what about that email notification about a new blind defense strategy? And that YouTube notification about running PT4 reports? And that new video released in the Poker Forge about flush drawing math?

Delete them… and be happy about it.

Allow yourself to feel the joy of ignoring that “shiny new thing” that tried to pull you away from your current focus.

Those items will always be there for you to learn from in the future when you choose to focus on that topic.

Make friends with your Delete button.

3. Practice the things you learn BEFORE learning moreMaybe that cbet bluffing video you watched today taught you 4 things:

1. HUD stats to look out for.
2. Bet sizes to use.
3. Gauging how their range interacts with the flop.
4. How to plan for double-barreling the turn.

Watching a video gives you knowledge of strategies, but practicing them gives you experience.

And experience is how you're truly going to improve your skills because action is the greatest teacher.

How do you practice the 4 things you learned? Here’s 1 idea for each:

1. Write down the HUD stat percentages you’re looking for on a piece of paper. Analyze the player HUDs and write the names of the perfect ones to target for cbet bluffing. Then target them.
2. Write down the recommended cbet sizes, then force yourself to use them as you play. If you exit the hand, put yourself in the cbettor’s shoes and decide which size you would use.
3. When you get a caller, put ‘em on a range of hands. Then, when the flop hits, try to figure out how well (or poorly) their range interacts with the board.
4. For every hand that sees the flop, whether you’re involved or not, analyze the situation and gauge whether it’s a good double-barreling spot or not.

Now that’s a lot of things to practice in one session. So, focus on one per play session until you feel comfortable with each of them.

It doesn’t matter if it takes 8+ play sessions to practice and become comfortable with all 4 strategies. Remember, you have the rest of your life to improve your skills. Allow yourself all the time you need to practice and you won’t feel overwhelmed.

Only after you feel comfortable with all 4 strategies can you watch another video and repeat this process.

Enjoy avoiding poker study overwhelm!

Avoid Overwhelm in Your Online Poker StudiesIn this episode, I discuss how a weekly study plan will improve your study efficiency, avoid overwhelm and will give you maximum value from free and paid-for online poker content.

Challenge (2:20)Here’s my challenge to you for this episode: For the next seven days, complete your first planned week of study and play. Download the ‘No Time for Study' Plan to get started. This is going to help you avoid the overwhelm and focus your studies around just ONE topic. Choose that ONE topic you want to study, then select 2 pieces of content to learn from. Remember, it's critical that you step into action and purposefully practice what you learn. So, pull one action step from each item you study and get to practicing.

Now it’s your turn to pull the trigger and do something positive for your poker game.

How does a plan help avoid overwhelm? (4:25)The number one benefit of planning your studies is to avoid overwhelm. There is so much out there with new things constantly hitting our email inbox or our YouTube notifications that it's easy to be distracted from our main job scratch that from the thing that we want to improve right now.

For example, this week from Carroters, I received an email about his latest episode of “PIO Versus Population” regarding 4betting. I also received a YouTube notification from Jonathan Little about equity realization. But, on Monday of this week I decided to study double-barrel cbets.

I purposely deleted the email from Carroters and I ignored the notification from Jonathan Little because neither of these jive with my goal this week of becoming a better double-barreler.

Here's my tip for avoiding overwhelm:

Plan your studies and ignore the rest.

Types of content: Free and Paid-for (5:45)Free ContentThis is what the majority of us learn from: videos on YouTube, articles on websites and podcasts. Free content can be very good and highly respected, but often we treat free content like it's not that valuable. We consume without much thought because it came to us at no expense.

Paid-for ContentPeople put a much higher value on things that they pay for, so they're more likely to be followed-up on, studied and acted upon. That's one of the reasons why I'm putting out more paid-for content in 2019 alongside my usual amount of free content every week.

As a producer of both free and paid-for content, I put the same effort into both. The goal with each is to deliver extreme value to the end user. But I will admit that my paid-for content goes a little bit deeper and gives additional strategies, actions and insights than my free content.

For example, yesterday I held the “Poker's Bread & Butter Webinar”. This webinar taught you how to purposefully put yourself in the most profitable situation more frequently to increase your profits.

I did one podcast episode on this exact same topic in the past: episode #184.

But in the webinar, I gave additional strategies for getting into more B&B spots. I also gave more actions they can take on-the-felt and I also gave some hand quizzes to get people on the webinar thinking more critically about the concepts I was teaching.

The idea is that the webinar is more valuable than the free podcast, which makes it more worth it for those who actually made the purchase.

But, whether it's free or paid-for, there's a basic strategy you should follow to learn from online content.

3-Step Process for Learning from Online Content? (7:45)1. Create a plan of study.In How to Study Poker Volume 1, I gave an extremely detailed weekly study plan. You can use this, but if you're having a hard time focusing on the topic you want to learn, I would suggest using the ‘No Time for Study' Plan (download above).

But suffice it to say, planning your studies on a day-to-day basis scratch that for the entire week is the best way to avoid overwhelm and improve your game with purpose.

1. Study one piece of content at a time, take notes and create action steps.Too many people watch a video after video, or binge-listen to podcasts without taking notes nor thinking about how they can practice what their learning. You need to study one item at a time, take copious notes, and decide on one or 2 things you can actively do to work on your game. These can be off or on-the-felt actions.

2. Jump into action and review hands afterwards.You're going to purposefully practice the actions you created from the content you studied. This is how you will ingrain new skills into your skill set and make more money at the tables.

Start your audiobook learning by picking up ‘Preflop Online Poker' through Audible.com. Click the pic above to begin your free 30-day trial or to purchase the audiobook version if you're already a member.

Study Examples (11:35)Free ContentMy favorite tournament training site is TournamentPokerEdge.com.

A few years ago when I was big into MTT's, I would watch video after video on this site. The pros here really know their stuff, and the different 5, 6 or even 10-part video series are super detailed and perfect for someone like me.

They have a great search feature that allows you to type in and filter for specific video content or even content created by individual coaches. If you like Andrew Brokos as a coach, you can look through just his videos if you'd like. Or, if you want to work on cbetting, just search for that and many videos popup for you.

But, maybe you're on the fence about getting a TPE membership so you want to watch some of their free videos to see how you like it. If you're going to study some stuff, you might as well do it with purpose, right?

On that page you'll find 20 different videos covering different topics. But, let's study these with purpose before we decide to purchase a membership.

Great study idea!There are five $109 tournament videos. 4 of these are part one in a series, and the 5th is a part 5 video. Let's make a plan to study the 4 part one videos.

Every 3 days we'll watch one of them, take notes and create some action steps to practice in-game over the next 3 days. Then 3 days later we repeat this process with video #2 and so on. At 3 days each, this is 12 full days of studying $109 tournament play as well as practicing all we're learning.

In these 4 videos, created by 4 different coaches, they discuss the early stages of tournament play, the ranges and types of hands they play, the opponents at the early stages and how to build stacks.

These are all things that we really want to focus on as an MTT player, right?

So utilizing this free content from TPE, we've created a next 2 week plan for purposeful play and study around becoming better mid-level buy-in, early-stage tournament players.

Support the show by getting a TPE membership. At no additional cost to you, they'll kick back a little something to me when you sign-up. Thanks for the support!

Paid-for ContentWhen it comes to learning from paid-for content like an online course, it's worth it to have a plan of attack so you can get the most out of it.

Most courses are organized in a particular way by the course create. Hopefully they put it together in an order that allows your knowledge and skills to build as you go through the course.

But, courses don't always tell you how to use what you're learning. So here's my three-part method for learning from courses.

1. Videos: watch these one at a time and do these:* Watch the videos in order that they're listed. I would hope that the course creator put them in a specific order to build upon each other.
2. Take notes on the things you learn in the video.

3. Create at least one action step from the video (preferably two or more, at least one for off the felt and one for on).

4. Supplemental Materials​: use these in-game or off the felt.* Whatever they give you, use it on or off-the-felt as they direct you.

5. Use them and feel comfortable with them before moving on to the next item. Or, you'll learn that it's not for you and put them to the side.

6. Questions: send the coach your questions* If he's a good course creator, he'll answer your questions.

Do the things above for one video before you move on to the next. Don't treat it like a race and don't pursue the destination.

Getting through the course, but putting only 20% of it into your skillset is a waste of your money and time. It's the journey that matters and with so much content, it's okay if it takes you the entire year to go through this course. If it's as good as you think it is, spending time will only help you to put the strategies/skills they teach into your skillset.

Support the ShowWalter Chambers purchased the Smart HUD for PokerTracker 4. In addition to the 3-part HUD with 6 custom popups, he also received loads of video links to help hih get the most from the HUD and from PT4.

Thomas Tatman purchased the Mashing the Micros Webinar (click for $5 off). There are so many landmines to dodge as well as value to earn at the micro stakes, and this webinar is your key to unlocking the strategies that lead to success.

The post Avoid Overwhelm in Your Online Poker Studies appeared first on Smart Poker Study.

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You are going to teach yourself how to overbet bluff on the flop. Does that sound tough or impossible to you? Teach yourself a strategy you've never attempted nor learned about?

It's not tough nor impossible, it's just going to take a bit of imagination and action.

You can do this!

Listen to the Part 1 podcast episode #505 as you follow along below:

Part 1: The Teach Yourself to Overbet Bluff ChallengeHere’s my challenge to you: Teach yourself how to overbet bluff on the flop.

Henry Ford once said, “Whether you believe you can or you can't, you are right.”

If you believe that you can teach yourself to make a new play, even one that you've never thought of in the past you can do it. I am telling you right now that you can teach yourself to make a play.

You are a poker player, a poker studier and a poker exploiter. You have learned how to make exploitative plays based on what somebody else teaches you.

This is the same thing, you're just teaching yourself now.

I believe in you!

Visualize the SituationYou’re a poker coach. One of your students comes to you and asks, “How do I overbet bluff the flop?”

Let's imagine you know the answer to that question and you want to teach your student.

Devise a strategy to teach your student right now.

The easiest way to do this is to visualize yourself in that situation:

• You are the open-raiser in the LP with XX.
• The small blind folded and the big blind is the only caller.
• The pot is 6.5bb and you didn’t hit TP on the flop of XXX. Your opponent checked to you.
• You realize this is a good spot to overbet bluff. You fire for 8bb’s into the 6.5bb pot, and he folded.
• You took it down with an overbet… way to go!

Now, visualizing this hand, what made this a good overbet bluff?

• What did you notice about this situation that helped your bluff succeed?
• What was it about your opponent that led you to believe that this would be a good bet?
• Why did you go over pot as opposed to just ½ pot?
• What was it about the flop cards that led you to believe this was a good bet?
• What was it about your relative position to the opponent that led you to believe this would be a good bluff bet?

Do the WorkTake the time right now and whip out a piece of paper and write down 3-5 points of strategy that your student can use to find and pull the trigger on solid overbet bluffing opportunities.

Do it right now before you continue on this page.

Now, that bullet point list is your focus over the next 3 days as you play to learn and refine this strategy.

Your 3-day Goal

Day 1: Make 3 successful flop overbet bluffs. Count the number of successful flop overbet bluffs you make.

Day 2: Make +1 more successful flop overbet bluffs over yesterday. If you made 4 successful overbet bluffs yesterday, today you’re striving for 5.

Day 3: Make +2 more successful flop overbet bluffs over yesterday. So, if you hit 6 on day 2, today you're striving for 8 successful overbet bluffs.

Refine the Strategy with Experience As you're playing and striving for overbet bluffs, you must have your piece of paper with your bullet points in front of you. As you're playing and gaining experience by making overbet bluffs, you're going to learn what works and what doesn't work.

Some cool realizations will come to you as you experiment with this play. Write these realizations on your piece of paper.

At the end of your session, whip out a fresh piece of paper. Now with your original bullet points and the new things that you learned with experience, you’re going to refine your strategies for day 2 and rewrite your list of bullet points.

Then you’re going to do the same thing on day 2. Use this fresh piece of paper with these new bullet points to refer to as you play. As you gain more experience with more successful and unsuccessful overbet bluffs, new realizations will come to you. Write ‘em down! Then at the end of the session, you’ll refine your strategies again on a new piece of paper for use on day 3.

Take Action!Now the ball's in your court!

Teach yourself to overbet bluff the flop over the next 3 days. Follow the instructions above.

Then, when Part 2 is released in 3 days, compare your strategies with mine. You can now play another session with mine and your strategies in mind, experiment more, and maybe come to even more realizations.

Refine your list of strategies again and play some more!

You're going to turn yourself into a flop overbet bluffing expert this week.

Get excited and ganbatte!

Part 2: How to Overbet Bluff the FlopVideo coming soon! Do the above 3-day challenge for yourself first.

The post Teach Yourself How to Overbet Bluff on the Flop – 2-part Podcast with Video appeared first on Smart Poker Study.

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The river can be a tough street to continuation bet (cbet). Train with these strategies to find more profitable value and bluff cbets.

Watch the YouTube video and follow along in PokerTracker 4 to begin your training:

Listen to the podcast #486 as you follow along below:

Train to Make More River CbetsHow often do you cbet the flop/turn/river, and what are your win rates on each street?

• Gradual drop (70-60-45) = “good”
• Huge drop (70-60-30) = “bad”

If you cbet the river <33% of the time, you must train yourself to find more profitable river value and cbets.

Find Value CbetsRiver Value Cbetting Strategy:

Value cbet if you can name hands in their range that can call and give you value.

Use this question to help you: “What can call and give us value?”

Use this 3-part PokerTracker 4 filter to find possible missed-value cbet opportunities:

1. River Cbet Opportunity
2. Checked
3. Won hand

*Save this as a Quick Filter: “Cbet River Opportunity + Check & Won”

Review all of these hands. Range your opponents each time and practice naming their value-giving hands.

Example: Ah2s on the BTNFlop: As Qs 3hWe flop top pair weak kicker and he checks to us. We decide to cbet 1/2 pot for value.

What can call and give us value?

Qx hands, flush draws like Ks8s, gutshot draws like KJ, underpairs for 1 street that don't want to fold just yet.

Turn: 9dThe 9d doesn't complete any draws and if he wasn't scared with the Ace and the Queen, this isn't a scare card either. So, it's a good time to barrel cbet for value, and we go 1/2 pot again.

What can call and give us value?

Qx hands, flush draws, gutshot draws like KJ, and even JT just improved to an open-ender. Maybe even a pair of 9’s if he's a particularly sticky player.

River: JhThe river Jh completes a straight and it improves some prior 1 pair hands into 2 pair hands. However, the flush draw didn't get there and some of his straight draws just hit a pair. I think this is a good time to bet for value. Let's continue with the same bet size of ½ pot to get him to call one more time with all those weaker hands and hopefully he doesn't believe we have an Ace.

What can call and give us value?

Qx hands, Jx hands, maybe even 9x. And, in case he has an Ace, we chop with a lot of them, namely A2, A4-A8

Ultimately, we decide to check and he shows Ks8s for a busted flush draw. He wouldn't have given us value, but against his river range, this still would've been a profitable river cbet.

Find Bluff CbetsRiver Bluff Cbetting Strategy:

Bluff cbet if you can name lots of hands in their range that can find the FOLD button..

Use this question to help you: “What hands can find the fold?”

Use this 3-part PokerTracker 4 filter to find possible missed-bluff cbet opportunities:

1. River Cbet Opportunity
2. Checked
3. Lost hand

*Save this as a Quick Filter: “Cbet River Opportunity + Check & Lost”

Review all of these hands. Range your opponents each time and practice naming their folding hands.

Example: KsJh on the BTNFlop: 5s 6h 3hOn that small-card flop, our opponent has a lot of overcard hands that can easily fold. So, we should bluff cbet most of the time.

What hands can find the fold?

A-high down through T-high without a strong heart (and we block some good heart draws with our Jh). We also hold the Ks, blocking some strong overcard + back door flush draws that could call.

Turn: AcThe turn Ace is a great card to bluff on. We have all AX in our range, and the club didn't improve any draws. When he checks to us, we barrel bluff and ask ourselves, “What size would I bet if I just now hit the ace?” I would size my bet a little bit bigger now for value, so let's make it roughly 2/3 pot.

What hands can find the fold?

All of the K-high through T-high without a draw. And now that the Ace is there, most flopped pairs can fold like a random 6, 5 or 3. Also, any drawing hands that stuck around on the flop can now fold without improvement and facing a larger size.

River: QcWe have the best non-paired hand, but we want to get any weak pairs to fold. It's time for a triple-barrel cbet bluff! Let's ask ourselves, “What would I bet on this river for value with an Ace or better?” Repeating a 2/3 pot bet here sends the message we've got the goods, so going ~12bb in the 18.8bb pot should work.

What hands can find the fold?

Weak pairs 99, 88, 77, 6x, 44, 5x, 3x and 22.

However, we checked instead and he shows Js6c and takes it down. Most players can find a fold with third pair after facing a large triple-barrel, so we missed out on a great river cbet bluff.

Take Action2 Study sessions followed by Play sessions:

1. Spend 1 hour reviewing possible missed river value cbets. Then, play 1+ hours with a value betting focus.
2. Spend 1 hour reviewing possible missed river bluff cbets. Then, play 1+ hours with a bluff betting focus.

The post Train to Make More River Continuation Bets (Cbets) appeared first on Smart Poker Study.

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What weakness are you working on right now? We're 1 month into the new year, so I'm sure you're taking poker more seriously and putting in more study time, right?

So, what are you filling your study time with?

I recommend you fill it by purposefully working on your areas of weakness (also called poker leaks).

Listen to this episode as you follow along below:2 Ways to Find WeaknessesIt doesn't matter how good you are at poker, there's always something that you can improve.

For many micro stakes and low stakes players, maybe you’re weak at the fundamentals: 3betting and cbetting and preflop bet sizing and going for value when you flop a strong hand.

For pros, they have the fundamentals down pat. However, maybe their weaknesses revolve around intricate stuff like check-raising the turn on dry boards or knowing when to bluff 25% pot versus 33% pot versus 150% pot.

There are 2 ways that I recommend for you to find their weaknesses.

1. Pay attention to “unsure” spotsMaybe this past week, you experienced this “unsure” spot four different times:

2. Your opponent bet on the flop and you called.

3. An overcard hit on the turn and your opponent checked to you.
4. You sensed weakness so maybe you should bet. But, you were unsure of your chance of success. So, you checked back instead of bluffing… all four times.

This is a sure sign of weakness, so you need to study this spot to get comfortable with it.

1. Use PokerTracker 4It shows your tendencies in every situation and calculates your win rates when making different plays. If you don't use PokerTracker 4 yet, click here to get a free 14-day trial and support the show.

Maybe you think your game is spot on and you 3bet bluff plenty, double-barrel cbet all the time and you’re a winner when calling rivers.

But sometimes what we think about ourselves isn’t the truth. PokerTracker 4, however, shows us exactly the results of our plays and there’s no hiding from this info.

Perhaps in your last 10,000 hands, PT4 shows you that:

• You 3bet only 2.8% of the time >>> Weakness: you’re a value 3bettor.
• You make the flop cbet 74% of the time, but barrel the turn only 42% of the time >>> Weakness: you’re an honest turn cbettor.
• You called the river 83 times and have lost a whopping 18bb’s on average each time >>> Weakness: you make terrible river calls.

Take Note of WeaknessesRegardless of how you discover your weaknesses, when you find ‘em, you must write them in your poker journal. I recommend keeping a list of your weaknesses so you can work on them one at a time through 2024.

And, to improve most efficiently, you need to prioritize your weaknesses.

Prioritize Your WeaknessesLet’s imagine you’ve written these 5 weaknesses in your poker journal:

• I Don’t 3bet Bluff Enough: I 3bet only 2.8% of the time and my Call PF 2bet is a whopping 15%.
• I Don’t Double-Barrel Cbet Enough: My cbet drops 32% from the flop to the turn. This makes it easy for them to steal the pot when I check the turn.
• I Lose Too Much When Calling Rivers: Losing 18bb’s on average when calling the prior 83 river bets is terrible for my bankroll and morale.
• I Don’t Table Select: I stay on tables with too many strong players, allowing loose and aggressive players to sit on my left. This makes poker very difficult.
• I Fail to Target the Weakest Players: I don’t consider who my opponent is before entering the pot.

Let’s prioritize this list so you can work quickly and efficiently improve your skills and results.

General rule: Work on the most common spots first, as well as quick fixes that yield great results.

Here’s how and why I would prioritize the list of weaknesses above:

#1: I Don’t Table Select

This is a quick fix. Weaker tables full of fish makes poker easier, more fun and more profitable. My weaknesses are less pronounced and also, easier to work.

#2: I Fail to Target Players

Another quick fix. If I actively target the weakest players and try to play hands against them, poker’s more fun and profitable.

#3: I Don’t 3bet Bluff Enough

This one will take a bit longer to fix. However, if I can turn bad calls into good 3bet bluffs, I’ll be the one pressuring my opponents. I won’t face as many cbets nor river bets, and I’ll be the one cbetting more often with stronger ranges.

#4: I Don’t Double-Barrel Cbet Enough

Now that I’m 3betting more often and calling less, I’ll have stronger ranges with which to pressure my opponents on all 3 streets.

#5: I Lose Too Much When Calling Rivers

This could take a long time to fix without the above four fixes. With the above four in place, the players I get to the river against won’t be able to put so much pressure on me, so river decisions should be improved.

How to Purposefully Work to ImproveThe first 3 episodes of 2024 were all built to teach you how to purposefully work on your game. Know which weakness you're going to work on first, then hit one of these for great study strategies to get you working with purpose:

• Transform Your Game! 1-Year Plan to Excel in Online Poker
• The Hardgainer’s Guide to Effective Poker Study in 2024
• Earn Your Next Poker Superpower – Study & Play with Purpose

Now Get to WorkWith this prioritized list of weaknesses to tackle, you’ve got your work cut out for you.

Simply put all your focus on #1 until you feel comfortable with it and you see positive results.

I was going to end with “Good luck!” But, I recall that Louis Pasteur once said:

“Luck favors the prepared mind.”

So, skip the luck and get to work to prepare your mind for better play!

The post Spend Study Time Improving Areas of Weakness appeared first on Smart Poker Study.

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You’re going to earn your next poker superpower with this 3-step process. Starting today, you'll be like Spider-Man, your friendly neighborhood amazing poker player. Or like Daredevil, the poker player without fear.

Watch this podcast episode #473 on YouTube:

Listen on Spotify:

You know that question we would debate as kids, “Which superpower would you love to have?”

My answer was always the power to fly like Superman. But I wouldn’t turn down Spider-Man's wall climbing, spidey sense and super strength, either.

And my younger son, his choice would be super speed like the Flash.

Super hero superpowers are special abilities that few have but everyone would love to have as well. The same thing holds true for poker. Imagine having the hand reading skills of Daniel Negreanu or the no fear of Phil Ivey, or even the patience of Phil Helmuth

You Next Poker Superpower What poker superpower would you like? Answer this for yourself right now.

Maybe you want the ability to:

1. Fold when you just know you’re beat.
2. Make thin river value bets instead of checking all the time because you're scared or unsure.
3. Read ‘em for weakness and make the bluff to win more pots.

These are Superpowers that you can develop! It just takes a bit of focus and hard work.

You don't need gamma radiation or a radioactive spider or a barrel of radioactive goo for this.

Follow this 3-step processto earn any poker superpower.

3-Steps to Your New SuperpowerStep 1: Learn How to Wield the SuperpowerIt's time to crack open a book, or start-up a video or podcast, and learn more about your superpower.

For example, maybe you want to earn the ability to fold when you just know you’re beat.

Start by doing a simple Google or YouTube search to find study material (or find a chapter in your favorite poker book). Type in something like “make good poker folds” or “how to fold strong poker hands”.

When I ran the search, 7 of the first 10 videos looked promising from creators like Crush Live Poker and Jonathan Little and a couple from Pokerstars.

And tons of articles popped up as well from Splitsuit, Cardschat and Upswing.

From me, I have an entire course called “Finding the Fold” within the Poker Forge, so members can go there.

Now that you found your superpower training material, you gotta get to work with studying & playing with purpose.

I dove deep into this in last week’s episode called “The Hardgainer’s Guide to Effective Poker Study in 2024”. To follow this process, you have to

• Watch/read/listen to the training material.
• Take notes.
• Practice what you learned with the goal of developing this new superpower.

Your search is going to yield a lot of results. DO NOT study it all in one day.

If I was pursuing this superpower, I would plan it out and split it up. You want multiple days for study and play to fully ingrain this new superpower. I would probably make a 21-day plan out of it.

• Day 1 is for watching video 1.
• Then I would play with purpose over the next 3 days with the strategies I learned.
• I would do further hand history reviews and hand reading practice over the 3 days (Step 2 below).
• Then on Day 4, I would repeat this process with the 2nd video and so on until I've studied and practiced with all of them.

Step 2: Superpowered Hand Reading and Hand History ReviewsEveryday as you’re working to earn your superpower, you have to do lots of hand history reviews and at least one full hand reading exercise.

Filter in your database for hands to study. One area that would be perfect for learning the superpower of finding the fold would be your “called river and lost” hands. Of course, not all of these are going to be hands where you should have folded, but the only way you're going to figure that out is by doing the work.

Start your daily study sessions by reviewing 20 hands. I'm sure that out of those 20, at least 10 are going to be ones where you should have folded. Choose one of those “shoulda folded hands!” to do a full hand reading exercise with. Probably the one that you feel is the most obvious calling mistake or maybe the most costly one.

Take note of all your mistakes, whether they’re strategy mistakes, or failing to notice your opponent's stack size or their HUD statistics, or maybe even mental game hiccups that caused you to make the bad call.

GI Joe taught us, “Knowing is half the battle”. By knowing your mistakes, you're able to address them as you play and work to NOT repeat them.

Step 3: Practice Your New SuperpowerI recommend playing just one or two tables at a time for this. The idea is that you're trying to put yourself into as many situations as possible to use your superpower. It's pretty easy to do this with something that's a common occurrence, like 3bet bluffing more from the blinds or cbet bluffing on hard-to-hit boards.

I recommend using a tick sheet and write your superpower at the top. Make a tick for every time you use it. The goal is to make as many tick marks as possible because the more reps you put in with your new superpower, the sooner you'll earn it.

However, some superpowers, like thin value betting on the river, rarely occur, so are tough to purposefully put yourself in. But, many hands each hour see the river. So let’s mentally practice the superpower.

For every hand that sees the river, if you’re not involved, noodle on it. Imagine you had some kind of value hand. Probably not the nuts, but maybe a TP or a 2pair hand.

• Is this a good spot to value bet?
• You've been watching the hand play out, so what kind of hand strength do you put one of the players on?
• Would you value bet your hand against his range?
• Would you even value bet a 2nd pair hand?
• And if you would value bet, how much would you make it?

Just noodling on the strategies, even when you're not involved, is great practice. So put another tick on your sheet.

And to help you learn from your practice sessions, tag key hands for review. You can still filter in your database for superpower-related hands to study, but these tagged hands are great for learning as well.

Repeat Steps 1-3 Until Superpowered!Repeat the three steps for as many play sessions and as many study sessions as necessary until you feel that you've developed your new superpower. If it takes you a full month of play & study at 5 days a week to develop this superpower, it’ll be well worth it.

Take ActionChoose your next superpower and work to earn it! Your answer to the question above, “What poker superpower would you like?”, is probably the best one to start with.

Follow the 3 steps here and work hard over the coming weeks to give yourself a new poker superpower.

STEAL more post-flop pots!! Introducing the Honesty HUD for PokerTracker 4:

Get the Honesty HUD here for FREE: https://go.smartpokerstudy.com/HonestyHUD

The post Earn Your Next Poker Superpower – Study & Play with Purpose appeared first on Smart Poker Study.

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Are you a poker hardgainer? You try to improve your skills with studying, but no matter how much studying you do, you’re still the same player you were when you started this journey.

It doesn’t matter how many videos you watch, books you read, podcasts you listen to or notes you take. You just can’t seem to successfully use the strategies.

If this sounds like you, you’re a poker hardgainer! There are millions just like you out there and today, we’re going to flip the switch on your studies, and you’re going to move the needle on your poker skills and results this year.

The study strategies you’re going to learn today will be the driving force behind working with purpose every month and achieving your goals this year.

Watch this podcast episode on YouTube:

Listen to this episode #472 on Spotify:

Check out these two podcast episodes to help you crush 2024:

• Achieve Your 2024 Poker Dreams with SMART Goals
• Transform Your Game! 1-Year Plan to Excel in Online Poker

The Hardgainer's Guide to Effective Poker StudyHow Much Should I Study?1 Study Session for Every 1 Play SessionYou should do 1 study session for each play session. If you play 5 sessions per week, study 5 sessions.

It’s like sharpening the axe before chopping the tree.

Do your studies before you play as a warm-up, or after to review your session. Do them in the morning when your mind is fresh and you’ve got your cup of coffee then play later that night.

Study during your lunch break. Listen to podcasts or audiobooks on your commute. Then play after work.

Follow a 3:1 Play to Study Ratio for TIMEThis means that 25% of your daily/weekly time is dedicated to study. Sharpen that saw!

If you can play for 60 minutes today, put in 20 minutes of study at some point.

If you can play for 6 hours this week, study for 2 hours.

One of the great things about starting any task is that a little can turn into a lot! I’ve sat down to do a single hand reading exercise loads of time, but then I end up doing 4 more on the same situation! Once you start seeing the benefits of study, you'll naturally want to do it more.

Tournament PlayersI recommend one 30-60 minute study session per tournament played. So, if you play 6 tournaments on Sunday, do 6 study sessions on each tournament. Review hands, the bubble, lead up to the final table, final table, ICM decisions, special format related things like bounty decisions, etc.

You can learn something from each tournament you play.

What Should I Study?There are about a million ways and things to study:

Soooo many ways to study: HH reviews, videos, books, audiobooks, podcasts, courses, articles, study groups, forum posting and responding, hand reading, range and board work with Flopzilla Pro, GTO studies, coaching sessions and a whole lot more.

Toooo many things to study: Preflop or post-flop, calling 2bets or 3betting, limping or open-raising, cbetting or checking, finding the fold or finding the bluff, player types, hud stats, pot winning plays, the red line, targeting leaks or building your exploitative skills and loads more.

Here are my top recommendations.

Top 3 Ways to Study1. Hand Reading * 66 Days of Hand Reading YouTube Playlist * Online Poker Hand Reading Workbook 2. Training Videos – The key is to take notes (don't just passively watch). Notes are how you take your studies with you into the future. They’re great for refreshing your strategies before playing, and they can be great in-game reminders of what you should be focused on. 3. Follow Along then Do For Yourself – Anytime you see a software demonstration in a video, article or book, open the same program and follow along. Try to get the same output the coach does. Then, find related hands in your database and do it over and over again.

Top 3 Things to Study1. Big Losing/Tilting Hands. You made mistakes, reviewing these and taking note of your mistakes is the first step in NOT repeating them. Anger and tilt are huge results-killers and motivation-killers. Improving your anger response is critical in boosting your results. 2. Finding and Plugging Leaks. This requires you to dive into your PokerTracker 4 database of hands to record and analyze your statistics and win rates (get a free tracker here). Once you see the areas where you’re easily exploitable and the areas you’re losing too much money, you’ll know where to focus your study efforts to cut your losses and improve your overall results. 3. Stealing Pots. This is a big focus for myself this year. Winning at showdown with solid made hands is great and it’s the lion's share of every poker player’s winnings. However, it’s hecka fun and very profitable to steal more than your fair share of pots. So, do lots of studies on preflop stealing of pots, so seeing where players are weak and pushing them off the hand. Same for post-flop. Spot weakness, attack!

1 Concept for Hardgainer's to Turn Studies Into Skills and Results

Learn Something, Do Something

Action is the greatest teacher, so just studying a piece of training material doesn’t cut it. Have you ever read 3 poker book chapters in one sitting, but failed to actively practice anything you learned in those 3 chapters? I sure have.

This is going to require that you take notes with every piece of training material you study. At the end of your study session, circle something important in your notes that. This should be a big idea, a key strategy you want to use for yourself.

Now, figure out how you’re going to practice it:

• What situation do you need to put yourself in?
• What kind of board are you looking for?
• Who do you need to target?
• What kind of hand are you looking to play?
• What stack/pot sizes are you looking for?

Write this on a piece of paper as a tick sheet. In your next session, every time you purposefully get into that situation or make the play, put a tick mark. Also, practice thinking about it when you're not in the hand and during your studies.

Take ActionMake a commitment to studying 1 session for every single play session or tournament.

Also, devote 25% of your poker time to study.

Whip out your weekly calendar right now and schedule your study and play sessions for the rest of the week. I want to see exact days and times for each.

Next, choose one of the 3 ways to study and one of the 3 things to study. And I’m going to make this simple for you: If you don’t know how to hand read with Flopzilla Pro yet, that’s your goal before you study anything else! Do a full 66 days of hand reading like I did! You’ll thank me for this.

Hand reading will make you a more effective studier and poker player than anything else.

Now get to work!

The post The Hardgainer’s Guide to Effective Poker Study in 2024 appeared first on Smart Poker Study.

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Transform your game and learn to beat online poker with this 1-year plan! You'll play and study with purpose to turn yourself into the player you want to be and crush the competition through 2024 and beyond.

Watch me cover the 1-year plan, month-by-month with the key strategies in this YouTube video:Listen on Spotify:The 1-Year Plan to Excel in Online PokerYour Notes are DONE for you! Download the 7-page 1-Year Plan PDF:Resource LinksHere are the monthly resources from the 1-year plan with URLs for each monthly FOCUS. You'll have to find additional study materials, but these items are a perfect kick-start to each month.

JanuaryLearn How to Play Profitable Bread & Butter Poker: https://www.thepokerforge.com/BreadandButter1

FebruaryFind Poker Leaks with These 41 Statistics and Win Rates: https://youtu.be/pX4EkLwaFMc

MarchTable Game Planning – Plan Exploits Based on Opponents: https://www.thepokerforge.com/game-planning-forge-video

AprilTarget the Fish 3x Podcast episodes: https://www.smartpokerstudy.com/pod467

MayTrain for Consistent HUD Use | Post-flop Online Poker Book: https://youtu.be/byhO0bw0_5k

JuneSmart HUD for PokerTracker 4: https://www.smartpokerstudy.com/SmartHUD

JulyFlopzilla Pro Course: https://go.smartpokerstudy.com/FlopzillaProCourse

August66 Days of Hand Reading Playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy4pUQAtRIkJiP1czMB0_N9w2x9iyMFqm

Online Poker Hand Reading Workbook: https://go.smartpokerstudy.com/HandReadingWorkbook

SeptemberBefore Calling Preflop, Plan for Post-flop Float Bets and Probe Bets: https://www.smartpokerstudy.com/pod360

OctoberAnalyze Your Game Tape: https://www.thepokerforge.com/15-minute-poker-game-tape

NovemberGet More From PokerTracker 4 Course: https://go.smartpokerstudy.com/Get-more-from-pokertracker-4-course

The post Transform Your Game! 1-Year Plan to Excel in Online Poker appeared first on Smart Poker Study.

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An integral part of profitable poker is playing the player, and we do this by exploiting every player tendency.

What are a player's tendencies? These are repeated patterns of action they tend to do in similar situations. Maybe it’s a habit, something they’ve learned is valuable, or something they don’t know they do. But as an observant player, you’ve picked up on them.

Listen to this podcast #456 as you follow along below:Maybe Bob rarely 3bets. You might notice this tendency because over the 1,000 hands you’ve played with him, he’s only 3bet once and he held AA at showdown. Or, you’ve noticed his 3bet statistic is just at 1%. No matter how you spot a player’s tendencies, it’s valuable information because now you have a way to exploit them.

To exploit tendencies, you make plays that take advantage of them. Against Bob, you can easily fold with 99% of hands when he 3bets to a large size. However, if he makes a small 3bet to 6bb, you can call with a wide range because if you get lucky on the flop and hit a value hand (better than his overpair), you can win Bob’s entire stack.

Exploit Every Preflop Player TendencyEvery tendency can be exploited in many ways.All you need to do is answer this question for every opponent, “What do they tend to do, and how can I exploit it?”

Let’s discover 12 exploits over 6 tendencies with this Smart HUD panel:

Figure: Villain 4 has the following tendencies: (1) Folds vs Steals 56%, BB Folds vs SB Steal 48%, (2) Raise/Folds to 3bets 0% and (3) 3bets 4%.

From Villain 4's HUD: (1) Folds vs Steals 56%, BB Folds vs SB Steal 48%. “What do they tend to do, and how can I exploit it?”

Preflop Player Tendency #1: He defends his blinds almost half of the time. * Exploit #1: Expect a call, so steal with post-flop playable hands. He’s not folding often enough to justify stealing the pot with hands like 92o. So, choose big card hands, suited and connected hands and pairs. You want a decent chance of flopping something playable. * Exploit #2: Cbet bluff almost all flops. Figure ### shows that Villain has a tendency to fold post-flop. He folds versus flop and turn cbets at 68% and 63% respectively, and he folds on the river 63% as well. He’s a great cbet bluffing target who gives up when he misses the board. * Exploit #3: Open-raise with larger value sizes. If your opponent will defend with the same range versus a 2.5bb open or a 3.5bb open, make it larger with your premium hands. If he’s calling regardless of size, you’re getting more theoretical value with larger bets. I say “theoretical” because the hand isn’t over yet, there’s still post-flop play. However, your best hands have a great chance of winning unimproved and earning a lot of his chips.

Let’s consider the opposite tendency of #1 from a different player. For example, maybe Fold to Steal is 80%.

Preflop Player Tendency #2: He does not defend the blinds often. Exploit #4: Steal his blinds as often as possible with anything playable.* If he gives up quickly, you’ve got an easy blind steal.

From Villain 4's HUD: (2) Raise/Folds to 3bets 0%. “What do they tend to do, and how can I exploit it?”

Preflop Player Tendency #3: He hates folding versus 3bets after raising (folding 0%). Exploit #5: 3bet BIG for value. He’s not folding, so if you hold QQ+, go big with your 3bets and expect a call. * Exploit #6: Only 3bet bluff from IP so you can cbet steal when he misses the flop.* Your positional advantage will help your bluff cbets succeed. Choose hands that block the strongest hands like AX and AK that block him having AA, KK and AK. He doesn’t fold to 3bets, and that’s probably related to how infrequently he Raises First In (11%). Expect him to check-fold on the flop if he doesn’t hold TP or an overpair.

Let’s consider the opposite tendency of #3 from a different player. For example, maybe Raise/Fold to 3bet is 80%.

Preflop Player Tendency #4: He’s quick to fold versus 3bets after raising (folding 60%+). Exploit #7: 3bet bluff as often as possible. He’s folding a lot, so you’re 3bet bluffing a lot. It helps to be IP, and it really* helps when he’s raising first in with a 20% range or greater. Notice this with a positional RFI popup like the Smart HUD has (not shown).

From Villain 4's HUD: (3) 3bets 4%. “What do they tend to do, and how can I exploit it?”

Preflop Player Tendency #5: He’s an honest 3bettor. Exploit #8: Raising frequently and fold versus larger 3bets. * Exploit #9: Call his 3bets with suited connectors and pairs if he has ~100bb’s behind and if it’s a small 3bet.* The goal is cracking his big pocket pair, so we want speculative hands that can hit something great. He’s made it super cheap to see the flop (maybe a 6bb 3bet) and with lots of chips behind to win (high implied odds on our call), it’s worth calling with hands that are behind JJ+ and AK right now, but can crack them on a great flop.

Let’s consider the opposite tendency of #5 from a different player. For example, maybe 3bet is 10%.

Preflop Player Tendency #6: He’s capable of 3bet bluffing (>6% 3bet). Exploit #10: Expect a 3bet, so narrow your range to defend more frequently. You know you’re going to fold 76s or A8o versus his 3bet, so don’t open with those. A narrower open-raising range allows you to defend with calls or 4bets more frequently, thereby exploiting his 3bet bluffing tendency. * Exploit #11: Open-raise to a larger size to discourage him from making more costly 3bet bluffs. He’ll just call or fold instead when you make it 3.5-4.5bb’s. * Exploit #12: 4bet re-bluff him by open-raising only with value hands or hands you’re willing to 4bet re-bluff with.* Constrict your open-raising range to only value 4betting hands and hands you’re willing to 4bet re-bluff with like suited Aces or mid-pairs. These can be 4bets to ~25bb’s or re-shoves, it’s up to you in the moment based on your opponent and your hand.

2 TipsEvery tendency can be exploited in many ways.

It's your job to notice the tendencies and figure out how to exploit them. Use this question, “What do they tend to do, and how can I exploit it?”

Once you know how to exploit their tendencies, you MUST pull the trigger when the time is right.

If you know how to exploit Bob, but you never do it, you're not actively using your knowledge to “play the player”. You won't be earning the value nor the bluffed pots that you could be earning, thereby limiting your poker success.

Take Action!Play with PurposePlay your next 4 sessions the same way:

• Just 1 table.
• Start with the player on your left. On a piece of paper, write their name and 2 tendencies with 1 exploit per tendency.
• Go to the next player on your left. Do the same, write 2 tendencies with 1 exploit each.
• Proceed around the table until you’ve written 2 tendencies with 1 exploit each.
• Pull the trigger on your written exploits at every opportunity. Tag each exploiting hand with an “Exploit” tag (Action ###) to review your exploits made.

Study with PurposeOver your next 4 study sessions, choose one specific player each day to analyze. Preferably, choose players you often face.

Ask the question, “What do they tend to do, and how can I exploit it?”

In your poker journal, make a list of 10 or more exploits on each player you analyze. By the end of the 4 study sessions, you’ll have at least 40 exploits you know you can use against these players and anyone else with matching tendencies.

Use this list of exploits as your pre-session warm-ups to prepare yourself for maximal exploits!

Exploit Their Post-flop TendenciesIn the first half of this post above, we used a player's HUD statistics to understand his preflop tendencies to develop exploits against him. Let's do this again, but this time we're focusing on his post-flop statistics.

Listen to podcast #457 as you follow along below:To help us analyze and exploit, we use this question: What do they tend to do, and how can I exploit it?

Here are our opponent's Smart HUD statistics:

Figure: Villain 4 has the following tendencies: (1) Cbets Flop 31% and Cbets Turn 75%, (2) Bets River 15% and (3) Folds to Cbets 68% on flop, 63% on turn and Folds to River Bets 63%..

From Villain 4's HUD: (1) Cbets Flop 31% and Cbets Turn 75%. “What do they tend to do, and how can I exploit it?”

Post-flop Player Tendency #1: He’s a flop honest cbettor. * Exploit #1: Quickly fold flop without a solid hand or good drawing price. He only bets with top pair or better, so it’s an easy fold. * Exploit #2: If you hold the nuts, you MUST raise his cbet for maximum value. He’s got TP+, so get value while the getting’s good. He’s not folding! * Exploit #3: If you call preflop, bet as soon as he checks the flop. He will check with weaker hands, so there's a great chance a Flop Float or Turn Probe will get him to fold.

Let’s consider the opposite tendency of #1 from a different player. For example, maybe Cbet Flop 75%, Turn 31%.

Post-flop Player Tendency #2: Turn cbet honesty. Exploit #4: Call most flop cbets and bet as soon as he checks the turn. He only barrels with the goods, so when he checks the turn, it means he doesn't like the board. Bet to steal the pot. * Exploit #5: Raise for maximum value versus his turn cbets with the nuts or near nuts.* He only barrels with very strong hands and when he feels confident, so we must re-raise him on the turn to get maximum value.

From Villain 4's HUD: (2) Bets River 15%. “What do they tend to do, and how can I exploit it?”

Post-flop Player Tendency #3: Very honest river bettor. * Exploit #6: Raise big on the river for value with the nuts. It's not often you have the river nuts, so when you do, you must get the maximum value for it that you can. He only bets rivers 15% of the time, which signifies a very strong hand. * Exploit #7: Fold anything weaker than TPTK when he bets river. He’ll check anything weaker, and probably only bets TPTK+ on rivers. It’s unlikely you can get him to fold, so don’t bluff raise.

Let’s consider the opposite tendency of #1 from a different player. For example, maybe Bet River > 50%.

Post-flop Player Tendency #4: Frequent river bluffing. Exploit #8: Bluff catch by calling with any TP hand. His frequent river betting means a wide range with bluffs and value bets. He likely bets with his busted draws and weaker pairs or Ace-high hands. Even a weak TP hand like K9 on the Kxxxx board is worth calling. * Exploit #9: Bluff raise versus river bets.* If you read him for weakness, due to the board runout or his bet size, and especially if you can rep a strong hand like a rivered flush or straight, bluff-raise him.

From Villain 4's HUD: (3) Folds to Cbets 68% on flop, 63% on turn and Folds to River Bets 63%. “What do they tend to do, and how can I exploit it?”

Post-flop Player Tendency #5: Quick to fold versus cbets on every street. * Exploit #10: Cbet bluff often! He’s quick to fold, so don’t hesitate to bluff flops or turns. You can test smaller sizing with your bluffs because he’s so honest, he just might fold versus any size, so save money on bluffs when possible. * Exploit #11: Slowplay big hands. He’s quick to fold, but you want him in the pot. Bet smaller or just check to keep in him the pot.

Let’s consider the opposite tendency of #1 from a different player. For example, maybe Folds to River Bet 10%.

Post-flop Player Tendency #6: Hate’s folding versus cbets. Exploit #12: Cbet for maximum value.* He’s a calling station, so get value while the getting’s good. Don’t slow play by checking nor bet small 1/4 pot bets. Try to bet as big as possible to earn as much from this calling station as you can.

2 TipsIf they ain’t folding, you ain’t bluffing.

However, if they’re folding on turns but not on flops, you’ve got to make the first flop cbet to sufficiently pressure them on the turn.

Get value while the getting’s good with your best hands.

It’s a huge mistake to check or bet small versus players who hate folding for any reason. If you flop a TP+ hand, get maximum value from the calling stations.

Take Action!Play with PurposePlay your next 4 sessions the same way with a post-flop exploit focus:

• Just 1 table.
• Start with the player on your left. On a piece of paper, write their name and 2 post-flop tendencies with 1 exploit per tendency.
• Go to the next player on your left. Do the same; write 2 post-flop tendencies with 1 exploit each.
• Proceed around the table until you’ve written 2 tendencies with 1 exploit each.
• Pull the trigger on your written exploits at every opportunity.

Study with PurposeOver your next 4 study sessions, choose one specific player each day to analyze. Preferably, choose players you often face.

Ask the question, “What do they tend to do, and how can I exploit it?”

In your poker journal, make a list of 10 or more post-flop exploits on each player you analyze. By the end of the 4 study sessions, you’ll have at least 40 exploits you know you can use against these players and anyone else with matching tendencies.

It’s good to find positional tendencies and exploits. For example, a player might be a more turn honest cbettor when OOP versus IP. Write this down as one of their tendencies and create a positionally-relevant exploit to use against them.

Use this list of exploits as your pre-session warm-ups to prepare yourself for maximal exploits!

The post Exploit Every Player Tendency – Preflop and Post-flop appeared first on Smart Poker Study.

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I'm going to cover the fundamental things you need to consider before making your next value or bluff continuation bet.

Listen to the podcast as you follow along below:

Continuation Betting FundamentalsWhat is the Continuation Bet?

The Continuation Bet, or the Cbet, is a bet on the flop made by the preflop aggressor in the hand.

Basically: You raised, somebody called, and now you can continue the aggression on the next street.

There are 3 key reasons for continuation betting:

1. You displayed strength by raising preflop, your opponent is weak because they just called, and now you’re putting pressure on your opponent and utilizing fold equity to win the pot right now.
2. Most hands and ranges of hands aren’t improved much on the flop. Most ranges “hit” flops about 35% of the time. By “hit” I mean that they flop top pair+ or an open-ended straight draw+. Key: If they “hit” 35%, they miss 65%! So your opponents are more likely to fold on the flop.
3. If you flop a hand worthy of going for value, and the stacks are deep, you’ve got to get more money in now so you can pile more money in later to eventually get all the money in and stack your opponent.

Value versus Bluff CbetsThe most important question to ask yourself before you click that button is: Why am I cbetting? The answer should be for value or as a bluff.

Value Cbets: you must be able to name some hands from their range that you beat and that they’ll call you with. If there’s nothing they’ll call you with, then you may be better off checking instead.

Bluff Cbets: you must be able to name hands in their range that beat you, but can be folded. If they ain't folding, you ain't bluffing.

Most of the time, when we discuss cbetting, we’re talking about it in terms of bluffing or semi-bluffing. Most ranges hit only 35% of the time, so if you’re cbetting 70% or more, then more than half of your cbets are bluffs.

For a great tournament-related discussion of semi-bluffing, PokerNerve.com put out a super detailed article with plenty of hand examples.

This same idea of most flops not helping most ranges is why your opponents nowadays don’t fold so easily to cbets. You’re cbet bluffing because THEY likely didn’t improve, and they’re calling because YOU likely didn’t improve. It can be a game of chicken. But, if you’re using a HUD and they aren’t, then you’ve brought a tank and they’ve brought a Volvo to this duel.

Important HUD Statistics for Continuation BettingThese stats will help you figure out how your opponent is likely to react before you make the cbet.

1. Fold to Cbet – the higher the better when you’re considering a bluff cbet. Anything over 65% means they’re pretty flop honest vs cbets and you can push them off more easily.
2. Raise Cbet – Some players like to raise cbets as bluffs especially when IP. Anything over 10% is likely a bluffer, and over 20% is surely a bluffer. You only flop strong hands worthy of raising maybe 10%.
3. Check-Raise – Same as raise cbet, over 10% is a bluffer. If you’ve played 1,000 hands and you’ve never seen this player check-raise until now, fold the hand unless you’re near the nuts.

Make sure you're also aware of your own Cbet stat. What does your current stat at this table say about you? If it’s at 35% over 100 hands, then you are pretty straight-forward and flop honest. If it’s at 55%, then you’re mixing in some bluffs and semi-bluffs with your value hands, and if it’s at 75% or greater, then you’re full of it and your perceptive opponents will notice this.

Continuation Bet SizingThe main thing with your cbet sizing is to tailor it to your opponent to get the reaction you want from them.

When bluffing, go as small as you think will still get them to fold. If they're super honest, like Fold to Cbet = 80%, you can often get away with 1/4 pot to 1/2 pot cbets. However, you might have to go to 2/3 or 3/4 pot versus players who like to stick around.

I'll often think to myself, “What would I bet with a strong hand for value?” That “value” size can be a good size to go with.

Before choosing your flop bluff sizing, think about the size of the pot on the turn in case they call. If you think it's going to require a double-barrel to get them to fold, go smaller on the flop, say 30-50% pot. Then on the turn, you can go 50-66% pot and it's going to be less costly than going 60% pot on both streets. Plus, that increase in bet sizing could look really scary to players who notice. Going from 30% pot on the flop to 60% pot on the turn looks like you mean business and it could earn you more folds.

For value cbet sizing, make it as big as you think they can call and give you value. People often see 1/2 pot bets or smaller as weakness, so those quickly get called. But, if you're opponent hates folding or the board is wet or they could have a made but weaker hand than yours, go bigger for more value. 2/3 pot is a great place to start, then size it up or down based on what you think they can give you value.

One thing I teach all my students is to “get value while the getting's good”. If you think they can give you value, don't slow play and check. Bet to start building the pot now, so it's bigger on the turn and river to maximize your value.

Opponents and PositionsHU pots are much easier to gain value from, as well as easier to bluff at; you only have one opponent and one range to be concerned with.

But multiway pots are a different story. It’s tougher to bluff multiway because so many wide ranges seeing the flop have a good chance of connecting. Getting all these players off the pot with a cbet is pretty tough.

Another thing that makes cbets difficult is being OOP. Give yourself a better chance at successful cbet bluffing by making them more IP as opposed to OOP. People love to float the cbet then take it away from you when you check the turn. If you only want to fire one barrel, and you think it’ll take more than one to get your opponent off their hand, don’t fire that first one.

Board TexturesTexture matters. Think about their calling range and how well it hits the board.

A calling range comprised of small-medium pairs, lots of suited connectors and some broadways doesn’t hit an A43r flop so well, nor does it hit a K92 flop so well. But, this kind of middle card and pocket pair heavy range hits the 578 or JT8 flops very well. If the board smacks their range, you should be much less likely to bluff cbet.

Scroll below for more on cbet bluffing using flop and board textures.

Continuation Betting ChecklistsFor Value Cbetting:

• Get value while the getting's good!
• You must be able to name the weaker hands they can call you with.
• If they’ll fold everything you beat and only call with better, don’t make the value cbet.
• You must look at their HUD stats first to help give an indication of their likely response.
• You want to size it to 2/3 or 3/4 pot, and adjust it up or down depending on how likely your opponent is to call.
• Be much more careful when cbetting into a multiway pot.
• Consider the board texture and how their range interacts with it.

For Bluff Cbetting:

• If you can list better hands they’ll fold, then make the bluff cbet.
• If they ain't folding, you ain't bluffing.
• When the flop board texture smacks their range, don’t bluff.
• If you’re OOP, be less inclined to bluff cbet.
• And if it’s a multiway pot, be less inclined as well.

Challenge!Here’s my challenge to you for this episode:

Focus on cbetting this week. With every cbetting opportunity, be deliberate. Know whether it's a bluff cbet or a value cbet. Purposefully choose your cbet sizing to get the reaction you want. Look at their cbet-related stats to gauge how they'll likely react. Be sure to get value while the getting's good, and of course, if they ain't folding, you ain't bluffing. Get 'em, tiger!

Now it’s your turn to take action and do something positive for your poker game.

Out of Position Continuation BettingThis video is taken directly from the Profitable Cbets Course within the www.ThePokerForge.com. Take notes and take action!

Download and listen to this video in podcast format.

Bluff Continuation Betting and Analyzing Flop TexturesI'm going to help you analyze flop textures to figure out which are the best for cbet bluffing. As we all know, most of our cbets are bluffs. So, the strategies you're going to learn below will help you win more pots without showdown.

Listen to podcast #442 as you follow along below:When are Continuation Bet Bluffs Most Successful?They Fear What You May Have* Indications: Stats and tendencies – They fold a lot to cbets or fold in general. Their stats will tell you what type of player they are. NIT’s and TAG’s fold a lot, FISH and LAG’s not so much. * Indication: The board texture hits your opening range. When you open, you have lots of Aces, Kings and Queens and big pocket pairs in your range. If the board comes all big cards, this likely hit you squarely, so if they’ve got nothing, they’re folding.

They Are Out Of Position* Indications: Look for players who fold a lot when out of position (OOP). Make sure your popup has their Fold to Cbet and Fold to Bet stats broken down by IP and OOP. You want to bluff players who fold a lot when OOP.

The Smart HUD for PokerTracker 4 has all your IP and OOP statistical needs covered: https://smartpokerstudy.gumroad.com/l/LduZ

They Have Nothing on This Board * Indications: The wider their preflop calling ranges are, the less likely they hit the board with any real strength. But you’ve got to watch out because wide calling ranges are indicative of stickiness, so these players won’t readily fold with any pair as long as they think you may have not hit the flop. * Indications: Their preflop calling range doesn’t interact well with the board. Understanding range and board interaction is critical in deciding whether or not to cbet bluff. Beyond your opponent’s approach to post-flop play and their stats, this is super important.

Flop Texture MattersThe first thing you do before you cbet is consider how the cards on the board hit their preflop calling range.

Coordinated boards (or wet boards) are bad to cbet bluff. Why is this?

Think about why our opponent called preflop. They clearly DID NOT want to 3bet for value or as a bluff. They called because they want to see the flop, right? Are they calling with 92o? J4o? AA? Probably not. They’re calling with the same types of hands you call with; suited connectors, suited Aces and Kings, broadways and small-medium pocket pairs.

Since this is what they’re calling, our bluff cbets will have a better chance of working on board textures that do not hit these types of hands.

Example: 5.7% calling range on two different boardsThis small range consists of small-medium pocket pairs and suited connectors (maybe a tight SB caller's range who 3bets better hands):

Which board is better to cbet bluff on? An A92r board, or a 678ss (two tone) board?

A92r:Only 8.82% of this tight calling range only hits TP+ and good draws on this A92r flop. Most of this range's pocket pairs are below the 9, so they’re less likely to call. The best draws they can have are back door straight and flush draws, making it less likely they’ll stick around to draw out. And if we’re IP, all the more reason for them to check/fold here.

678ss:The range flops tons of top pair+ hands and good draws. So…

They ain’t folding here, so we ain’t bluffing.

Bottom line: Make continuation bet bluffs on flops that don’t hit the player's range.

Flop Texture SpreadsheetThis table shows you how often a 5% calling range “Hits” 11 different flops. “Hits” = TP+ and OESD+. It also shows you how often the range flops TP+, Middle Pair+, an open-ended straight draw (OESD) or a flush draw (FD). The reason why we want to look at these individual hand strengths is because these are the ones our opponents are more likely to stay in the pot with. Knowing these individual ones helps to further our understanding of how well the range hits the 11 distinct boards.

This first table above contains how often a narrow 5% 2bet calling range hits the various flops. The rest of the spreadsheet contains ranges for 13%, 22% and 33% 2bet calling ranges. As you can see, there are 11 distinct board textures with an example of each on the spreadsheet (downloadable above!).

The goal with filling out and using this sheet is to get a good idea of how different 2bet calling ranges hit these various boards. I completed this table using Flopzilla Pro, which is the best software available to help understand ranges and board interaction.

Get my Flopzilla Pro Course to learn how to use this invaluable program:5% on the High & Dry Flop Texture A small 5% calling range Hits only 10% on A92r.

This small 5% calling range “Hits” at 10% (TP+ and OESD+). On an Ace high board, the only things it can hit at TP+ are sets, in this instance namely 99 and 22. It can’t flop oesd’s nor even gutshot draws. And being a rainbow board with a pocket pair filled range, it can’t flop flush draws either. So, this is a great board to cbet bluff because they hardly ever hit anything good.

For just TP+ it’s only 10%. And Middle Pairs flop 40% of the time. That makes sense as it has 3 pairs below the Ace and above the 9. It flops OESD 0% of the time and FD’s at 0% as well. All of this tells us that cbet bluffing on High & Dry boards should be very profitable against such small ranges.

5% on the Low & Wet Board TextureA small 5% calling range hits TP+ at 68.4%.

On the two-tone 754 flop, this 5% range “Hits” the board at 90% of the time. That makes sense because it’s got many overpairs, 3 different sets it can hit as well as an OESD with 66. This board is super dangerous to cbet bluff at against a tiny 5% range.

And if we break this down further, it hits TP+ at 68.4%; Middle Pair + at 79%; an OESD 11% of the time and a FD never. So, this range flops mostly made hands and only one good draw, making it really tough to successfully bluff at.

I'm sure you can see the value of doing this type of Range & Flop analysis with Flopzilla Pro.

Flipping the Script for Value Continuation BetsEverything until now has been about cbet bluffing.

But, what if you’ve got a value hand and you want to extract the max from your opponent?

Simple, you just flip the script on everything.

When it’s likely your opponent hit something, bet. If they’re going to raise a lot of your cbets on this board, then bet. If they’re going to call with all of their draws and mediocre hands, then bet. Maybe he's an unbelieving calling station and calls 90% of flops, then bet.

But, if the board is bad for their range or if they fold a ton in general, don’t bet. Possibly let them catch something worth staying in with on the turn.

You want to get value and that is so much easier when your opponent hit the board or they’re a station. Use your knowledge of their calling range as well as their post-flop stats to get a good idea of whether they’ll pay you off or not.

Challenge!Here’s my challenge to you for this episode:

Download the Board Texture Spreadsheet (form above). Then open up Flopzilla Pro and get to work completing the three remaining tables. Save, print and use this spreadsheet to crush the preflop callers in every future session.

Now it’s your turn to take action and do something positive for your poker game.

Support the ShowI want to thank these super poker peeps for picking up the Online Poker Hand Reading Workbook. This is a 95-page PDF that teaches you all you need for hand reading. With loads of examples, quizzes and workbook activities (with 17-page answer key), you'll build hand reading skills quickly and efficiently.

Thanks to Alex Roberts, Piotr Turlewicz, George Kourakos, Fred Woolley, Jean-marc Moskowicz, Jean Dalarosa, Frederic Renard, Doenghoon Bae, Chris Fetner, Randy Noel, James Gravatt, James Crossen, Kevin Pryor, Ben Cawley, Joachim Svensson, Mark Wojszko, Darren Clare, Tarvo Solg, Gerald Crone, Wayne Altomare and Mutsuki Kojima.

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Here are 20 quick online poker tips that are sure to boost your results. Even if you already know a lot (or all) of these things, it's helpful to be reminded of them occasionally.

Watch me cover the 20 quick tips on my YouTube channel:

Download the audio podcast here and listen as you follow along with the quick tips below.

1. Position is King!When you have position, you give yourself more time to think and act. You also get to see what they do before you have to act.

Position gives you the ability to pot control (bet or check before the next street). Plus, your opponents must contend with your position on every street if they choose to remain in the hand.

My position + seeing them check 2 streets + my bet won me this pot.

1. Preflop Raising > Calling or LimpingBy raising instead of calling or limping, you can win the pot right now. Calling or limping is done in hopes of winning the pot later. Plus, raisers have a range advantage over their calling opponents, making it easier to bluff them later.

I earn good profits when 2betting, and I'm losing when calling 2bets.

1. Look for 3bettors BEFORE Open-raising or Calling“3bets are the bane of 2bets.” You already know this because making a 3bet is much preferred to facing one, right?

If there are 3bettors still to act, raise or call with a plan first in case they 3bet you. Narrow your range, raise to a larger size or preempt their 3bet by doing it yourself.

Plus, leave tables with lots of 3bettors. They'll make poker a pain as YOU want to be the one 3BETTING THEM!

1. Learn HUD StatisticsHUD statistics are a friend whispering your opponent's tendencies in your ear. This is one reason we play online, so you should learn all you can about every statistic in your HUD.

Choose one statistic at a time and learn about it in PokerTracker 4 under Configure > Statistics. Play with purpose and work to make reads and plays using the statistic.

Get the best HUD in the business, the Smart HUD for PokerTracker 4:

Yep, 3bets are the bane of people like this who open a lot and fold to 3bets a lot.

1. Play the PlayerEVERYONE has tendencies you can exploit (live and online). Your HUD (#4 above) is the perfect tool to help you play the player.

Maniacs love bluffing, fish love calling, TAGs love folding… exploit these tendencies!

Check-calling a maniac's triple-barrel bluff.

1. Target the FishFish are the best source of profits! They make the most mistakes, and throw chips around with their recreational, unskilled play.

Be sure to isolate limpers, raise fishy blinds and 3bet 'em to get 'em all to yourself

Table select to find fishy tables.

1. Limping = FishSee a limper, tag 'em as Fish and isolate 'em. Other fish indicators are short stack buy-ins, failing to top off and calling stations.

Also look for a large gap between VPIP-PFR > PFR. Like 4 of the players on this table (37/9, 60/9, 43/13 and 40/10):

1. Warm-up with Study NotesChoose one strategy/topic to study each week, take notes on the items you consume. Notes are how you take your studies with you into the future.

Reviewing notes in your pre-session warm-up refreshes the strategy and leads to A-game play.

1. Use Sticky NotesWrite down important notes and attach them to your monitor to help remind you of key strategies as you play.

2. Use Poker’s Ultimate Question: “What are they doing this with?”They act, you ask yourself this question and the answer will lead you to the correct response. Train this question as a habit in your studies.

No idea what they're doing? Just fold.

1. Use a Tick Sheet to Keep FocusedYou can create a tick sheet for any strategy you're practicing. Some ideas:

2. Hand Off That Mouse!Avoid “finger tilt” (a term from Tommy Angelo) in dangerous situations (like holding KK on a dangerously wet board).

Return your hand to the mouse after you've thought through the situation and decided on a play.

1. BreatheTake a second and a breath… think through the situation. This also helps avoid finger tilt.

2. Ditch DistractionsTwitter, email, Netflix, Candy Crush all take focus away from your goal…

Making great reads and decisions!

Also, play a comfortable # of tables where you have enough time to think and act properly.

1. View Chips Stacks in BB'sThis is helpful for basic strategy analysis. “9bb” is better than thinking “$.45” or “$2.25” (9bb's at different stakes).

Helps for playing different stakes and also when moving up, and of course, for tournament play.

1. You're Going to Miss the Flop… “How can I steal it?”How often do ranges hit top pair or better and the best draws? Not too often:

Being in position, the preflop aggressor and stat reading all help to steal more. Make a plan for stealing post-flop before you enter the pot preflop!

1. If They Can Find a Fold, BetYour ranges miss the flop very frequently… but so do theirs! When you miss the flop, and you think they can find a fold… bet!

Look for folding stats, dry boards and any signs of weakness.

1. Don't Bluff the Unbluffable“If they ain't folding, you ain't bluffing.” Go for max value instead.

But, if they're folding later, be willing to bet to that street. In the above hand, Villain 353 doesn't fold on the flop, but folds on the turn. I have to be willing to barrel to the turn before I make this first flop cbet bluff.

1. HH Reviews: Always Put 'em on a RangeUse Flopzilla Pro when you review hands and put your opponent on a range every time. This will train hand reading, range understanding, player analysis and equity understanding.

Use Poker's Ultimate Question to help you build the range (#10 above).

1. Use the PT4 Note Editor, NOT the Poker Site's SoftwareYou want to have access to any notes you've taken while reviewing hands. Use the Smart HUD's note editor for notes (the small orange square in the top left corner):

Take Action with These Quick Tips!Put each of these 20 quick tips to work starting today. Work on 'em one at a time until you get 'em all down pat!

The post 20 Quick Tips Every Online Poker Player Needs to Know appeared first on Smart Poker Study.

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I'm sure there are some poker situations and plays in which you have ZERO confidence. Let's work to build your confidence in these “tough” spots.

Watch this episode on the Smart Poker Study YouTube channel:Download the audio podcast here.

Help yourself take notes with my FREE Poker Journal (click here).

1. Answer this Confidence QuestionTrust your gut reaction to the question below. Your first gut reaction is probably the most important area to focus on this week.

“In which situation, or with what play, are you most lacking in confidence?”

Your answer is where you'll be working to build confidence this week. Example answers:

• 3bet bluffing
• Calling in the blinds
• Calling 3bets
• Cbetting
• Facing a donk bet
• Facing a river bet

Goal this Week: “I'm going to build my confidence in _________.”

1. Study the Situation/Play Where You Lack ConfidenceLet's use “Facing a Donk Bet” as the situation where you lack confidence.

PokerTracker 4 filter:

Filter in your database for the situation and review hands. You MUST always:

1. Put your opponent on a preflop range of hands in Flopzilla Pro (learn how to use this valuable program here).
2. Enter your hand to see your equity vs their range.
3. Ask Poker's Ultimate Question to force you to use all the information available to analyze your opponent's actions: “What's he doing this with?” Consider player types, tendencies, bet size, stack size, position, other players still to act, etc.
4. Review 20+ hands.

I raised pot versus his tiny donk bet:

Next, find ONE piece of content to study through a Google or YouTube search. Study it and take notes; review more hands.

1. Purposefully Face It Over and Over Again to Build ConfidenceThis week, play at least 5 sessions with the goal of putting yourself in this spot over and over.

Use the strategies you learned whenever +EV and pull the trigger!

Tag hands for review.

How do you purposefully put yourself in certain situations?

• 3bet bluffing >>> Look for opportunities to 3bet.
• Calling in the blinds >>> Try calling more in the blinds.
• Calling 3bets >>> Open-raise and plan for the 3bet.
• Cbetting >>> Open-raise and 3bet a lot.
• Facing a donk bet >>> Isolate donk bettors.
• Facing a river bet >>> Pay attention when NOT in the hand.
• ANY SITUATION >>> Pay attention when not in the hand and consider what you would do if you were the one facing the situation.

Take Action!Goal this Week: “I'm going to build my confidence in _________.”

Study and play as outlined in #2 and #3 above.

Play at least 5 sessions! Do more as necessary.

The post Let’s Build Your Confidence in “Tough” Poker Spots appeared first on Smart Poker Study.

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Follow these 8 poker study mandates to take your education and skills to the next level.

Listen to the podcast as you follow along with the 8 mandates below.

8 Mandates for Great Poker Study1. Motivate Yourself With GoalsYou play and study poker for a reason. Maybe it’s for the challenge of the game, or it’s for additional income, or maybe it’s for bragging rights after you sock it to your home game buddies every week.

Setting goals that flow alongside the reason you’re playing is a great motivator for continued play and study. If you play for the challenge of the game, set a goal of moving up in stakes by building your roll over the next 3 months. If you play for additional income, set a goal of earning and withdrawing $100 this month, $200 the next and $300 the month following that. Playing to crush your friends? Make a goal of stacking each of your buddies at least one time this month.

Put your goals down on paper, review them daily, and use them as fuel to get your daily play and study done.

2. Take NotesWe all remember note-taking in high school and college classes and how it really helped us to remember the things that we were studying. The state capitals, the quadratic equation, the history of the Native American Indians, all that jazz was easier to remember and easier to cram for tests with good note taking. You must do this for your poker studies as well.

Your notes allow you to go back and refresh your studies one month or 2 months later, or even before your next play session later tonight.

Your note taking can be in any form that works for you; paper and pencil, Evernote or something like Word. Just choose the form that works for you and do it.

3. Group Your StudiesI know many of you feel overwhelmed by all the poker content out there. You study preflop ranges one day, cbetting the next then poker math the following day. No wonder you feel like you’re getting nowhere.

Instead, each week you must choose and devote all of your study and play time to one strategy. This is going to benefit you the most and will give you ample time to learn and practice that one strategy.

Within your week of study, you build upon what you learned the prior day. Maybe this week you choose to study preflop 2bet ranges. On Monday you create and analyze ranges for the early positions. This is your smallest range. Next on Tuesday, you build this range a little wider for you middle position 2bets. Then Wednesday build it wider for your CO range then on Thursday you build it the widest for your BTN range.

Grouping your studies this way allows you to learn systematically and it saves you time in the process.

4. Test YourselfTesting yourself on the strategies you learn is great practice you can do on your own.

I like doing this with Flopzilla Pro quite a bit. I’ll try to guess what the equities will be before I enter in hands and ranges. I’ll do this before I enter in board cards also.

After you read a page in a book or a section of an article, try to recall what you just read. If I can’t remember a single thing about it, I know I’m just spinning my wheels as I’m passively reading something.

5. Switch TechniquesKeeping your mind nimble is important. If your poker studies always revolve around reviewing the 5 biggest losing hands in the prior session, you’re going to get stuck in a robotic mode of learning.

Instead, switch it up constantly. Hit your database one day, read a chapter and take notes the next, watch a video the third and do hand reading exercises the fourth (but remember #3 above and keep these all grouped around one strategy).

Developing a nimble mind through studies will also help as you play. You face different situations and opponents every time you play. With a nimble mind you’re less prone to robotic play and you’ll be thinking more about each situation you encounter, leading to more +EV play.

6. Go Big to SmallGoing big to small is one of my favorite mandates!

Figure out where you’re losing the most money and concentrate your studies there first. You might want to study cbetting or defending against donk bets. But if your preflop 3betting strategy is losing you 4bb’s every time you 3bet, this is a humongous leak. Put everything else on hold and concentrate on the one thing costing you the most money.

Also, start preflop and then go post-flop with your studies. Building your preflop skills helps to some of the post-flop issues you face.

7. Share Your KnowledgeAlbert Einstein once said:

“If you can’t explain it simply, then you don’t understand it well enough.”

Practice explaining your ideas to others. This is easily done in poker forums, Discord or Facebook groups dedicated to helping each other learn poker strategy.

Post your own hands and try to explain your thought process simply. Or, respond to posts from others and share your ideas. You’ll find that the harder it is to explain something, the less you know about it.

8. Take BreaksWhen your poker study or play is leading to boredom or even frustration, it’s time to take a break.

If studying is bringing you down, replace your studies with more play for a week. This will give you more time to practice the things you’ve been learning and will motivate you to hit the books later with all the additional hands you put in this week.

If playing poker has been frustrating, due to things like poor play or heavy losses, take a break and do some additional studies instead.

ChallengeHere’s my challenge to you for this episode: Choose one of these 8 mandates and put it into action starting NOW. As you read each of the mandates, I'm sure there was one where you said, “Man, I should be doing that!” Well, there’s no better time to start than with your next study session.

Now it’s your turn to take action and do something positive for your poker game.

The post 8 Mandates for Great Poker Studies – Podcast appeared first on Smart Poker Study.

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I answer two listener questions about keeping your poker study notes extremely organized and getting beyond your fear of being bluffed.

Listen to the podcast as you follow along below:

Q1 From Mike: Organized Poker NotesThanks for the video (below) and I take notes when I review material as well. I usually use index cards (so I can review when I have some downtime) and type the content into OneNote. I really like what you were doing with Word and I think I'm going to try it your way.

One of the things I've been trying to do is to break poker down into pieces. Three betting, check raising, HUD stats, hand reading etc. If I wanted to review the concept I could just pull up the section and read a couple of pages to get myself back on track. My problem is trying to figure out all of the pieces that make up the poker puzzle and logically formatting them. Any ideas?

-Mike

Answer:Let's look at a NLHE cash game player's notes. Divide your notes first by street, so the first Heading 1 within your poker journal Word document would be Pre-flop. The next Heading 1 would be Flop, then Turn then River. Here's the video Mike watched:

Next, subdivide each of these into parts that go in a logical order for you and make them all Heading 2.

Example:(Heading 1) Pre-flop

(Heading 2) under this, and in order of importance could be: Opening Ranges, Calling Ranges, 3betting Ranges, 3bet Calling Ranges, 4betting Ranges, Bet Sizing, Pre-flop Math, Opponent Types (LAG, TAG, LP, TP), Specific Plays (like limp/raise or limp/call or steals), etc. Another organizing idea is put it in order of the plays you prefer to make. For example; Open-raise, Iso-raise, 3bet, 4bet, Call 2bet, Call 3bet, etc.

(Heading 1) Flop

(Heading 2) under this and in order of importance could be: Value Cbets, Bluff Cbets, Post-flop Math (outs and odds), Check-raises, Donk Bets, Cbet Raises, etc.

As you learn more from different sources, put your notes in the appropriate area so you can recall them quickly.

Keep the same terms or notations so you can run quick searches. Don't spell “check-raise” in different ways through your notes. I don't want to see:

• check-raise
• check raise
• c/r
• x/r

Choose one and go with it for all of your notes to make searching (Ctrl+F) for terms quick and easy.

Organized and thorough notes could be turned into a book one day.

I use a separate document for the different things I study like books or webinars or training courses.

Q2 From Chris: Fear of Being BluffedMy current biggest leak is that I call/shove in my stack with the worst hand quite often. I think I might be a fish. Not sure how common this is, but my red line is usually positive, and my blue line is very, very negative, at least over the 15k or so hands I've played in the last 10 days. I just don't have a good “I should get out of this pot” feeling yet, I suppose, and it's the main thing that's making me a losing player, I believe. It's pretty silly, because I have a huge note to myself that says “WHEN IN DOUBT, FOLD” and I know that this is my biggest issue, but for some reason, I call their shove more often than not.

Answer:Your problem of giving too much value is very common. Lots of players have a fear of getting bluffed. I think that's probably your real issue (it’s still a big issue for me as well). That note of “When in doubt, fold” doesn't actually cover the real issue. In the heat of the moment, you probably aren't really in doubt. You probably think your hand is the best. You may also be thinking about all the possible hands your opponent could be bluffing you with. It also sounds like you bluff a lot as well if you're getting it in with the worst hand quite often.

4 Fixes for Fear of Being Bluffed1. Run a filter in PT4 for times when you called a raise on the flop and saw showdown. You'll probably find a huge negative win rate here. I've seen as high as -750BB/100 hands. These are most often when you should fold because raises are mostly for value. Sure, sometimes you raise the flop as a bluff, but most often it's for value. Your opponents are playing the same way. You can also run this for calling turn raises and river raises as well and see what those win rates are. 2. Look at all of your biggest losing hands that went to showdown. Often in these big losing pots, your opponents show they're interested in the hand three times or more. When somebody opens the pot pre-flop then calls, that's twice they've put money in. If they call your cbet, that's a third instance of them liking their hand. Alarm bells should be ringing. When they donk lead the turn, that's #4 and should be a huge sign that they like their hand. As you review the big losing hands with multiple actions on different streets, count the times they show interest. I bet at 3 or 4 you should've picked up on the fact that your TP or underpair or even 2p was beat at that point. 3. Change that note from “When in doubt, fold” to read, “When they show interest 3 times, assign a likely hand strength before clicking the button.” You should always be thinking about your opp’s range, but it’s very important when they’re fighting for the pot. If their range beats your hand you should consider folding. You can stay in to bluff, though, if you think there will be a bluffing opportunity at some point. And taking good notes on your opp’s will help with. If you see somebody bluffing, make a note of how they bluffed. * “Capable of bluffing the turn OOP when checked to” * “Cap of c/r bluff” * “Pulled a triple-barrel bluff on an A high flop IP” * “SB bluff 3bettor”. 4. Also, run a filter for top pair showdown hands. I have a student who is at -283bb/100 hands with this filter. Take a look at the biggest winning and losing hands. Some of the biggest losers will be where you called down but should've realized sooner that you're beat. Lots of the winning hands will be where your opponent missed their draw but you saw showdown anyway. Realize that TP isn't often that good of a hand, especially if there's lots of action. That's another note you could make: “TP ain't good vs 4x interest”.

Now, run that filter with showdown and 2p instead of just TP. There should be a huge difference in your win rate here as 2p is so much stronger. 2p can withstand so much more aggression than TP can. One of the goals with these two filters is to train your mind to not think that TP is such a strong hand. If you treat it like the semi-weak hand it is, it’ll be easier to fold in the future.

ChallengeHere’s my challenge to you for this episode:

Run these two filters: 1) Top Pair Hands with showdown and 2) 2 Pair Hands with Showdown. Compare the win rates and dive in and review the biggest losing hands that result from these filters. Find your mistakes and take note of them in your poker journal. Then of course, work to NOT repeat them in the future.

Now it’s your turn to take action and do something positive for your poker game.

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It's time for you to experiment with “new” strategies. I'm purposefully using “new” because the strategies you need to experiment with are probably not really new. They're just strategies that you don't often do, so your expertise is probably low.

It's “new” to you.

For example, donk betting. You probably see lots of donk betting in your games, but there's a good chance you never do it.

And what about making large 3bets to 12 or 18bb's? Do you ever do that? You've seen it, but you may have no experience with it.

The 3 steps I outline below will have you experimenting and building your skills with your very next session.

Watch this podcast episode on YouTube:

Download the audio podcast for this episode here and follow along below.

Experiment with “New” Poker Strategies1. Choose the “New” StrategyHere are some strategies that you may want to experiment with:

• Donk Betting
• Cbetting (especially bluffing)
• Check-Raising Flops
• Bluff Bet/Raise Rivers
• Floating Flops/Turns/Rivers
• Probing Turns/Rivers
• Detailed Schemes – Examples: Bet small flop, bet large turn; limp-raise 4x to steal with a specific range of hands, etc.

Two great reasons to experiment with new strategies:

1. You add another weapon in your player exploiting arsenal.

2. By learning how to use it and why it works, you can develop an understanding of how you can counteract it when they use it against you.

3. Study the StrategyFind one video, course, book chapter, article or podcast to learn from.

Study the item, take notes in your poker journal.

1. Experiment with the StrategyKeep your notes open as you play and review them for your pre-session warm-up.

Play 1-2 tables so you can stay focused on the strategy.

Purposefully put yourself in the necessary situation over and over. Pull the trigger when +EV to do so. Here are the basic situations you need to be in for each play mentioned here:

• Donk Betting: be the OOP caller in the blinds or open/call a 3bet from OOP.
• Cbetting: be the preflop raiser.
• Check-Raising Flops: be OOP on the flop.
• Bluff Bet/Raise Rivers: get to the river and need to bluff to win.
• Floating Flops/Turns/Rivers: IP post-flop so you can bet when they check.
• Probing Turns/Rivers: OOP, bet the next street when they check-back the prior street.

Pay attention when NOT in the hand. Put yourself in the player's shoes and ask yourself, “Would I make the play?”

Drop down in stakes as necessary.

Don’t experiment willy-nilly:

• Know who your opponent is.
• Set a goal for the # of plays made.
• Tag each hand for review.

2 Birds with 1 StoneI love doing double duty when it comes to improving poker skills. You can work on a “new” strategy and build your statistical understanding at the same time.

1. Experiment with the strategy over and over.
2. At the same time, train yourself to focus on the related statistic. For example, if you're working on donk betting, add Fold to Donk Bet to your HUD:

To help me donk bet effectively, I added Fold to Flop Donk Bet on the far right of my Smart HUD (large font “100” in black on white background). They're both folding 100% of the time versus donk bets.If you're thinking about experimenting with the strategies listed here, these are the stats you'll want to focus on:

• Donk Betting: Fold to Donk Bet; Cbet Flop, Fold to Flop Cbet (to gauge their flop honesty)
• Cbetting: Fold to Cbet by street; Cbet by street (honesty)
• Check-Raising Flops: Cbet, Float or Bet Flop; Fold to Cbet (honesty)
• Bluff Bet/Raise Rivers: Bet River and Fold to River Bet
• Floating Flops/Turns/Rivers: Fold vs Float; Cbet F/T/R and Fold to F/T/R Cbet (honesty)
• Probing Turns/Rivers: Fold vs Probe

Take Action!Choose a “new” strategy and experiment.

Follow the 3 steps above and incorporate a HUD stat focus.

Experiment for 3+ play sessions with studying in between.

Support the ShowDaniel Podheiser, Alex Roberts, Benjamin Barzilay, Daikel Paredes, Max Zeißig, Scott Kinder, Sunil Joshi, Jason Mcdermott, Jason Roig, Joel Keinänen and Shawn Bridgland bought the Smart HUD with a 1.5 hour webinar for PokerTracker 4. It’s the best online poker HUD in the business! 16 elements in the HUD and 7 custom popups. This is what every online player needs to maximally exploit opponents.

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If you do this strategy before your next session, you will actively work on your poker skills. What's this thing you MUST do?

Review losing hands, find the mistakes you've made, take note of them then work to NOT repeat 'em.

Sound simple? It is. Let's get into it.

Watch this podcast episode on YouTube:

Download the audio podcast for this episode here and follow along below.

Find Mistakes, Take Notes, Take ActionI'm sure you've conducted many of these study strategies:

• Study training material
• Hire a coach
• Take action with action steps (play/study with purpose)
• Post in forums
• Take a poker course

The study strategy I want you to do BEFORE your next session, and it's one of the most beneficial ones, is:

Find Mistakes, Take Notes, Take ActionMistakes are simply learning opportunities. Don't shy away from your mistakes. They tell you exactly what you need to work on.

My favorite way of finding mistakes is through PokerTracker 4 database reviews (click here to get a free 17-page PT4 study PDF) where I'll pick 10 losing hands and review them street by street.

I'm pretty sure in 10 losing hands, you'll find at least 3 mistakes (I often find 5+).

If you can't find mistakes, just keep at it. Put the reps in!

As your skills grow, you'll notice more and more mistakes. If you're not confident in your hand analysis skills, like any skill in life, the only way you'll get better and develop confidence is by doing it over and over again.

Do This For Each Mistake You FindMake sure you whip out your Poker Journal. Then, for each mistake you find, answer these questions:

1. What was the situation?
2. What was your mistake?
3. What will you do better next time?

Write your answers in shorthand or full-on paragraphs. Do an essay for each if you desire!

Example Hand – AQo on the BTNMy preflop mistake of calling instead of 3betting.A 2nd mistake of failing to bluff raise with lots of equity and many turn cards that will help me put barreling pressure on my opponent.My poker journal answers for the hand above:

1. I called preflop on BTN w/AhQc, HU to flop of Jc3c2c.

2a. Failing to 3bet a wide open-raising folder.

2b. Also, failed to bluff raise his flop cbet w/overs+fd+bdsd.

3a. I will 3bet with strong AX hands vs folders, especially when IP.

3b. I will bluff raise on scary boards when IP + loads of draws/equity.

Before Your Next Play SessionWarm-up with your journal notes. Good idea: Choose 1 mistake to focus on for this play session.

Keep journal open for reference and to keep you on task with working to NOT repeat mistakes.

Take Action!Review 10 hands before you play with chunking:

• LP mistakes >>> review 5 hands in CO, 5 on BTN
• EP mistakes >>> 5 in EP, 5 in MP
• Blind mistakes >>> 5 in SB, 5 in BB

Support the ShowTrevor Mccarthy, Avi Etzioni, David Hogan, Nils Bauer, Raz Meshulam, Eliasaph Deuel, Mitch Patton, Hugo Schallert, Mario Reséndiz, Borisa, Eric Tetrault, Kris Bursuc, Philip Achille, Amin Golestan, Andreas Bärtschi, David Cassidy, Fred Woolley, Michael Austen-davies, Drew Lehinger and Christopher Carney supported the show by picking up the Get More From PokerTracker 4 Course. This course will turn you into a PokerTracker 4 Journeyman. The 26 videos (over 7 hours) with “do as you consume” instruction will teach you how to use PT4 to find and plug your leaks, use a HUD to exploit your opponents, filter through your database, run reports and so much more!

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Tracking your quarterly statistics and win rates leads to great insights into your developing skills and current leaks. Download the tracker below, whip out PokerTracker 4, then follow the 8 steps outlined here to analyze your numbers and find your areas of weakness.

Then of course… get to work on building the skills that will move the needle the most!

Start by downloading the Quarterly Stats & Win Rates Tracker:

Watch me discuss the 8 steps below and my own quarterly results:Analyzing Quarterly Results in 8 Steps1. Enter Your Monthly and Quarterly Stats and Win RatesFilter in PokerTracker 4 for each of the last 3 months separately and for the full quarter. Enter your stats and win rates in columns C-F (see my own #'s below).

Need help finding your statistics and win rates in PokerTracker 4? I'll show you how…2. Analyze Your StatisticsMy recent quarterly statistical resultsAre you satisfied with your volume? Your winnings? Your total win rate?

Does any statistic stand out as an obvious area to work on? Look for month-to-month trends and changes. Why? What's happening?

• I'm a bit too honest when 3betting. Want to get this up to ~8%.
• I'd like to double-barrel cbet more often. I bet I can find some good turn bluffing opportunities that I'm passing up on.
• I think I'm calling too often in the SB.

Imagine your stats were an opponent's stats. Any glaring weaknesses or tendencies you could easily exploit?

• In November I was raising first in 27% of the time, but folding versus 3bets at 74%. This made it very easy for knowledgeable opponents to 3bet bluff me.

Take note of the areas you need to work on to be less exploitable.

1. Analyze Your Win RatesEeek! Lots of red in my quarterly win rates.Where are your leaks? (ugly negative/red win rates)

Key: Look for persistent leaks month after month.

• I don't like the losses when calling 2bets on the BTN and SB. And of course, I hate the total losses when calling month after month.

Reference the Statistics related to persistent leaks. What are you doing wrong?

• I'm losing when calling 2bets, especially the BTN and SB. Looking at Call PF 2bet stats in those positions, I think I'm calling too often. I should call less, and maybe add some 3bet bluffs.

Take note of the areas you need to work to plug your leaks.

1. Review Hands from Troubling AreasStart with big losing hands and study/review 20-30 hands to find your mistakes.

Take note of your mistakes in your poker journal so you can begin working to NOT repeat them in the future.

See a hand history review in action:5. Create a List of Areas to Work OnExamples:

• I'm losing so much when calling preflop! Improve my preflop calls.
• I'm super turn honest when cbetting turn! Learn to double-barrel more.
• Why am I losing so much when calling rivers!!! Learn river calling strategies.
• Why's my SB calling win rate -249bb/100 hands?! Learn to play well in the SB.

• I hardly ever 3bet! Learn how/when to 3bet bluff.

• Rank Your List By ImportancePut them in order of importance, with the most frequent situations (preflop) at the top:

• Improve my preflop calls.

• Learn to play well in the SB.
• Learn how/when to 3bet bluff.
• Learn to double-barrel more.

• Learn river calling strategies.

• Get To Work!Hit one item at a time, working down your list starting with #1.

Study and play with purpose to build necessary skills that will improve your results.

1. Repeat Next MonthCopy the tab in the Quarterly Tracker and give it a new name.

Repeat step 1 and enter in numbers for the most recent month and quarter in columns E and F.

Critical Thinking: Did you make progress in your areas of focus last month? Presumably, you did steps 5, 6 and 7. So, did your work pay off with improved results?

Repeat steps 2-7 for this new month.

Download this Podcast Episode #427

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Have you ever bought a poker course, but failed to finish it? Yeah, me too! Been there, done that, way too many times. What a waste of a great opportunity, not to mention the money I spent on the course. So, after getting fed up with wasting my money on 3 different courses by NOT […]

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Do you ever feel like your progress is stagnant and you’re not using new strategies? Like, you’re studying and trying to improve, your wheels are spinning, but you’re not going anywhere? I’m giving you my top strategies for purposeful practice, for playing and studying, that will grow your poker skills. Watch the video for this […]

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I wish I knew these things at the start of my poker journey! It took me YEARS to become a winning online poker player. Loads of playing and studying, and along the way, there were many lessons learned. Too bad I didn’t learn ’em sooner (like in the first 5 years 😬). I’m going to […]

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Finding hands to study is easy… learning from them is tough. I give you 16 useful and insightful questions to help you learn from every hand played. Listen to podcast episode #402 as you follow along below:   Get your FREE 17-page PDF called “5 PokerTracker 4 Study Strategies EVERY player NEEDS to Use”   […]

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Do you know how to find the fold? It’s a skill that all profitable players must learn, and in this episode I give you the 4 skills that will help you save money. Listen to the episode as you follow along below Find the Fold and Save Money Earning value from your best hands and […]

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I help you navigate your poker studies and purposeful play with one of my favorite learning principles: one until done with action. Listen to this podcast episode as you follow along below: Last week I helped you learn poker strategy, not merely expose yourself to it. My Favorite Learning Strategy I believe that the best […]

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I help you stop merely exposing yourself to poker strategies and instead, you’re going to effectively LEARN poker strategies. Listen to this episode as you follow along below: Stop Merely Exposing Yourself to Poker Strategy The other day, a listener named Ted asked me how to study poker. He said he reads books, watches videos […]

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“What would this look like if it were easy?” Tim Ferriss, the author of the incredible book called “The 4-Hour Workweek”, asks himself this question in order to clarify his thoughts, to begin with the end in mind and to simplify the actions he needs to take to accomplish his goals. Listen to this podcast […]

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My new and FREE Poker Journal will improve mental clarity, organize your studies, find leaks and track your progress. Get your FREE Poker Journal here: Download and open the journal, then listen to the podcast as you follow along below:   Action First, Learn Later Download the free Poker Journal (in the form above). After […]

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Action First, Learn Later: Take action from a trusted source, then come back later to learn more about the strategies and logic behind the action. This will help refine the knowledge you gained and the lessons you learned while taking action. Listen to this podcast episode as you follow along below: This concept of learning […]

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We’re in the throes of 2021 and isn’t it about time you developed a strong poker study habit? Too many of us go willy-nilly from one video to the next, or binge listen to dozens of podcasts without even putting one piece of poker strategy to use.  Well, no more! This is your Ultimate Poker […]

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This page will teach you all you need to know to begin an enjoyable, profitable and rewarding online poker journey. You’re about to learn: The benefits of pursuing an online poker journey The 5 steps to start with bonuses and rakeback What software is a MUST for better performance and studies How it’s possible to […]

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Are you looking for a poker routine for study and play? Maybe you have extra time on your hands and instead of binging Tiger King on Netflix or re-watching all 6 seasons of Lost, you want to work with purpose to improve your skills and profits. Or maybe you’re taking a 2-week vacation from work […]

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