The best way to learn how to play poker used to be by playing hand after hand after hand, but playing can be an expensive way to learn. So how else can you get that kind of exposure? You could read books, but that is all theory. You could practice at the freerolls, but the level of competition on freerolls and the tendency for the players to play every hand makes it a poor representation of the game. The best way to learn is poker training videos.
The videos show live games in action and walk you through play by play what the proper strategies are given the actual situation at hand. The genuine nature of this is so important.
What if you wanted to be a rock-climber? Would you buy a book and then go scale a cliff? I hope your answer is no. While the consequences of playing poker armed with book knowledge may not be as bad as falling off a cliff, foolish financial decisions can still be pretty serious.
The proper way to rock-climb, and learn poker, is to find a solid coach to guide you through the basics until you are capable. Poker training videos do just that, and if you have signed up with a poker training site you will also have a personal coach to make sure you are implementing the lessons properly.
First off, you have solved the dangers of both learning from a book and the misleading nature of freerolls because what you are seeing are actual games with actual money on the table. As stated before, learning from a book is all theory and no practice, and learning from a game that doesn’t quite mimic poker is a great way to form bad habits that will get you in trouble later.
Also, you’ve solved the problem of spending too much money while you have no clue what is going on. Even better, you’re not just sitting there watching and making up your own mind about what is happening; you have an expert explaining exactly what is going on and how you should be thinking about each scenario.
You couldn’t get this from real play even if you wanted to blow all that money to gain experience. You would just be sitting through all those games, trying to get a sense of what just happened, and possibly being misled by wins that were probably just flukes. To further this amazing benefit, a good coach will even watch you play once you are ready to get to the tables and coach your play in real time.
With powerful tools like this at your disposal, why wouldn’t you be using them? Because you can bet that if you don’t, the guys who are will be counting up your chips at the end of the game, and they won’t be yours any more. If that’s how you like to spend your money, have a ball. In fact, you’ll probably be helping to pay my rent.