Reviewing sessions
Beginner Tips
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Marcus Bateman /
10 May 2010 /
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Poker is a game as dependent often on what you do off the table as what you do on it, and nowhere is this more true than in reviewing your play.
One of the most important and fundamental aspects of improving your game when you first start out is to review your sessions well. Poker is a game with so much information that it is very hard to go through it all while playing, and carefully reviewing your big hands from a session can really help you improve your game.
Poker is effectively like a very large puzzle, and as such, there are nearly always pieces you missed to be fitted in after. What makes these pieces important in retrospect, is that by identifying and understanding them, you can greatly improve your chances of not missing them in the future.
Say you review your hand histories from a lengthy session of playing solid, tight aggressive play, and notice that you seem to be losing with your big pairs on certain types of board. Although each hand is unique in poker, you can easily start to identify trends in how hands go over time. If you can start to see a pattern emerge about certain hands, you need to start piecing together what is going on and try to change it.
You may well need to start trying a bit of pot control in some situations, while playing more aggressively in others, or to get better at playing against certain player types. These are all things that are very hard to establish in a given session when you first start out, and going through the key hands you play can help your game more so than any other main factor.
Poker is a game as dependent often on what you do off the table as what you do on it, and nowhere is this more true than in reviewing your play. Often moves are made in poker during the 'heat of battle' that throw up important long term lessons for a player. In order to spot these clues and adapt to them requires you to review your sessions, and your own hand histories often provide the most valuable learning resource available anywhere.
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