Poker Training Lesson No 1 - Pay Attention To Poker Stories

I have found there are definitely alternatives for poker training whilst listening and learning from opponents, especially when they are sharing their poker stories. I know it often gets monotonous playing the same old voices bragging about their talents or degrading other opponents play. How often do you come across a poker player that wants to tell you how close they got to winning, but just got lost to a bad beat? Or even poor play from another opponent.

You should not simply consider this idle chatter... that is poker training.

These poker stories are an extremely valuable opportunity for you to learn about your opponents. Whoever is telling the story is in fact divulging information that you can use against them. They truly are providing information such as:

what hands they like to play


the value they think certain hands are worth


what they might consider a good fold or an unhealthy fold


what they consider is an acceptable raise


what may hook them up to tilt


what they believe is bad play


how they react to other players actions


and much much more....

Can you see this information is gold, it's a read, these are poker tells on your opponents. They may be friends or strangers, and regardless whether you get the opportunity to utilize this information on that particular opponent, you should store these poker stories in your 'poker vault'. Your poker training is to develop this vault to gather a vast range of familiarity with poker personalities and perspectives. You can and will start to see patterns develop amongst players and this is often formed through conformity, players reading similar books and players swapping methods and telling each other what they believe is correct.

BUT usually do not start to believe everyone will act the same. Here is the beauty of Poker, no-one player can define the right or right way to play.

Every hand is like a fingerprint, they are all different. WHY? Because human emotion is involved. Any poker qiuqiu hand might and will be influenced by so many different reasons, such as past hands, reactions to opponents, chip stacks, limiting beliefs if not something unforeseen like a fight with a girlfriend in the home the night before. You can never play the same hand the in an identical way twice. How will you tell? How will you know? What type of poker training can help you learn these things? Well the answer isn't in the cards, it's in listening to your opponents and the poker stories they so often want to openly share with you. All you have to do is ask the whole table, "what's the worst beat anyone has ever seen? " I guarantee, someone will pipe up and open the flood gates of sit back, listen and enjoy and remember to take mental notes of what's said. And if you want to take it to another level, watch if the other players are listening too. Consider if other people is listening the way you are, are they that 'switched on', are they learning as much as you, are they someone to look out for too. You will always learn more from listening than talking, which reminds me of a different one of my favorite quotes from the past US president, Richard Nixon:

"I learned that the people who have the cards are usually the ones who talk minimal and the softest; those who find themselves bluffing tend to talk loudly and give themselves away"

I have found this to be oh so true. The loudest are often the worse talented players (provided their volume is not deliberately to annoy or intimidate).

Can you imagine there clearly was more to learning about poker than just reading books. Poker training and information can be gained from a whole selection of sources. Playing poker stories is just certainly one of these methods, but they don't just have to be poker stories, they can be any kind of stories. An account told by an individual has a personal spin to the story, therefore that person will provide you with insight in to how they want to tell the story. How they recall the story, thus you learn more about them and how they think. Live poker is about once you understand people and how they act and react in various situations. Your day you stop learning about people is the day you stop improving your poker game.

Take it from me, any poker player at any level can always learn from this sort of poker training, go forth and listen and you may indeed learn something. Good luck.

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