Books Vs Experience

Alright I'd just like some feedback from everyone as to if you feel learning from books or learning from playing various hands is better??? I know if ya do both it's ideal BUT if ya had to choose ONE, what would you choose? ^_^

Good Luck At The Tables!

If you wanted to become a great NFL running back, would you practice just your playing or just study videos and your playbook?

To be good, you HAVE to do both. There's no way to pick one or the other. In poker, reading books (or other poker studies) and practicing your play (live, online, or even video games) go hand in hand.

The only people who don't need both are the ones who have a pro to mentor them instead of having to read books, but they still must practice playing.

If I had to choose just one, it would be the CC Hole Cards Revealed Videos

Pick one---experience hands down.

If you played over 10,000 hands + eventually, if you are intuitive and intelligent enough, you will become a better and possibly even a good poker player. However, if you read like 50 poker books and never play a single hand in that span, you'll be clueless at the tables. Actually playing is completely different from analyzing or reading on how to play the game.

It is like Carpentry. You can read all the books you want about how to do it, but you will NEVER EVER make money at it unless you have experience!

Experience is obviously number one. But knowledge is power, the more you know about hte game the more you can apply that knowledge. Not just books either, internet forums (cough cough Cardschat!!!! ) books, videos of poker, even TV to some extent are great places to learn about the game.

Poker is a game of situations, and knowledge. So there really is no "correct" answer to this question, just as there is no "correct" way to play a hand in poker.
One thing that I have learned from reading is that they spend far too much time teaching how to play certain hands, which would lead the reader toward playing each hand similarly.
While books provide good insight on different ways to play certain hands, these examples are just a framework for you to use your experience to lead you toward making the correct decision with the hand based on the situation.
The most valuable information that I have gained from reading a book relates to outs, pot odds, implied odds, situational bluffing, and tells.
The rest, you have got to rely on your experience to assess the situation and determine the correct course of action.

Different people learn better in different ways. The 'correct' answer for one person may be the 'wrong' answer for the next person. You are the best judge of whether you are a practical or a visual learner.

The general answer is of course both, but apparently this isn't allowed.

ZeeJustin made an interesting post on 2+2 like six months back, and he had an interesting perspective on the people who learn only from experience: Only the ones who are "lucky" actually become experts.

Luck, here, has nothing to do with catching great cards or outdrawing your opponents, but sometimes rather the opposite. See, poker is a game where playing perfectly often means you lose, and playing awfully often means you still win. Check the Bad Beat Board for examples.

So someone who plays only by experience and gut feeling only has past hands to go on and may therefore develop incorrect attitudes towards the game. "never call with an inside straight draw," "don't chase the flush when the board is paired" or "I don't raise with AK, since it's not a made hand." The "natural talents" or the ones who simply come out great despite never studying the game in any detail are the ones who are lucky enough to early on get a correct distribution of hands. The ones who early on actually catch their flushes one time in five rather than too often or too rarely. Or the ones who win big with AK early on, enough to convince them that it's a winning hand. The ones who are unlucky get either unlucky with good cards or lucky with bad cards and then develop really bad habits because of this.

Someone who has never read a book or made mathematical analysis of the game, will usually not raise with AK when it's the 10th time he gets it and he lost his entire stack the first 9 times.

Pavlov's dogs and all of that.

luck here has to do with hearing chris's hawt brit accent.

I agree with you FP, except this doesn't apply only to a person who hasn't read a book. There will be people that have read books, that also will not raise with AK when it's the 10th time they get it and they've lost their entire stack the first 9 times. Even if they've read all the books, maths, analysis, strategy, ect, some people are superstitious and might fold even with all their knowlegde that you should raise with AK preflop. It depends on the person, I don't think books have anything to do with this situation.

Good point. I made the unspoken - and, honestly, unfair - distinction between logical and intuitive players, and then swiftly decided that logical players read books and intuitive players only play hands. I think my greater point still stands, but you're probably right in that it doesn't necessarily, or at least not automatically, apply to books vs. experience as a primary learning tool.

if i had to choose one it would be > experiance < remember the old saying<< experiance is the best teacher <<< dont think there were any books when Doyle Brunson started playing, lol, and im sure there were no books when i started playing poker , way back in 1957,,, buck

i'm fairly new to poker and i just went straight in and started playing with play money online without having a clue what i was doing. Obviously i didn't do well so maybe i should have read up on it a bit first but i feel i am gradually getting better so i think the best way to get better is just play.

I learn bettor from experience. Not everyone is like that. Learning from books helps me have a better experience if that makes any sense.

Just started watching last year's video. It has some great advice that I'm going to try to use in my game.
A year ago I wouldn't have understood how good some of the advice is. You have to play. You need playing experience to be able to relate to the advice you get. If you can relate, it will stick with you. If you can't,you'll forget it very quickly. I will probably pick up more useful advice if I watch that same video in 6 months.
You will probably improve by just playing. You will improve much faster if you incorporate solid advice to your game. The more playing experience you accumulate while utilizing the outside advice you can relate to, the stronger your knowledge base becomes. As your knowledge base increases, you will be able to relate to new concepts ........etc, etc.
Hope this makes sense.

I have studied 2 poker books so far & i think the experience (practice practice practice) is way more important to a persons game. The people who have written poker books, well most of them, had been playing poker for years b4 they wrote their book. So experience i think is the key.

hey melissa,
i would recomend reading books in lue of playing because your always gonna be playing, the books are an adddded skill for your play, but your play and more importantly your obsevance of others play will always out weigh reading books, however read D. Brunsons books and it will help.
goodluck
and remember women have a step up on the boys

Ive never read a book to help me but soon i willl start reading everything i can get my hands on. The way i see it is untill you have the experiance to know what the hell the books are telling you to do they will be of no use to your game what so ever.. Having played online now for a couple of years and become a winning player who has won small scale tournies i think the time is right now because i know i have the basics of a lot of the theories built into my game it is just they need polishing and i need to understand them completely rather thn partially

The problem is most books focus on preflop play since it is easier to do. Anyone can quickly and easily with charts and graphs show you how to play specific hands preflop. I could write an entire book on just playing AA after the flop in different textured flops. Books also can teach you odds to make correct call.

Post flop gets to situational to really help anyone. This is where experience comes in. You only get better after playing in a situation several times and seeing what happens. There are to many variable to accurately help anyone. That is why I love the Hand Analysis area. You can get specific and truely learn from different situations.

i'd say experience, although it never hurts to read up on the game, hence the reason we are here.

Experience- for me im more of a hands on learner. I can read all the books i want but i am not going to really get a good grasp on something until i go actually do it.

I think in a lot of situations experience and books can compliment each other quite nicely. I had never picked up a book before I grabbed Super System II a couple of weeks back. As I began reading the Caro section, I was telling myself man does this ever make sense. I have yet to put my new found knowledge into play. It's a massive and serious book that I want to wrap my head around some more.