Hi all,
First time caller, long time listener.
Through university athletics and the business world afterward, I learned two very important lessons. The first lesson is 'To train with purpose'. The second lesson is 'data to information; information to knowledge; knowledge to wisdom'. I have come to believe that both are connected.
My university coach told me that you can come to practice everyday, but if don't go through the steps to make it wisdom, you will always be 'stuck' at your current level. My bosses afterwards, more or less, said the same thing.
You can read all the
poker books in the world, you can watch all the YouTube views you want, but if you don't turn the data contained within both of those forums (or the data within this forum for that matter) you will always be 'stuck' right where you currently are.
That said, I believe the question really being asked, is how can you get to a point in your poker understanding to know when to lay down your hand and/or when to call with the worst of it?
My answer is this: get a mentor, coach, a friend that shares the same passion for poker that you have, and start the conversation. Look at some of the various hand postings on the web (or even on this forum) and begin to question (from both the winning and losing hands perspective) why the hand played out that way. With the ultimate goal of extracting chips, how could the winning hand have played differently to extract more chips? How could the losing hand have played differently to lose less chips?
By turning the data contained within those hand postings, by learning the information contained within poker books (odds of flopping a flush for example), you will begin to gain knowledge of the game in a meaningful way. It will only be then, that you will have gained the wisdom to know whether you should fold to a runner runner straight or call a runner runner flush; it will only be then that you will be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, regardless of the forum you get your information from (vblog, forum, youtube, etc.).
By taking the above approach, you begin to 'train with purpose'. While my coach was talking specifically about my sport, it is a life lesson that I have taken into both business and my personal life. To great reward.
These are my thoughts; I look forward to hearing yours.