Is poker education overrated?

Is poker education overrated?

Lets face it poker is getting harder and harder these days. The edges the best players had back in the boom days are getting smaller.

I'm mainly a tournament player. If a player has a solid formation and a lot of experience at the tables, will he benefit much by working on his game?

So at what point poker education has reach its limit of being really profitable?

There is no limit to education. The more you learn, the more you can mix up strategies against your opponents and understand why your opponent is doing what he is doing. To make the decision that you don't need to learn anything else, you are essentially giving up on developing your skills and will not be as profitable.

you never stop learning.. The day you think you have learnt it all is the day you start going backwards.

wanderingthehall said:

There is no limit to education. The more you learn, the more you can mix up strategies against your opponents and understand why your opponent is doing what he is doing. To make the decision that you don't need to learn anything else, you are essentially giving up on developing your skills and will not be as profitable.

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That is fine provided you can understand what your opponent is doing, and why. But unfortunately lots of players, at least in the lower stakes, don't know what they are doing themselves! So the OP, I suspect, is really asking whether the large amount of analysis that currently goes into trying to get perfect play is now worth doing. And I suspect it is not - I laugh to see some of the over-analysis done on this site. For instance, I have seen posters putting a player on a 'range' when they know absolutely nothing about him (or her). And they quote odds to justify a move when it's very possible that the decision of the online opponent rests on nothing more than how he is going to play another hand on another table, or whether his wife wants him to remove a spider from the bath!

I think it's a trap lots of players are falling into. After all it was Chris Ferguson who, after years of working on analysing odds and probabilities, had to modify his calculations because his opponents were not playing anything like perfect poker.

I know I will be shot down, but I think that understanding people and human nature is at least as important as the cards. Always will be...

steveiam said:

you never stop learning.. The day you think you have learnt it all is the day you start going backwards.

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Absolutely agree. For everything there is in life there's a vast amount of never ending knowledge out there for you to learn. Poker is no exception.

Lol I leave you with this. A professor told me one time, the internet is the most powerful tool in the world, you just have to know how to use it

Perfect poker does not exist. Good poker and good decisions do.

Indeed, and that is my point. You can make good decisions without knowing the nuts about ICM or even odds (though they are easy enough to work out). But so much current analysis assumes that players are playing perfect or near-perfect poker. They are not!

Well I don't know the rating of poker education. But, if a player learns the game on his or her own it can't be too overrated.

learn to play poker is very important, but also in case of playing the same tournaments almost always got that record the characteristics of the players as it is also important that online also needed to support program

I would say the best poker education comes from experience. You can learn all the hands and tell tale signs from any book, which will give you an advantage over the others, but in the long run...i think the poker experience will still prevail.

I think the value in poker education is very high when properly applied. I am not suggesting everyone go pay hundreds of dollars on coaching: I'm not sure there is much value in that for the average player.

Many players seem to think there is a magic formula to win at poker, and if they can just get the math right they will be unbeatable. Realistically though, learning the basic poker math, hand planning, tells etc is essential for making good decisions, but it has to be taken in context and applied correctly. The book/ coach/ video could be wrong or inapplicable; Just because you read that you should only raise AK & 88+ UTG and the guy who raised UTG open raises tight does not mean he has AK or 88+. He could easily have JTs or 22 or even a his "lucky hand" because he is a person who may have reasons for his play that you do not understand. So learn, educate yourself, and take it all with a grain of salt.

Poker education is so UNDERRATED to many many players, thats why you can see sh1tload of "rigged" threads

I think being able to mix up your game as an art form is the truely great defining skill a player can have.
which goes with education we cant rely heavily on what we learn we have to become the teacher the orginal theorist

to have the awareness to a great players observations and adjustment to exploit in response to our own game any player capable of pin pointing attention to detail in these adjustments/ strategys is truely destined to make it and maintain it at the top.

Ofcourse its easier said than done.