syllabus for a beginner/intermediate course on poker theory

So..I'm in the early brainstorming phase of this, but I might be getting paid to teach a course on poker theory. I would be responsible for selecting any books/materials used and for completely designing the course as well.

I have a good number of ideas and will post in a couple days or so a rough syllabus/course outline. I just thought I'd throw this out to the forum and see what you would like to have included if you were to pay to take a course.


As far as target audience..It will not be for advanced players but I expect people to have an understanding of the basic rules, how to play, etc as well as some basic math ability (expected value, etc).

Nice

Are you going to cover non hold'em games?

Is this all forms of poker or one particular game?

It will be primarily focused on hold'em. I'm still working on time constraints, I may spend time on other forms but I doubt I will have much time to explore them very well.

Both LHE and NLHE? More math in LHE but NLHE you would probably deal more with psychology in poker.

zachvac said:

Both LHE and NLHE? More math in LHE but NLHE you would probably deal more with psychology in poker.

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I plan to talk about both. I honestly am not sure how deep into the actual math we will get.. this first time will be a trial run. If it goes well I might get to teach it a couple more times.

I do plan to talk about psychological aspects, definitely.


To put this in perspective.. I'm not really expecting alot of these people to be able to tell me what pot odds, implied odds, possibly even expected value are. I do expect them to be able to tell me what hands beat what for example. So I will spend a fair amount of time dealing with things on more of a conceptual than an in-depth look at the mathematics of things although this isn't to say we won't get into some math.

Another topic I would want to talk about would be tournament vs ring.


Again I'm really in the brainstorming phase and don't want to lead this thread too much (other than just getting it started ). Basically I can do whatever I want to with it, but the above should give you an idea of the rough caliber of player I expect to be getting. Just thought it would be interesting to see if any ideas I haven't thought of get thrown out in here on what would be good to include.

Four mistakes that I made that I would hope to be dealt with:

1. Don't decide how much to bet purely on how good your hole cards are, and thereby imply to others how good a starting hand you have,
2. Your starting hand isn't all that matters, importance of position and the situation (e.g. tourney, ring, bubble, stack size etc.),
3. Try to limit the number of hands that you play until you are more experienced, as a lot of new players play too many hands (apparently),
4. The importance of aggressive play.

If I went to the first lesson in the course and it had a lot of mathematics in it, that would make me feel less inclined to go back. Not sure whether it would be a series of lessons in your case, or not...

Good luck with this, designing a course from scratch is quite a challenge, but it's very rewarding if it all works out!

NoWuckingFurries said:

Four mistakes that I made that I would hope to be dealt with:

1. Don't decide how much to bet purely on how good your hole cards are, and thereby imply to others how good a starting hand you have,
2. Your starting hand isn't all that matters, importance of position and the situation (e.g. tourney, ring, bubble, stack size etc.),
3. Try to limit the number of hands that you play until you are more experienced, as a lot of new players play too many hands (apparently),
4. The importance of aggressive play.

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all great ideas, definitely should be included.

If I went to the first lesson in the course and it had a lot of mathematics in it, that would make me feel less inclined to go back. Not sure whether it would be a series of lessons in your case, or not...

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Yeah I tend to agree with this assessment here at least among the crowd I expect to be drawing. If the course were intended to be an upper level math/stats elective or something that would be different but it isn't here.

Good luck with this, designing a course from scratch is quite a challenge, but it's very rewarding if it all works out!

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Thanks!

Make sure you cover all the basics at the beginning. Maybe not rules, but at least go over position and how that affects starting hand requirements, pot odds, fold equity, etc.

You might expect people to be familiar with them, but depending on the degree that they are self-taught they may have incorrect concepts, or may have heard the term but don't actually know what it means.

Don't forget to teach them where to find the freeroll passwords.

A few things specific to online poker might be appropriate as well. Major rooms. Rakeback. Deposit methods. Stat tracking.

Where do you teach?