Been seeing a heap of fresh poker guides and vids pop up lately for first-timers, and honestly... some of them are doing my head in. Feels like every second one wants a brand new player to stare at charts, solver colours, weird abbreviations and perfect preflop ranges before they even know why position matters. Bit cooked if you ask me.
If someone is just starting out, surely the basics still matter way more than all the flashy stuff. Play tighter, stop calling garbage because it "looks suited", respect position, don’t go broke with one pair every bloody hand, and learn when to just fold and move on. That stuff saves more money than trying to copy some high-stakes robot strategy from a YouTube thumbnail. I reckon heaps of newbies get spooked because the advice makes the game sound way harder than it needs to be at the start.
Curious what everyone else reckons is actually worth learning first now. If your mate rocked up at the pub and said he wants to learn poker this arvo, what are the first 3 or 4 things you’d tell him? And are the newer guides helping at all, or just confusing people for no good reason?
▲ 0#2
yeah 100%. First thing I tell mates is stop trying to win every hand. Most new players torch chips because folding feels boring, so they invent reasons to peel one more card. If you can get comfy binning junk without feeling ripped off, you're already ahead of a heap of people.
▲ 0#3
My little rule when I was learning was after any session I'd pick the 3 pots I hated most and ask one thing: why did I put money in there to begin with? Not solver stuff, just honest answers. Helped way more than watching another guy talk at a whiteboard for 20 mins.
▲ 0#4
What bugs me with a lot of first-timer advice is it acts like every game is the same animal. Cash, pub tourney, online MTT, little sit and go... not even close. So when a guide says always do this or never do that, I sort of switch off. Half the mess comes from people learning one format then dragging it into another.
