9 Poker Education Life-Hacks

Matt VIP• 6,664 Views • on 14/3/17

In this article you'll find a few poker life-hacks that can make your life a whole lot easier.

The more poker we play the more we realize how complicated it is and the advanced poker videos or strategy articles further emphasize that point. Time for a little breather!

Today we'll explore some easy solutions that can have a real impact on your learning and performance at the tables. Below you'll find a few poker life-hacks that can make your life a whole lot easier.

1) Use the Pomodoro method!

I can't stress this enough. When it comes to the optimal mental performance doing things in 20-30 minute blocks followed by a 5-10minute break is absolutely the best thing you can do! You can read more on the subject here.

2) Consider supplementing your poker education with... an evening cardio routine!

A recent study conducted at Radboud University showed that 35 minutes of interval cardio training performed four hours after a learning session can improve your memory retention by 5%. Now, this might not be a number worth dying over but poker is a game of very small edges and every percentage point counts!

Besides, cardio has numerous others benefits like helping you stay healthy so you can kill two birds with one stone.

3) Speaking of supplementation - caffeine is your friend.

Unless you have some medical condition that makes consuming caffeine a health risk for you (and when it comes to health, it's always a good idea to consult a licensed professional) - grab a cup of coffee before your study session. It's like a pre workout supplement for your brain. Caffeine can reduce anxiety, improve short term memory, boost concentration and fight (or cause if you're indulging a little bit too much) sleep deprivation.

And if you make a tiny bit off the effort, buy a cheap french press and some quality beans you might increase your discipline (by adding a 5-minute brewing ritual before learning, rituals are a great tool in the process of forming new habits!) and make your sessions infinitely more enjoyable.

4) Install some website blocking apps and extensions!

No, you're not alone. We all have a tendency to procrastinate and website blocking apps are one of the most effective tools that you can use to counteract that! Install, something likeStayFocused, WebsiteBlocker or Freedom (the only paid option out of the three) and make sure to block all of the usual time sinkers like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Forum.knittinghelp.com (don't judge me!) so they can't take away from the learning session.

5) Log off the social media.

Let me guess, you have a history of cheating on you website blocking app? Building up on that last hack, you might want to add another layer of inconvenience and log off all the social media website right before you start the learning process. The additional hustle of typing a password can be enough to prevent you for procrastinating.

6) Make poker notes better by acting like you're writing them for players or coaches who will sweat your session.

We all had this happen to us. We're in the middle of a tough river spot, we're facing an epic third barrel and we notice that we have a note on our opponent! We click the note full of hope and this is what we see:

1/2F, 1/2T, 3/4 R B???
3bet KTo, BvB vs. bpp, pol?? lin?
毁坏
T hero overbet 2x snafu
Pick up the wife from knitting classes at 4:30 pm"

We tend to come up with these elaborate notation systems and then promptly forget all the shortcuts which make our notes a nightmare to read in the heat of the moment.

While getting serious about using shortcuts in your notes is, also a perfectly valid approach you might want to consider writing your notes in a manner that would be easy to read by someone who has no idea about your carefully crafted shortcut system and thus easy to read for you.

7) Watch coaching videos at 1.25x speed.

This is a tiny bit of a double edge sword because of the fact that we subjecting ourselves to more and more stimuli at a faster and faster rate made the attention span of an average human shorter than that of a goldfish.

However, in this particular case, it's worth it to speed things up a little.

Poker isn't exactly played at breakneck pace, even if you're watching a zoom poker live video there's usually a lot of downtimes and the ability to shave a few precious minutes from every coaching video that you watch will add up in the long run.

8) Make a habit of asking one follow-up question in every line-check thread that you create.

Hand evaluation forums are already one of the most efficient ways of learning at poker and making sure that you engage with other users better than the average hand-poster is a great way to ensure that you're getting the most out of the process!

9) Write Things Down

Studies show that writing something down is the memory equivalent of reading it seven times. So... write things down! Preferably in a notebook that you're going to keep close to yourself.

Write down your goals, plans and the things you struggle to learn the most like advanced math concept or the range you're supposed to have in a certain niche spot.