What direction for a NEW Player

There are top pros who claim to have very little math knowledge. Whether or not they are telling the truth is another thing. You certainly don't need a degree in math to be a winning player.

That said, you need some math to be good and more math usually correlates to more knowledge which, in general, makes you better player.

Firstly, you should be able to link your number of outs to your % chance to catch one of those outs in all post-flop situations.

You should have at least some sense of villains' ranges and betting habits, which (nowadays) means using a HUD to do the math and then using reason and intuition for the rest.

You should definitely be able to work out pot odds, implied odds, SPR (stack to pot ratio), and ESS (effective stack size) on-the-fly at the table.

You will quickly memorize all of these simple, often repeated, useful bits of information. The same (or at least quite similar) things happen over and over again, which makes it go pretty quickly. Once these maths become instant knowledge instead of you working them out, you will start to find more maths that you can think about. That's the path to improvement, IMO.

EDIT: As far as what you should be studying: yourself. Go over your HH. Spend at least as much time reflecting on your play as you do actually playing. In every other sport, practice outweighs competition. That same mentality needs to be applied to poker.

It's hard to suggest anything because different people have different ways they like to think about things. For the mathematically-inclined it comes very naturally to think of poker in terms of math. For others, it may not be so.

The two things you can't do without is putting opponents on a range and analysing hands (preferrably on this forum). In this process you will probably also realise whatever study-methods best work for you.

the maths you need to know is pretty simple, but you need to know it. Best way to get it sorted used to be getting in irc and asking spoon or someone, not sure who is in there now. If you can count outs, and are pretty good at multiplying things by 2 and by 4, plus ok at calculating 10% of something and then multiplying that by numbers between 1 and 10 then your maths level is ok, then you just need to work on applying that math.

what should you study? obviously it depends.

you could start with thinking in detail on why each hand is in your utg range, and why icandy would suggest min-opening some of that range.
some stuff is written on that
http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...ed-174229.html

if you have read and understood these http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...ds-186705.html then you can win $$ at poker, and isf's strat articles are still some of the best poker resources available

what is IRC? I can do all of the stuff you mentioned except counting outs I mean I physically can do it but not live.

Originally Posted by gotigers1234

what is IRC? I can do all of the stuff you mentioned except counting outs I mean I physically can do it but not live.

re irc, search for threads with 'irc' in the thread title.

counting outs is pretty simple. Ask yourself the questions below, you'll get there fast. Basically draws fall into one of only a few patterns/types, learn how many outs there are for each type and you don't need to calculate them each time. Like, if you have two overcards and a flush draw you don't want to have to think about things like 'how many cards in each suit?', you want to think '9 outs to the flush, ez game, wonder how good those 6 outs to the overpair are?'

how many clubs are there in a deck of cards? if you have two clubs in your hand and there are two on the board, how many remain? How many outs to hit a standard flush draw?

how many nines are there in a deck of cards? how many fours?if you have 78s on A56rb, how many cards will make you hit your straight? How many outs to a standard open ended straight draw?

ok, you are 3 way with AJcc on Jd7s3h, you know your opponents both have KK. How many aces are there in a deck of cards? how many are still in the deck? how about jacks? How many outs do you have vs these guys?

You flop a flush draw + gutshot. How many ways to hit one of these hands? (clue, only count cards once!)

Originally Posted by daven

re irc, search for threads with 'irc' in the thread title.

counting outs is pretty simple. Ask yourself the questions below, you'll get there fast. Basically draws fall into one of only a few patterns/types, learn how many outs there are for each type and you don't need to calculate them each time. Like, if you have two overcards and a flush draw you don't want to have to think about things like 'how many cards in each suit?', you want to think '9 outs to the flush, ez game, wonder how good those 6 outs to the overpair are?'

how many clubs are there in a deck of cards? if you have two clubs in your hand and there are two on the board, how many remain? How many outs to hit a standard flush draw?

how many nines are there in a deck of cards? how many fours?if you have 78s on A56rb, how many cards will make you hit your straight? How many outs to a standard open ended straight draw?

ok, you are 3 way with AJcc on Jd7s3h, you know your opponents both have KK. How many aces are there in a deck of cards? how many are still in the deck? how about jacks? How many outs do you have vs these guys?

You flop a flush draw + gutshot. How many ways to hit one of these hands? (clue, only count cards once!)

Ok There are 13 clubs in a deck.so 13-4 is 9 outs..not sure what you mean by standard ??

There are 4 9's and 4 4's so you have 8 outs to hit the open ender... same thing here about standard.

Ok there are 3 A's left and 2 J's to give you 5 outs

The flush draw and gutshot.... 8 outs ...

I hope all this is right... now how do I use this info???

Originally Posted by gotigers1234

The flush draw and gutshot.... 8 outs ...

12 outs (9 to the flush, 4 to the gutshot - but one of the gutshot outs is already counted as an out to the flush), rest are correct

the way you use this info is that by playing with these sorts of examples for a while you basically start to know how many outs you have without having to calculate anything. Cos that's what you said you struggle with 'live'

The easy approximation is to take your number of outs and multiply by 2%. This will get you to within 2% of almost all calculations. This is based on the assumption that there are 50 cards that are unknown. Clearly, there are 47 or 46 cards that are unknown in real situations. The thing is that 1/50 is 2% exactly and is therefore extremely easy to calculate, whereas multiples of 1/47 and 1/46 are harder.

e.g. You have 9 outs to a flush draw at the flop.
To catch your flush on the turn:
Approximate: 9*2% = 18% Actual: 9/47 = 19.1%
To catch your flush on the river:
Approximate: 9*2% = 18% Actual: 9/46 = 19.6%
The error is always an under-estimate.

The same works for multiple streets, but the error increases a little bit, more and more as the number of outs increases.

same e.g.
Approximate: 9*2% * 2 (streets) = 36% Actual: 35%
The error is always an over-estimate. In this case, we are only counting the odds of getting exactly 1 of our outs.

*note: don't bet 2 streets of odds unless it's an all-in bet. otherwise you pay for 2 cards and might get only 1 card before you face another bet.

fundamentals. fundamentals. fundamentals.

Originally Posted by gotigers1234

I hope all this is right...

good effort, gotigers

As daven says, you don't need to do the calcs every time, just learn 'em, so here's a handy chart:

Originally Posted by gotigers1234

... now how do I use this info???

well, if you're on the Turn w/ draw to a flush that you think'd be the winner and have a bet to call, you now know that if the pot odds are offering you better than 4:1, it's a profitable call