Different ways to learn

[Ghazban]

I recently got a PM from another poster asking me who I thought on a certain board gave the best advice. This got me thinking about this whole message board and the way it has helped my game.

While there are some posters whose play is solid and post excellent advice, I think I learn a lot from the people who (in my opinion) post bad advice, too. I don't take anything anybody says on these boards as unequivocably correct; rather, I read what is written and try to figure out why its correct (or incorrect).

Anyway, after giving this other poster the list of people who generally posted sound advice, I started to regret it. I think his game would improve more dramatically by reading both bad and good advice and being able to determine why the bad advice is bad and why the good is good.

Is it better to seek out posters by name who post good advice and read their posts or to read a wider variety of posters and be able to identify the flaws in the arguments of those posting bad advice?

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]
Is it better to seek out posters by name who post good advice and read their posts or to read a wider variety of posters and be able to identify the flaws in the arguments of those posting bad advice?

[/ QUOTE ]

I think when you're just starting out, you need to trust certain sources as the voice of gospel, if only because you understand so little about the game that your head would explode if you bothered thinking about "why am I doing this and not that?" while playing (so thats why you learn the cute little charts and such so when you just start out playing you look at your hand and go "oh, that's group six, I can't play that after a raise, I fold" and so on)

Then, after the beginner has played a while using these straightforward recipes and has begun to think about the game by himself, he can then start to think about the game for himself.

But if you start him out right off the bat with "Chris Ferguson says you should never limp in when you open a pot, but Sklansky and Malmuth say you should do it with your weak hands. On the other hand, Abdul Jalib says you should limp in with AA or KK to try to get a reraise in, because he thinks only winning the blinds with aces or kings is a catastrophe," in most cases the guy is going to go completely insane and never want to play poker again.

[Bodhi]

I'm a skeptic about everyone, so I don't like the idea of compiling a list of names. There's too much player-worship around here anyway.

[gergery]

i'd prefer to know who the good players are. Read their posts and you'll get better faster. They may not be perfect but they are pretty good usually.

Seems a waste of time to go thru all that thinking to figure out who's good and learn from scratch. By that logic you could say, "don't read TOP, just think it thru and you'll get there eventually"

just my 2 cents

[schwza]

"another poster" was me. i'm getting back to the ssnl forum after spending most of my time in mtt. i find knowing who the names of a handful of respected posters to be very useful.

in a given situation, it's usually pretty possible to give reasonable-sounding rationale for bad advice. a lot of the wisdom i've gained from 2+2 has not come from detailed, logical explanations (although a lot of it has), but from a known good player saying "you've just to get your chips in with 2 pair there and hope it's good" or "after getting check-raised on the flop you should dump your TPNK."

i find that i generally gain from 2+2 in 4 ways:

- writing what i think about a tricky situation
- reading others detailed arguments in a tricky situation (either known good players or anonymous players)
- reading short answers from known good players with little explanation
- explaining what i consider to be definitely true (e.g., you've got 7 big blinds left on the big blind in a mtt and the button min-raises. you must push if you have JJ).

[flair1239]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm a skeptic about everyone, so I don't like the idea of compiling a list of names. There's too much player-worship around here anyway.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed.

As an aside a downside of established posters gving sound byte answers is that the issue never gets debated or explained.

The logic behind this is that the person recieving the answer is supposed to think about why. This is all well and good, but what frequently happens is the sound byte by the established poster ends the discussion, because people are afraid to inquire further or debate even if they disagree. The thread then proceeds to get buried with in 25min and is never seen again.

I also don't like one word answers, because I am more interested in thought processes used to achieve the answer than I am anything else.

[Ghazban]

Another thing that's related to this topic is that, on the strategy boards here, people don't generally tolerate horrible advice. Its one of the strongest things this community has going for it. Granted, you might not always see the followups to a certain thread where the bad advice is debunked, but bad advice doesn't usually sit too long unresponded to.

[FrankLu99]

learn from others mistakes

[invisibleleadsoup]

for what its worth i agree that when starting out at least its useful to have an idea which posters know what they're talking about...

when i started reading twoplustwo i used to pay more attention to posters with more than 1500 or so posts to their name-obviously having posted loads is no guarantee that you give good advice,but as a rule of thumb its not bad-if you've stuck around long enough to post 1500 times you've probably picked up some grasp of the basics.

one thing i found when i started out reading the forum is that i'd often read a reply to a question that totally convinced me,then every other poster would chime in to explain why that obviously wasn't the case-so from that we can deduce that early on in my learning i often wasnt good enough to "decide for myself",although when a more experienced poster explained what was the correct play (or best option or whatever) i usually followed what they were saying

as i read more about the game,started to think about it more and generally improved,i found that i was better able to figure out for myself whether i agreed with one idea or another,although obviously i still find i have a lot to learn-the difference is that i'm better able to judge an arguement on its merits...

so i think initially anyway its a good thing to have some idea who are the respected posters etc-just like you'd find out which poker books were most highly thought of before buying one...

if i was to start learning seven card stud,for example,which i know nothing about,it'd help to know which posters had a good record