[LesWormMurphy]

Here's what I did-- and it seems to have helped, and still is helping. Get a play money account with something like Party Poker. Then pick up a book, preferably "Small Stakes Hold 'Em" by Ed Miller-- read it through once without reverting back to any section. Once your done reading, unquestionably, as a beginner you'll be confused with all this new information. What you do then is go back to the beginning of the book, go section by section and apply what you've learned to the play money games.

For instance, if your learning how to count the pot-- don't look at the numbers, count the chips as bets. So if everybody in a hand folded, the small blind completed and the big blind checked, you know that there are 2 small bets in the pot. For every additional player, you add appropriately.

Do that for a couple of hours.

Once you get the hang of it, and believe me, you will-- you start applying pot odds based on the bets you've counted, not the exact money count. Translating your pot odds is easier when you count bets, not money. So if there are 20 small bets in the pot, and somebody bets the flop, figure that you are getting paid 10bigbets-to-1, count your outs, and see if its profitable.

Do that for a few hours (Spread thru out the week, not all at once)-- Then learn to count outs, practice that, then devote a session entirely to remembering who raised, and at the showdown remember what cards he played. Do that for hours at a time, then apply everything you possibly can.

After all that, reread the book from start to finish-- things are going to make more and more sense and one day it'll just click. You'll be at a table and everything will just gel together smoothly, and you'll know what to do and why to do it.

When that happens, keep studying and keep studying. Keep coming back to this website and reading posts. You'll see that in a matter of weeks you'll go from asking them to answering them.

It just takes time.

Take care.