[Student]

It's perfectly natural for one to read a book and understand only those aspects of it that our experiences will permit! That's why I recommend the cycle of Read, Play and Think. During the Reading Cycle we are exposed to far more than our peabrain can absorb (understand, whatever). During the Play Cycle, it's not very likely we're going to have a chance to apply what we've just read precisely, but we continue to strive to apply it. Unfortunately the situations that come up rarely fit what we've just learned. When it does fit, that's when we're going to be given the opportunity to really learn, big-time! But even if we fail to find hands that permit us to apply what we've just read, the mere striving will deepen our understanding of what we've read.

So, we move into the Think Cycle. In this cycle we attempt to internalize what we'd read and what we'd experienced during play. This is when we develop perspective. Not everything we've read happens everyday. While thinking, we come up with other things to be curious about, concerning poker. That's good! That's when we choose topics that we'll next read, during the next Read Cycle.

I suppose I'm different than most, in as much as I have yet to have read a useful book about poker, cover to cover. Instead I hunt for good treatments concerning my present conception of where my biggest leaks are. This hunting is done during the Think Cycle.

For example, the other day I came up with check-raise as being something I didn't understand adequately, discovered the chapter in "The Theory of Poker" concerning this, and decided thereby to read chapters in this book concerning the Theorem of Poker, Check Raising, and Slow Playing. Why? Because I've diagnosed my problem as that I'm not aggressive enough, postflop.

I might read just one chapter, and then play some poker, repeating the 3 cycles over and over again.

I am Student, and it seems that the way I'm organizing my learning process is interesting to some, especially here in the Beginner's Forum. So I invite your questions of me, here in the forum.

Dave