[AZK]

I'm trying to teach my dad to play. Not much of a gamer but intelligent and eager to learn. I started off having him read GSIH the section for NL, I think it will help him understand some of the general concepts/terminology. You don't realize how much you know how complicated everything is until you start trying to teach someone from scratch. Very difficult. I load up 4 tables to get excessive hands at a low limit of full ring and then we play together, people can learn a lot from wtching you play as long as you say why you do what you do on every street. For example I tell him why I muck AJo out of position to a raise, why Ax is a bad hand, etc... this doesn't last long as people get information overload, afterwards we go over some ideas that I want him to know. I started off with the basic the two most important things in this game are position and stack size idea. So we talk a lot about stack size, and how it affects your decision. I think you should start with hand rankings and relative strength, and then go to stack size ideas. There is a program that people can download where it deals you 5 hands and a board and asks you what you think is the strongest hand and then shows you what happens on each street. I had him use that for a while. Once people realize how much work is involved (though it doesn't feel like work for us, but it is) a lot of them are no longer eager to learn. Right now we are "on break" from learning poker which I have a feeling will last forever. Most people will just see the money you win/lose and then think it's easy to learn, I think this is what happened with my dad...