[Borodog]

"Virtually useless?" Come on now. It's not written for the modern LLHE game, but it is still chock full of brilliant **** that makes me money every time I play.

Anyway, back to the OP.

1) Play full ring games, not shorthanded. Cage-match-wolverine-taming as cited above is an excellent analogy for trying to learn to play shorthanded. You will get eaten alive.

1a) Read Small Stakes Hold'em.

2) Use Poker Tracker if you aren't already.

2a) Reread Small Stakes Hold'em.

3) Start out playing very tight. Get very comfortable playing the big hands that have the highest EV. As you get comfortable, then you can begin to add more marginal holdings. Playing a lot of small EV junk can distract you from serious problems that happen frequently (e.g. playing AK on a whiffed flop).

3a) Rereread Small Stakes Hold'em.

4) Practice excellent table and seat selection. Choose tables where most players are loose and passive if possible. Make sure the loosy-goosies are to your right, and try to get a couple of rocks to your left (so you can steal their blinds). Money gravitates to position. Have loose, fishy money to your right. Avoid tables with very large pots. The problem with these games is that while they are probably loose, they are also probably aggressive. Those giant pots are built by aggressive betting and raising. You want loose and passive, not loose and aggressive. If you sit down and determine that the table is not good, or even if the table is great, but you just are in the wrong seat, get up and keep looking. Even if you get stuck. It's not worth it (I learned this the hard way; you do NOT want to try to get even in a rock garden).

4a) Rerereread SSH.

5) Think about the game away from the tables, including posting hands here. Study important hands from your sessions. I recently saw a post by someone who said they sort their session afterward by $ won and examine what they did right and wrong in their biggest wins and losses (although there are a ton of small but frequent win and loss plays that matter tremendously). I think that's a great idea, and I'm about to start it myself.

5a) SSH.