The first poker training site (CardRunners) started off as a poker portal that offered coaching videos to subscribing members. The site consisted of some poker articles, professional poker player blogs, a poker discussion forum and a few poker training videos. As the game of poker grew and more and more players sought poker training, new types of poker training sites emerged. These new poker training sites aimed to break into the frame of things by offering a different method and a possibly more effective method of poker training. Regarding the types of poker training site, they can be broken down into three categories.
- Traditional Poker Training Sites
- Specialised Poker Training Sites
- Interactive Poker Training Sites
Traditional Poker Training Sites
In the early years of poker training sites, a number of new sites offered similar services to CardRunners The formation of DeucesCracked, LeggoPoker and PokerSavvy Plus amongst others, led to the training market becoming extremely competitive. Even with so many sites to choose from, more continued to emerge on the scene, most notably, Bluefire Poker.
These sites nowadays are known as traditional poker training sites where they provide all subscribing members with similar services in the form of poker training videos, professional and member blogs and large community poker discussion forums. Although predominantly no limit hold’em focused, these poker training sites offer a fair ratio of other videos including pot limit Omaha, multi table tournaments and sit & go poker training.
No limit hold’em is the most popular format of poker; therefore there is a bigger demand for no limit hold’em training. DeucesCracked and PokerSavvy Plus are considered the best all round poker training sites for the player who likes to mix in different disciplines of poker at the tables.
Specialised Poker Training Sites
Specialised poker training sites are sites that only offer training in one format or discipline of the game. The number of these sites increased when the no limit hold’em cash game market became somewhat flooded and virtually impossible to penetrate. Sites like Poker Pwnage and SitnGoGrinders specialise in MTTs and Sit and Go training respectively. These sites consist of high quality coaching line ups that offer members poker training in one type of specific game.
Specialist poker training sites work on the premise that members will have a constant flow of new videos all relating to their preferred game. Due to their one dimensioanl approach, they are almost always going to be a better learning source for their particular area of focus. That is why sites such as PokerPwnage and FloatTheTurn are so successfull as they produce more regular and more focused content. Even the biggest sites like Cardrunners and DeucesCracked cannot realistically produce 7 Sit and Go or MTT videos per week as they need to create videos to keep all their members satisfied. Thus they keep a happy medium, by covering all formats of the game, albeit to a lesser extent.
One truly specialised poker training site that comes to mind is HUSNG. This site offers poker training exclusively to players who play heads up sit and gos. Many people felt HUSNG were staying very narrow in their offering of poker training, but they have shown that they are experts in their field and anyone who plays heads up sit and gos needs a subscription there to maximise their poker potential.
Interactive Poker Training sites
With all traditional and specialised poker training sites covering all poker disciplines and variations through poker training videos, poker professionals sought to provide coaching online in different ways through different mediums. This brought about interactive poker training.
Interactive poker training is where the subscribing member takes part in training module and learns from advice and input from the professionals at the site based on their actions in the module.
An example of an interactive training site is Test Your Poker. At TestYourPoker, the member plays a series of hands versus fictional players who play in a similar style to their name. The player is dealt certain hands and they have the option to fold call or raise as they see fit. It is up to them to make the best decisions at the table versus the opponents. At the end of the session the member is evaluated based on their play and how it compares to how the pros play it.
The newest and latest interactive poker training site is DeepStacks University. DeepStacks University uses patent pending interactive software as a poker training medium –The Poker Matrix. Using the software is akin to a poker simulation, where the member makes decisions in a simulated poker game and the poker matrix presents a video of the professional poker coach explaining why each decision is good or bad.
