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, for instance Deuces Cracked, Leggo Poker and Poker Savvy Plus, which led to the training site market becoming somewhat competitive. Even in the market climate, a number of new traditional poker training sites emerged on the scene, namely 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 traditional poker training sites offer a fair ratio of pot limit Omaha, multi table tournament and sit & go poker training videos. No limit hold’em is the most popular format of poker; therefore there is a bigger demand for no limit hold’em training.  Deuces Cracked and Poker Savvy Plus are considered the best all rounder poker training site for the player who likes to mix in different disciplines of poker at the tables. It is unlikely that many poker training sites will enter the traditional poker training market with the arrival of Bluefire Poker.

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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 because of Bluefire Pokers presence. Sites like Poker Pwnage and Sit and Go Grinders specialise in MTTs and Sit and Go training respectively. These sites consist of high quality coaching line ups that offer members poker training in the specific game. Specialised poker training sites work on the premise that members will have a constant flow of new videos all relating to their preferred game.  Other popular specialised poker training sites include; Float The Turn and PokerXFactor

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.

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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.  In this, 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 Deep Stacks University. Deep Stacks University uses patent pending interactive software as a poker training medium –The Poker Matrix. Using the software is similar to 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 bad or indifferent.

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