Poker training is like any other form of training where a player or collective team of players aim to improve their skills, knowledge and abilities, but all in relation to poker. Traditionally poker training involved reading online poker forums, reading poker books, studying poker hand histories, talking amongst poker playing friends  and discussing poker theory. Today, all these methods are still widely used, but are now also enhanced with the aid of poker training sites. Poker training sites offer subscribers professional poker training for a monthly fee. This poker training involves poker training videos where the professional coaches comment on their own play and teaches how a player should approach the situation. Along with this, poker training sites typically offer member forums and blogs where a community spirit is developed and further poker discussion takes place.

Before poker training sites, many poker players trained on their own by conducting a ‘session review’.  A session review consists of reviewing all the hands played in a particular session and seeing if you could play the hand better or any differently.  Another form of poker training is done amongst a small group of poker friends in the form of ‘sweat sessions’. A sweat session is where someone else watches you play and asks why you are playing a hand a certain way, with the aim of sparking poker discussion and learning.  These training tools are of course helpful, but a player must further their poker knowledge to truly know if something could or should be done different.  Learning from a high stakes poker player is a way to think about the game on a higher level. Studying under their tuition will enhance your poker knowledge and improve the quality of the study you do on your own or with friends.

Players who subscribe to poker training sites get to watch the professional poker coach play poker and hear them discuss the action while explaining their various decisions. These coaches are all active on the training site’s forums and are willing to give an input into hand histories and contribute to relevant theory discussions. An added advantage of having a training site on your side is that the coach will cover your hand histories in a videos and conduct member sweat sessions more effectively than you can do on your own. Deuces Cracked and CardRunners are famous for doing this in their videos.

To get a private coaching session with one of these coaches it would cost anywhere between $300 and $3000 per hour depending on the coaches coaching rate, but with the use of poker training sites, you can avail of coaching from one of these pros for a monthly subscription of between $10 and $50. You are obviously not getting the same one on one attention that private coaching brings, but you are part of a collective group of players who want to learn under this pro. Bluefire Poker is the No.1 poker training site for facilitating a learning environment. The pros on the site are all extremely effective teachers, in addition to possessing superior poker skills. The quote on the main page of Bluefire Poker says a lot about how they approach poker training; “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.

All in all, it cannot be disputed that poker training is essential, weather you decide to do it alone, with a poker friend or with a poker training site. Poker training sites are obviously the most effective of these training methods due to the wide range of training videos available, professional input into players education and an encouraging training environment. Although, some of the higher stakes poker coaches offer private one on one poker coaching, and it can be very beneficial to a player who is willing to put in the big investment, overall it is probably too expensive when you can get an alternative for so cheap.