How to improve at poker

I decided to google 'how do you get good at poker' and came across the following thread, where user Abhinav7354 posted a thorough response.

How does one get good at poker? (Super newbie)

 Abhinav7354

Abhinav7354

•10mo ago

Few useful tips

1. Learn preflop ranges. The #1 leak low stakes players hands is that they play too many hands and they play their hands regardless or position at the table. By simply playing better hands than they do, you will outperform them significantly.

2. Learn to isolate. When you play live poker at the low stakes, you end up going multiway a lot to flops. When you are the initial raiser, there's not much you can do about this. What you want to be doing after someone opens is 3betting aggressively. This lets you push people out of the pot and get it heads-up even if people do defend.

3. Learn when to bluff. At low stakes, it's nearly impossible to get players to fold hands that have a high absolute hand strength (trips or better) and so if your bluff requires them to fold that, it's unlikely to work. A few tips on this. Find spots where your opponent is likely to have a lot of marginal hands (single pair hands without potential to improve). You'll have your best chances here. I like to look at boards that make me uncomfortable with marginal hands and target boards like that with my bluffs.

4. When normally passive players take aggressive actions, they are almost never bluffing. Be prepared to make big folds when this happens.

5. Don't sweat the coolers. It's tempting to analyze hands where you got it in KK vs AA or the second nuts into the nuts and figure out where you could have done better. These spots are simply not worth worrying about. Instead, focus on the smaller but more frequent misplays that you may make. Are you floating on flops too much/little? Are you overbluffing draw-heavy boards, etc. etc. There's simply very little to be learned from coolers and there's a lot to learn from more common smaller spots.

6. Track results. It's impossible to know how you're doing if you're not keeping track.

This advice is okay, I guess, for a newer player. It doesn't really help me that much. It also doesn't answer the question. How do you get good at poker.

Here is an alternate answer, which I think is superior.

Grind poker, and then study poker. So play a session or two, say 500 or 1000 hands. Then study poker. Studying poker includes a number of things. Reviewing hands that you played, broadly reviewing your session (did you play well, did you tilt, how long did you play, did you play the right stakes, a more macro picture than just how did you play a particular hand or street), watching training videos, participating in discussion forums, solver work, thinking about poker, etc.

Then rinse and repeat.

It's not that Abhinav's advice is wrong or anything - although I will get into my thoughts on more of it in a moment - it is just he is not actually addressing the question. He's answering "how do you play poker". But what I am interested in is the improvement process.

Now let's look at his advice. It seems to be geared towards live low stakes no limit hold'em, an arena in which I have some experience.

The advice to "learn preflop ranges" is sound, although it is also so vague to be meaningless. Which preflop ranges should we learn? And from where? And how should we learn them?

In fact, there are no static optimal ranges in poker, not even for as simple a situation as 'raise first in'. or RFI.

RFI refers to the range of hands that you will open in a given position if it is folded to you. This is the most common form of poker starting hand chart. It was originally created by Johnathon Little of https://pokercoaching.com/ fame. 

So if they fold to you and you are on the button you raise all the hands in red. And that is the same for any position. This is a full ring chart, so it is for 9 handed play, but if you are playing 6 handed you can just lop off the first three positions.

But you should also vary your RFI range based upon game conditions. Maybe not very much, or maybe only under rare circumstances. But it is certainly conceivable of a situation where you would open tighter or looser than these charts indicate. And of course these charts are just one person's opinion about how you should open. Maybe instead of opening 44 in the Lojack we open T8s instead. Would the world really end if we slightly altered our opening configuration? RFI standards are just a crude guide anyway. In a game where no one is three betting, you can probably open wider than in a game where you are often getting three bet isolated. And aside from open frequency, we can also alter our open quality, as in the 44 vs T8s scenario. If we expect to get head sup vs a fish who is showdown heavy, we might favour a hand like KJo than a hand like 87s. KJo is pretty good at making a big pair, and taking villain to value town with one big pair is going to be a big part of our game plan heads up against a calling station. Conversely, with a hand like 87s the power comes from the ability to make threatening semibluffs. This is a great tool against a weak tight or 'tight fish' (too loose preflop but more willing to give up post, a pessimist fish perhaps who usually thinks they are beat) opponent. But semibluffs are not a great tool vs a calling station whale. Fold equity only generates profit if your opponents know how to fold.

But still, the general sentiment of his comments is correct. Know your ranges. Know your opponents ranges. Don't assume them, but do make conclusions on the basis of evidence (i.e. showdown hands). Understand how your ranges and your opponents ranges intersect. Most people when they look at solver outputs, they look at how the solver plays against the solver. But what happens when you give the solver a fish range. What happens when you have a tight range, and the solver calls from the small blind with a 15% to 60% range. How would the solver play in that situation, given the massive disadvantage? And how does your opponent varying from that optimal response enable you to exploit them even more?

2. Learn to isolate. Trying to isolate your opponents in live low stakes NLHE is an exercise in futility. Fish love to swim together. There is actually a poker phenomenon called 'schooling'. It more applies to limit hold'em, but it has some applications in nlhe as well. Basically, because your bad opponents all play bad, there mistakes become not as bad. Once you have 6 players to the flop for 2 small bets (limit remember) it becomes correct to chase any gutshot, or even three to a straight flush i.e. 6c7c on 2h8cQd. Conversely, if you are playing in a game with one loose whale and 8 or 9 nits, then the whale is going to be playing every hand at a huge disadvantage, isolated, usually out of position, against a grossly superior range. And there is a game speed element too. 8 nits can engage in pseudo-collusion simply by turbo mucking - something which most nits are great at, having years of practice doing it in full ring games. Compare that to a game where you have 7 or 8 fish, most not really paying attention to the game, yapping at each other or looking into their cell phones. Sometimes they have an entourage to entertain. A single hand can take an eternity as they butcher every street and go into the tank in the most straightforward of spots. Hmm, it is raise reraise on the flop already and I have ace high... what is my play....? 

Alright well I would have liked to go on for longer but this was pretty draining already.