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Real Poker Training

Reviewed by BaddBeatBobb - Vancouver based online and live poker player

Warning: Real Poker Training will hurt your head! But. . . if you survive the trip, it will sharpen the depth of your poker game like no other resource I've run across.

First things first, who am I to be telling you these things, and why believe me? I am by no means an advanced player, and I don't make a living playing poker. I am, however, a positive ROI player in microlimit tourneys and cash. Go ahead and look me up on Official Poker Rankings. I mainly play on Stars. Not exactly early retirement money, but I do live in the top 15% of players who are able to make enough money to not have to reload their own money to keep playing.

Ok, now that's out of the way. If you've read some books, regularly haunt sites like TwoPlusTwo, have seen the free MZone video series, belong to a decent forum of other poker enthusiasts where you discuss your game (I haunt the Tournament Indicator Forum), and if you've played 20-30K hands of poker, you're probably in a pretty good spot to take advantage of RPT.

So, what is there to take advantage of? Essentially, piles and piles and piles of video training. Training by guys who make a living playing poker. Training by guys who are a href="http://www.realpokertraining.com/af.php?a=189&page=splash" target="_blank">millionaires because of their poker playing. The total number of videos on the site is 151 as of this writing (November 2007), but in the time I spent lurking on the site to prepare this review, I saw one to two new videos going up weekly, including a fantastic video of Chad Batista explaining his way through an entire MTT which he won and took down a purse of over $90,000.00. It's 2.5 hours to watch, but it's pure gold in terms of getting inside the mind of a sharp player explaining his moves.

These guys are the real deal, and the topics in the videos are extremely broad: Limit and NL cash, sit-and-goes, and MTT's; Pot Limit and Fixed Limit Omaha; Stud; HORSE; RAZZ; and even 5-Card Draw. You will find your game covered here. The heaviest intensity of videos centers on NL MTT's and Sit-n-Goes.

The main benefit of these videos is to help intermediate poker players move from Level 1 thinking up to Level 2 and 3. Level 1 is to recognize the strength of your own hand. Level 2 is when you put your opponent on a range of hands based on his tendencies and actions in relation to preflop action and the board. Level 3, the Zen level, is when you climb into your opponent's mind, look at the action from his point of view, and try to figure out what cards he thinks you have. Is your head hurting yet? All the guys on RPT excel at these higher levels of poker thinking, and this is where big money is made. I'm not there yet, but slowly, I'm beginning to acquire this higher level of thinking, as I watch, video by video, these guys effortlessly working their way through very mind-boggling situations with the flair of advanced martial artists, dragging in monster pots along the way.

Learn hand-reading from Todd Arnold, who plays cash games like a drunken monkey and manages to bag $2500 in a 30 minute session. Learn discipline and patience from David Eisenstein as he slowly but surely rips apart an Omaha ring game, mucking hand after hand, taking full advantage of every mistake his opponents make. Are there problems? Of course. As always, I inevitably compare the production values with Marty Smith's free MZone videos, which I've never seen equaled in the poker world. Sometimes the audio is just awful and sounds exactly like it was recorded on a 5 dollar microphone. You will hear the sounds of slurping, chewing, big drags off cigarettes, and even a toilet flushing (don't need to know that much about your personal hygiene RPT guys!). Sometimes the phone rings, and you get to listen in on an inopportune cell phone conversation. Dogs bark, and children play. Although the price of admission to the website is reasonable, and the content is fantastic, paying customers deserve better quality audio.

But really, these are quibbles. Other than the few videos where the audio is maddeningly unreadable, you can and do get the goods. These guys really are selling their trade secrets but at a crazy discount. They will move you along your poker journey. You get an up close look at real mastery in action, mastery which you can begin to incorporate into your game, mastery which will pay you real money. Once you've mastered MZone strategy, and you're ready to move up a level, you will benefit from Real Poker Training.

BaddBeatBobb's final grade: A+

MZone Strategy - Playing "Small Ball" Poker in Online Tournaments

While playing online poker tournaments you have no doubt taken notice of certain players' styles of play. These styles could range from loose-passive to tight-aggressive and many variations in between that require a select strategy for counter attack.

You may be familiar with opponent profiles in other ways too. For instance, you can similarly use Phil Hellmuth's guide that applies creature-like characters to your opponents such as an eagle or an elephant. I have added a profile to this guide as well called the "monkey" - specifically in mind for certain internet players.

The loose-aggressive types of players often come out swinging in the early stages. You can liken these types of players to the type of game many pros like Erik Lindgren, Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey love to play in the early stages. They call it "small ball poker" which basically means playing a lot of small sized pots and forcing opponents nearly every opportunity into making tough decisions. While a professional poker player invariably has an edge in the types of hands using this style of play, there isn't as much an advantage to using it online, especially in the low buy in levels.

In the low limit tournaments, specifically up to about the $20-$30 range, you are still going to run into a lot of players who simply don't know when to fold. The number of players that will play top pair, middle pair or call draws all in actually dominate the low level buy-ins. Now granted, they are usually the early departed crowd too, but that doesn't mean all of them are gone. Some wise up enough after an early, lucky run and do in fact place and make the final table.

The point is small ball poker may be played online but you really have to pick your spots and opponents very, very selectively. Some examples of these opportunities may be against very tight players, near the money, and deep in the money. You can always use your tournament indicator poker calculator profiling grid to find know which players to make a move on. Otherwise, you are best to stick with an mzone strategy playing a tight aggressive game, because in the low limits, chips will eventually fall into your seat by virtue of frequent opponent mistakes.

Hopefully as your skill building in the game improves, you will be able to recognize spots to play without a hand, but rest assured that skill will be most useful in live, higher buy-in tournaments.

Marty Smith has a free video strategy series for playing low limit online poker tournaments. He also shows how to use a poker calculator effectively in tournaments.