Watching Poker On TV Is Not How To Learn

Televised poker is everywhere these days with new high stakes tv poker shows popping up all the time.

The World Series Of Poker is probably the most popular and famous poker show on TV. This is the show that I think really started the poker boom and made poker the mainstream game it is today. since Chris Moneymaker took down the WSOP ME it gave the home game player hope they could have a chance of hitting it big as well.

And it doesn’t stop with the tevlising of the WSOP. The World Poker Tour is a weekly show that features a different WPT location where they host a major tournament with players ranging from the biggest names to internet players who won satellite tournaments. It is a great weekly show, the announcers aren’t the best but the poker action is usually pretty good. It is possible to watch poker on ESPN, NBC, Bravo, and other pay tv channels in America or worldwide.
But is watching poker on TV the best way to learn the game? What many people seem to forget is that playing poker is not as easy as watching poker on the box. What you see on TV is heavily edited because for the big tournaments there just isn’t enough time to show every hand and it will be boring viewing if they did. It is edited to show the famous poker pros who are still in the event and the action hands which make for entertaining television.

Poker on TV is great to watch if you have an interest in the game, but you should consider it a form of entertainment and not fool yourself into thinking that you are actually learning the game by watching it. Nothing replaces studying the game and experience if you really want to improve your game. When you are watching televised poker tournaments you can see hands like T2s which big pots and make the mistake of thinking this is a good hand to play.

When it comes to watching poker pros on TV, many people fail to realize the level of experience some of these players have, and with experience comes very sharp post flop skills and an ability to read opponents. Put simply, if you don’t have the same experience, you can not expect to play as well on the flop as players who do, they have a considerable edge over you and hence can play more speculative hands and outplay you.

Take a look at the WSOP ME, which is a $10k buy-in event and a lot of players enter it every year. There is a huge pool of players and only a handful of them who will make the money. Poker is a complex game with many subtitles, which can not be learned by just watching televised poker.

Watching poker on TV is not how you will learn the game. If you are serious about become a better poker player, buy some books, subscribe to a few online training sites, read articles, post on forums, and most importantly, play the game, and not the same way some poker pro played a hand on TV, just because they won with 7 2 offsuit!

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