What should your study-to-play ratio be?

Dara O'Kearney shares what he thinks players who take the game seriously should be doing to stay ahead of the field in terms of study.

Almost every poker player knows they should be studying more, but what is the right ratio of study to play?

Early on, it should be 80/20 in favour of study. New players have so much catching up to do they should immerse themselves in poker study. This will also, hopefully, help them develop the lifetime habit of studying. 

Once you are beating the games you are in you can start to reduce the study and increase the grinding.

I'd say the ideal would still be a 50/50 ratio, but at a minimum never go under 20% study, 80% play. 

Study more the higher you go

However, to move up stakes, and in particular at high stakes, the study-to-play ratio should get closer to 80% study, 20% play. Maybe even 90% study, 10% play. 

David Peters is rumoured to spend 16 hours a day, most days, studying solver outputs. When people hear that it seems excessive, but it makes sense. 

In Super High Roller events, one big mistake is incredibly costly. You can get away with leaks here and there in smaller games, but not when you are facing other players who study 16 hours a day. 

Live poker players should study more than play too. First of all, you have to spend time travelling and the buy-ins tend to be bigger, so the cost of an error is all the more painful. Secondly, edges are greater in live games, so the more you study, the more your ROI can scale. 

Online it might take a lot of study just to go from a 20% ROI to a 25% ROI, so it makes sense to spend more time playing. In live poker, you might go from a 20% ROI to a 100% ROI by studying more. 

If you just play for fun, then feel free to have a 100% play, 0% study ratio. If you take poker seriously, you need to do a serious amount of study to keep up with the game. 

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