Originally posted by BadHabit1989
Originally posted by tonypmm
The key word is 'eventually'. It's better to make baby steps because the brain can't digest too much knowledge all at once, and even if it does, it sometimes fails to recall it correctly under pressure.
good statement. How much time can a human being spend on "learning poker" every day in your (and IvicaIliev77) eyes per day without overloading the brain?
me myself, I watch 2 Videos (40-60 min each) max, read an educational book before going to bed for aprox 30 mins and after that I switch books to something (still poker related) I just read for "excitement".
To explain this further, for example right now I read "Ace On The River" by Greenstein, I know it is out of date, but I enjoy reading it and still pick up some stuff that is still relevant and helps me improve around the game while it still won't ever overload my brain. Simply becuase I dont have to think to much about it.
Most of the time I only watch 1 Video and "read" half an hour in books. and under the day (usually at work) I read as much in forums + articles I can.
What also helped me stay focused on learning is when I would read different books. stop after an chapter, let it sink in and than continue on the same day with another book (1 chapter again).
I would not read a 2nd chapter in one of this books at the same day.
Key thing is actually that someones chapter 1 is somebody else's chapter 20.
We don't all start at the same level entering Spins as game format. Somebody never played anything and starts from scratch; someone else played MTT; other guy played CG; someone never played poker vs someone that did poker for 10 years etc
My point is, my story after having gone through SNGs (6 and 9 max, 6 max hypers as well), HU Hypers (7$ and 15$, some 30$), CG (Up to nl100zoom on stars and nl50 on other networks) and Spins becoming regular at 30$ stakes and taking shotes to highest stakes - this road took me 5 years. With this road and experience, I don't want to give false advise nor to guide anyone to waste time doing unnecessary things. So my point is, yes, learning some way to play with default strategy is a good thing but the problem by learning someone else strategy is that you get too many holes in your game plan. You never ask really important questions such as: 1) Why do I open this % instead of this % ? 2) Why is this hand not Limp vs Raise or fold vs either? 3) What do I do with 100% of my range by default and how do I use that range vs recreational or vs reg? 4) What if the players I face give me very hard time pre flop, what should I do then, which game plan is optimal then?
For the last question, its 99% of the time answer GTO ranges pre flop 
For the other questions, people rarely ask those for exact reasons why I am against for any beginner, micro player or student to come to coach and get spoon feed ranges without actually understanding why certain hand can fit into all categories but never understands why we choose to use it in one over the other categories? And the answer to this lies in GTO solver software and understanding EV.
We are not in 2010 or 2013 even 2015 anymore. End of 2017 approaching, stables have solid ranges, Stars killed RB, people from higher stakes are dropping down, level of play needed to make strong hourly is becoming very hard and it will only get harder from this point on. Key thing to stay in Spins in years to come vs human players is to actually study up on GTO because all other regs will use some tables from programs and some portion of them will learn to adjust to player stats and reads but our goal should be to defend ourselves vs regs as much as we can, and maximize our win rate vs recreational players. VS regs, the higher you go, edges become minimal and I get daily in a lot of spots thoughts such as: "it feels like I am playing myself over and over"!!! Its like all the all ins pre flop that they push or call, 98% of the time I would do the same. Same goes for limp trapping, not so much for limp shoving and very similar to shove over limp and iso call all in ranges. So when I see that daily, game in game out, I wonder where is the edge pre flop when those regs who infest the limit and we play 3 reg games are super solid? The answer is, there is no edge pre flop in such cases, only way I can protect myself is to play GTO strategy and work on using same frequencies until they show me how they are doing different frequencies so that I can exploit them. The real edge is in post flop but even in that area, shallow stack vs regs post flop gets into minimal edge. So a lot of games end up finishing based on card distribution and pure lack because you play very tough players.
Conclusion: Study GTO to have super solid understanding of what EV is, why and how EV changes for each hand 1st pre flop then post flop, memorize frequency with hands that you never used in such way, analyze opponents that are giving you hard time that have GTO stats pre flop (I have plenty of those which is pretty sick!) and then work on adjusting GTO based on their individual leaks (over larger sample, thanks to specific showdowns vs you). If you want to play Stars 15$ 30$, you can still play profitably without GTO strategy because there is enough % of recreational players that make your cEV high and enough Regs who play nowhere near close to GTO pre flop (most use some exploit style of play). But again, playing stars such stakes, without RB, good luck trying to make 30$+ per hour - I don't know even 5 players that can do that now on Stars, and one of them actually dropped from 100s to 30s to decrease variance due to no RB and accept reality of super low hourly now
