News: Column: Put Your Boots on and Start Learning

Barry Carter looks at our No-Limit Boot Camp which starts in March and, with the help of Jared Tendler, offers reasons why it might be the most effective way to improve your game this year.

When I heard about the No-Limit Boot Camp we have planned for March, I really got excited. Not only am I a complete nerd about poker, I am also a complete nerd about learning, and I think the boot camp is a format which could improve our community members' games in leaps and bounds.

Taking place in March, the boot camp is for Diamond status members who play $0.25/$0.50 and above.

It is a month-long series of videos, coachings, and specifically-tailored hand analysis in a dedicated boot camp forum.

Learn more about No-Limit Boot Camp

Accelerating education

I have actually attended a few poker boot camps myself and this is why I find ours quite exciting - because I have seen how powerful they are. In 2010 I attended a live boot camp where about 30 professional players came together in a classroom setting and discussed hands.

I was there as a journalist, not a player, reporting on the event. I can honestly say, however, that simply by observing what was going on I felt like I was learning a great deal, so the guys actually in attendance must have been really accelerating their education (one of them went on to be an EPT champion, another had a $1 million score, and a great number of them have gone on to establish themselves in poker).

Talent hotbeds

There is a phenomena in the study of success called a Talent Hotbed which I wrote about a few years ago. Often you will find that many high performers from a discipline came from the same school or area.

The Spartak Tennis Camp in Russia spawned half of the great female players of recent memory, the North Baltimore Aquatic Club trained Michael Phelps and four other Olympic medalists, even four of the top ten table tennis players in Britain were born on the same street (which just happened to be where a former table tennis champion also lived).

It is no fluke that these high performers all went to the same place to learn their craft. What this phenomena shows is that it is not just talent or hard work which determines success, the company you keep is also important. When athletes learn alongside other hard-working and talented athletes, the environment is much more challenging and dynamic. Thus, improvement is destined to follow.

This is why the No-Limit Boot Camp is such a great opportunity. Not only will you learn from the coaches, you will learn from your peers. You will see what is working and what is not for other people. You will have a benchmark for how others are progressing and whether you are falling short. Finally, the social aspect of it all might be that extra spark of inspiration you sometimes need to get through it.

Organised learning

jaredtendler

Jared Tendler, MS, is poker's leading mental game expert.

He has coached over 200 of the world's top players and is the author of The Mental Game of Poker.

The other great benefit of the boot camp is that it is an organised form of learning. Poker players are responsible for their own education; the last time they had a curriculum given to them was at school, and unlike school or work, they don't have a boss telling them what to do.

I have just finished writing a book with mental game coach jaredtendler on this very subject and he says:

"Without a teacher laying out a schedule for them, or a boss telling them what to do, poker players require a lot of self-discipline and foresight to organise the work they do away from the table.

"As a result, poker players can be quite random in their approach to learning. They are sometimes unsure of what to work on, or they try to learn too many things at once. Because of this, they often go through cycles of intense learning when they are full of inspiration, before hitting a brick wall and giving up completely for a while."

The No-Limit Boot Camp takes some of the difficult decisions about what and when to learn out of the equation. Although some players will hate the idea of returning back to a school environment, others will find that it is exactly what they need to provide direction and narrow their focus towards learning.

I hope the Boot Camp works - I personally think it will be a huge success, and hopefully will be the start of something special at PokerStrategy.com.

If you are on the fence about whether to join, and if you have recently found yourself plateauing with your own learning away from the tables, I think this is the shot in the arm your game might need.

By Barry Carter