The best thing about training to get better at poker is how easily you can enjoy the effects of your studies. You might not win overnight, but day by day, hour by hour of study, you will improve. The best poker training sticks with you and becomes something that you apply in practice every time you take to the felt.
Anyone who is serious about playing the game and wants to improve would be wise in learning from one of the best teachers around – Alex Fitzgerald. Alex is a professional poker player with over $650,000 in live winnings, but it’s coaching where he really excels. Alex has written several books about poker strategy and has been a long-term coach.
Alex’s Poker Without Fear course, created alongside his collaborator Steve Blay – who founded AdvancedPokerTraining.com and coached Qui Nguyen to his $8 million Main Event win at the 2016 WSOP – provides the solutions to several of poker players’ most common worries. We spoke to Alex about seven of those problems, and his replies made us want to sign up immediately!
- If I play aggressively will everyone stop folding to me?
Alex: No. There are specific situations where people consistently fold too much. You do not want to be unaware of those situations.
This makes a lot of sense to us. If we know the situations, then we’re more prepared when they occur. If we know when to be aggressive, we avoid losing and win more when we have the best hand. Now we just need to know the situations.
- No one ever folds in my games. How can I ever win?
Alex: I guarantee you that your game is beatable. There is a system that can be used. It’s consistent and it works. Sometimes, DREAM games will feature players who never fold. They’re the loose/passive whales. We want them! We just need to know how to tame them.
This is what we always suspected. But this is such a common problem that many players who have started to get good at the game face. It can be funny when variance sucks at the start, but that joke isn’t funny after a while. We want to win. We’re looking forward to looking at the best ways to take advantage of these people.
- I don’t know how to win big pots without getting dealt a huge hand. How will I ever be able to win?
Alex: You need to expand the situations where you’ll enter a pot and make a hand. You will also need to learn how to play mediocre hands for serious value. Both can be done!
This is why we keep hearing the word ‘range’. Making money from bad hands definitely takes a lot more than we have going for us, so we’re going to need to go into a lot of detail about where and when to make moves with low hands. We’re dropping that favorite hand and adapting our thoughts to only loving one set of hole cards – the eventual winning hand.
- I have no idea when I’m supposed to re-raise someone without a premium hand. Is it bad for me to never do this?
Alex: Yes, it is. You become too predictable when you only re-raise with premiums. You’ll never get value from your hands! There are skillful situations in which to aggress without a hand. We’ll discuss what those situations are.
We’ve lost count of the number of times that we’ve won next to nothing with aces or kings. Finding out how to make the most money from hands that have a much better chance of holding to the river is really appealing and would make playing poker so much easier for us.
- I don’t understand GTO and never have. Will I ever be able to win in this game?
Alex: GTO can be tailored to help you find the best exploitative games. Poker without Fear explains exactly how to do this.
This is a genuine relief. Everything is about GTO right now, so knowing how to either understand or exploit it – or both! – Is really important to us. We want to know about GTO so that we can make more informed choices about how to win. Understanding GTO within the framework of a more general course of improvement and removing fear from our game is the dream ticket.
- How do I run a successful bluff when it seems like no one ever folds to me?
Alex: You need to target specific players. Then, you must wait for specific situations. Once you have those two ingredients a whole world of bluffing is unlocked.
This helps already – we’ve previously been thinking too much about what cards that player or those players are holding without considering the player(s) themselves. Thinking of situational poker strategy is scary, but if you’re matching it to players that we can meet, then it makes it more real and instantly translates. Excited to be studying this part.
- How do I take over a table when nobody wants to fold EVER?
Alex: There is a way to do this! There are action players in every corner of the globe who know how to get players to yield to them. We’ll share their secrets with you.
This is like unlocking the biggest secret of all, making players fold. It’s so cool that one of the biggest action players in the world will reveal how they do it – this will help us win more. One of the first things we learned was that there are two ways to win a pot – winning it by getting to showdown or getting the other player to fold. We really need to do a lot more of the second one.
Buying Poker Without Fear would usually cost $497, but using the code Robbie397 will get you a $100 discount. Before you buy it for $397, be sure to read our full review of the training package and find out exactly what you can learn and how to do it.
