If you’ve been looking for the fastest way to learn poker from the ground up in 2024 and have found this link, consider yourself fortunate. LearnWPT, The Official Poker Training Platform of the World Poker Tour®, has assembled a step-by-step guide to help you get started in no time. If you’re a more seasoned poker player and are looking for the next level strategies that have won more than $60 million dollars, 12 WSOP Bracelets, and 5 WPT Championship Titles, then you’re also in the right place.

We’ve got you covered with expert strategies from some of the most successful players in poker including Andrew “LuckyChewy” Lichtenberger, Brian Altman, Tony Dunst, Eric “Rizen” Lynch, Michael “Gags30” Gagliano, Johan Schultz-Pedersen, and Nick Binger.

So no matter if you’re getting ready to play your first hand of No-Limit Hold'em, or sharpening your game to try and finally break through with a victory on the felt, your friends at LearnWPT are here with strategies and training tools that will immediately show results in your poker game.

① Find Your Poker Learning Path

The most impactful poker lessons happen during actual game play, however it can take several hands to accurately assess what stage a player is at their development. LearnWPT has developed a short quiz that will pinpoint your specific level of knowledge and deliver only the content that you need to start improving your poker play fast.

Take the below Quiz and find out where to begin your study...

If you are new to No-Limit Hold'em watch LearnWPT Quick Start to learn the basic rules and see how a hand is played including the Blinds, Betting Rounds, Hand Rankings, and more!

Join LearnWPT.com for just $5 your 1st month of Membership and get started on your path to improvement!

② Organize Your Poker Training

Now that you’ve discovered your starting point to learn and improve at poker, it’s time to organize your training assets and get on a study schedule. Depending on your goals as a player, you may want to study at least 3 days a week for a minimum of one hour per session when you first start learning a new poker strategy. The more ambitious your goal (for example, become a WPT Champion in 6 months), the more frequently you should study.

After you’ve identified your goals and outlined a general plan, it’s crucial to schedule your training sessions at times where it’s most convenient for you and any study partners. It’s often best to leave at least a few hours between poker study and play sessions to allow yourself a transition from study mode into execution mode.

If you’ve struggled with optimizing poker study sessions and maintaining momentum due to challenging personal schedules, you’ll also need a tool that helps organize and track your progress.

The LearnWPT online platform features a personalized and customizable training dashboard that delivers content from our strategy video library featuring 500+ Episodes, in a stream based on your specific Learning Path and current progress, plus offers an at a glance view of Ask A Pro forum activity and scoring history on the WPT GTO Trainer.

The ability to organize and schedule your poker training on an easy to use platform with best in class technology is ideal for staying flexible and finding the time to fit in study sessions on busy days.

③ Get Your Poker Play Reviewed By An Expert

There are many factors to consider when analyzing a specific poker hand. A skilled poker coach has the proven fundamentals and decision making process to determine what is the most crucial to focus on when providing strategic feedback. The ability to consistently follow a process for reviewing play and recommending concrete steps for improvement based on proven strategy are desired traits when looking for a subject matter expert to accelerate your learning.

Unfortunately it’s not always easy to find trusted resources when it comes to getting direct feedback on poker strategy, and it’s often a challenge to receive timely responses to your poker questions given crazy schedules kept by many poker professionals.

It can also be very cumbersome to track hand history details and capture all the necessary information from your poker play to accurately recount your trouble spots from a session. Often players struggle with recalling all of the specific details that are essential to correctly training and learning poker.

To make it easier for everyone to get strategy advice and direct feedback on their poker play, the Team at LearnWPT provides immediate access to experienced poker champions who are also expert teachers through a streamlined tool that helps you accurately record and store hands you play for analysis.

With the Ask a Pro Forums and the Hand Input Tool (HIT), you can quickly capture and share replays from hands you played directly to the Pros of Team LearnWPT and get timely and detailed strategic guidance to reinforce good habits while plugging your biggest leaks.

Join LearnWPT.com for $5 your 1st month of Membership to record hands and send them to our Pros for analysis!

④ Practice Playing Poker As Often As You Can

We’ve mentioned it a few times in this article already, but it’s crucial to understand that the only way to actually test new skills you are learning is to play hands of poker. The speed of growth in a poker player's learning curve is often directly correlated to their ability to test new theories rapidly through execution and get immediate feedback from opponents.

For the majority of poker players there is a huge challenge in playing enough volume to reinforce new concepts and develop the real time feeling of responding to an opponent with advanced plays. The size of your bankroll is also a big factor in the ability to play a large quantity of poker sessions in order to perfect new strategies.

In order to accelerate your learning and close the experience gap fast, it’s recommended to use one of the many programs that allow poker players to train simulated No-Limit Texas Hold'em hands for practice. One of the most comprehensive and advanced options on the market, The WPT GTO Trainer, is a specialized poker training tool that is exclusive to the LearnWPT platform.

With the WPT GTO Trainer you can practice cash game, tournament, 6-max, final table ICM, and heads up scenarios vs a computerized opponent who is programmed to respond with the correct strategy for each decision point.

As an added feature, LearnWPT.com Members can share hands directly from the WPT GTO Trainer session summary to the Ask A Pro forum for detailed analysis and strategic explanation of the specific spots they are practicing. Ready to give it a try?

Decision Point: In a Tournament with 50 big blind stacks you open raise to 2.5BBs from Middle Position and the Big Blind calls.

Now it’s time to test your skills from this spot and play a FREE sample of 5 tournament hands in the WPT GTO Trainer.

LearnWPT Members can play more poker hands from this common MTT spot with the MP2 Open Vs Big Blind Call WPT GTO Trainer pack.

Here are some tips when practicing with the WPT GTO Trainer:

• Your goal is to select the action for each individual hand that is as close to 0.00 EV as possible
• EV Loss of 0.00 is the same action a GTO Player would take
• 0.00 EV Loss means you broke even against a GTO Player
• EV Loss Color Coding Hint:
  • Green = Near GTO Play
  • Orange = Take Caution
  • Red = Probable Leak in Your Game
• Questions on why a specific play was not preferred? Share the hand to the Pros for analysis directly from your Session Summary Dashboard!

Not a Member? Join for just $5 your first month to play more WPT GTO Trainer scenarios like this.

⑤ Train The Mental Game

Learning strategic maneuvers and the specific mathematics that govern optimal decision making in a hand of No-Limit Hold’em is only the starting point to training your poker game for peak performance. Due to the statistical variance in No-Limit Hold’em poker you will face your fair share of bad beats (when an underdog beats a favorite) and have to deal with the emotional swings that occur from frustration, disappointment, and anger related to losing.

The world’s best poker players recognize that knowledge is only half the battle. Without the ability to execute and make complex decisions in a short amount of time with real money on the line, knowledge is reduced to trivia. The process of training your Mental Game is not that much different than training poker strategy, and there are proven strategies for reducing the effects of strong emotions on your decision making during play.

LearnWPT Mental Game Coach Jared Tendler is both a pioneer and innovator in the study of Mental Game training for poker players. His video Strategy Episodes on LearnWPT outline the causes of Mental Game errors and provide step-by-step instructions for proactively nurturing your emotions and stress levels before play.

If you are preparing to play a major tournament series it’s also essential to prepare your Mental Game for the rigors of long hours and less than favorable run outs.

Jared Tendler has used his expertise to create a proven process to prepare for these intense stretches of poker with his turnkey course Mental Game Up Tune Up for Tournament Poker.

⑥ Commit to A Cycle of Constant Improvement

Focusing your attention on a goal in poker requires an understanding of how poker results don’t always line up with your study efforts due to variance. Your edge as a poker player is based on statistical probability over the long-term, which essentially means millions of poker hands. To make big gains in your poker playing ability you’ll need to trust the process and commit to a cycle of constant improvement, pledging to get better by at least 1% every day.

Committing to a cycle of constant improvement has huge benefits for your poker game, as you’ll focus on improving your worst and enhancing your best a little bit at a time. You’ll also likely see more benefits in other areas of your life, as you strive to eliminate nagging errors and upgrade your overall decision-making skills.

WPT Commentator, WPT Champion, and LearnWPT Instructor Tony Dunst knows what it takes to battle and win against the best poker players on the planet. In his Strategy Episode on the difference between the Amateur and Pro mentality, he breaks down the key traits of a poker pro and illustrates how their mindset leads to breaking through for big gains at the table.

Conclusion

🎯 The fastest way to learn poker is to adopt a system used by proven winners who know how to accelerate your learning through targeting training and a continuous feedback loop. To make the most of your journey playing poker, and to have more fun at the table, it’s important to identify your goals and work towards them in a supportive community of subject matter experts.

✅ Organizing your poker training content and scheduling study sessions can be challenging both for you and any study partners. Choosing a platform designed specifically to help you learn and grow as a poker player is ideal for improving your play fast. You don’t want to waste valuable time trying to plan your study sessions or figure out what content you should be watching.

✅ Practice makes perfect, and it’s even more important to get in a large volume of hands when learning new concepts. You need a training tool that uses Game Theory Optimal Outputs and provides immediate feedback for your poker decisions, including for all different types of games and situations.

✅ Finally, it’s crucial to surround yourself with poker players and coaches who are knowledgeable in strategy and adept at teaching poker to students of all experience and skill levels. You need direct access to skilled poker players who have proven their worth at the table in order to really advance your poker education. It’s also essential to have tools built specifically for poker training that are designed to work together as a system and help you be as efficient as possible with our study time away from the felt.

We hope you enjoyed this handy guide to give the Fastest Way to Learn Poker, no matter if you are just finding the game or if you’ve played your fair share of No-Limit Texas Hold’em.

If you’re ready to take the next step and start your poker training program with a trusted ally, sign up for your first month of LearnWPT.com and train with the pros for just $5!

Have Questions? Contact our support team at [email protected] and we'll be happy to answer any of your questions.