When I first started working on poker seminars with Dr. Al Schoonmaker, he said to me, “Fox, most people don’t learn by reading or watching, they learn by doing, by being an active participant.”

This single statement has been invaluable in helping me understand how students learn. But don’t assume this means “experience is the best teacher” and you can just play until you’re good. If you want to get good at something, you must learn about it, do it, and find an expert to correct your mistakes and teach you how to do it well.

Many players seem to think that great players have some incredible innate talent that allows them to understand the game immediately or learn it on their own. There is some truth to this, but the value of innate talent is often overestimated and the value of hard work and good advice ignored. Two things other than an incredible natural gift help explain the great players who claim to have never read a book or taken a lesson:

1. They had one or more mentors, friends who were excellent players that they could discuss the game with. This situation is exactly like having hundreds of hours with a personal poker coach. Having a few friends who are great players is very valuable.

2. Some of them are liars. I know pros that have taken lessons, read books, and claim they have never considered either option. It could be an ego thing, wanting everyone to think they did things on their own, or they could be playing the game all the time, not wanting others to read books or take lessons because they want to keep the games soft.

I don’t reveal the names of my students if they don’t want me to, and the other coaches I know have the same policy, so there’s no way to know how many of the great talents have worked with a coach.

There is certainly some innate talent involved. You must be reasonably intelligent, have the ability to solve logic problems, be able to deal with stressful situations, and have a little creativity. The more of these gifts you possess, the easier success in the poker world will be.

But no matter how impressive your talent may be, it won’t develop unless you work at it. This is why the vast majority of athletic seven-footers don’t make it to the NBA. A very small percentage of those with the innate ability put in the time and work to succeed at the highest level.

The best way I have found to improve your game is by having another expert available to you. This doesn’t mean you need to hire a coach or make friends with every top player on PocketFives, but having an expert around is a huge help. The review process, as opposed to listening to lectures, watching videos, reading books, or trial and error, works so well because it covers the three most effective ways of learning:

1. It’s interactive. In working with seminar groups, we have found that much of feedback we receive praises the interactive hand exercises above everything else we offer. Students learn from them because they are involved in the learning process and the knowledge they gain sticks better because of this.

2. It finds the weak spots. A book, video, or lecture has to target everything. A writer/director/speaker cannot tailor their product to each individual, so much of what you read will not apply to you, and some mistakes you make daily might never be addressed. The give and take between an expert and a student allows for individual problems to be discovered, targeted, and solved.

3. It teaches the teacher. A coach can reiterate the points they think are important all day, but they may have no idea where most players actually need help. I know that I focused too heavily on strategy and logic and not enough on the information necessary to come to accurate decisions when I started coaching five years ago. Without interaction, I would never have known this was a problem. Now, I make sure to work with students to assess hand ranges accurately and understand their opponents.

In the hand exercises at the end of our seminars, we are able to pick up mistakes we might never see otherwise. Bet-sizing problems, players who are too timid or passive, mistakes in range assignment, and a failure to plan ahead or understand how stack-to-pot ratios affect the hand are all common mistakes that we might never catch without some serious interaction. Once we find the leak and get it plugged, success is usually not far behind.

So how do you replicate this for yourself?

If you have a coach, make sure you are bringing questions and trouble hands to your lessons. This makes life easier for you coach and helps them locate and address your problems quickly.

If you have friends who are serious about the game, make sure that you ask them how they would play a hand and why without revealing the outcome immediately. Tossing bad beat stories at them won’t help you learn anything and it may very well drive them away. No one wants to talk strategy with a whiner who has nothing to offer but pleas for sympathy and donkey tears.

If you are working on your own, submit hands to forums to see what others might do in your spot. Also, find a coach or attend a seminar or boot camp to discuss hands with a real person. It helps to meet a few solid players at your local poker room; if you are serious about learning about the game, you will find that some of the grinders are happy to have another person to talk strategy with.

In working on my writing lately, I have found that submitting my work for critique is really the best way to improve, and poker is much the same. Hopefully, I’m better at both than I was when I first started writing for PocketFives six years ago!

Pro Poker Seminarswill be running seminars June 27th, 28th and 29th in Las Vegas from pros like Fox, Dr. Alan Schoonmaker, and Brett “Gank” Jungblut. Click here for more information.