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every action tells a story, a bet has a reason behind it and you have to find out what story the hand is telling

Good luck, dude. I think this type of approach is best and you should be pretty successful with it. FWIW I think that observing opponents better to make more accurate reads during hands is the most important thing that you can do. I can crunch numbers like crazy but I often don\'t know what my opponent ranges are and therefore I make a lot of mistakes.

As most of us presumably don\'t just play for the sake of it, or \"purely for the money\", it is useful to have some goals to aim for. I know that DeathDonkey wants to be the BEST, and I don\'t have any particular doubts about that, but my goals are, still, a bit less ambitious. I want to write these down even though I realize that these goals aren\'t specific enough to be used as clear and measurable goals. But I guess this is better than nothing.

I don\'t want to set any goals related to results, because they are not measurable. The money in and money out is measurable, but I can\'t measure my impact on it. And even worse, I can\'t measure the difference of my skills in 2008 versus my skills in 2007. Of course I wish to move up in limits, but I\'ll leave that at the fate of the deck. (Sometimes I wonder whether I\'m not results-oriented enough as I\'ve been trying to train myself out of it.)

But my overall goal is to understand the game better. I want to understand what happens in a limit hold\'em hand, from the start to the end, and all what surrounds it. My approach will be somewhat mathematical as I always to be as explicit as possible; even in situations where you can\'t necessarily be so explicit. (So I have to try to be exact given some assumptions etc.)

The way to do this, to understand the game better, I want to do more long and thorough hand analyses. To think through, to calculate and write on specific topics of limit hold\'em. The trouble I\'ve had with this is that it\'s hard and sometimes impossible to isolate a single issue from the \"wholeness\", but I think it\'s feasible with most subjects. The goal is to understand a specific aspect of the game, not to change everything because of a chain of logic. (Say, for example, my thoughts about the effect of rake. I find it important to understand such topics, even though they might not effect the way I play specifically.)

I want to engage more in active learning. Regarding deuces cracked, this means that I should watch the videos at least two times, first without the voice and pausing on every decision point and thinking through the decision and second time comparing my thought-process with the author\'s.

Also, I\'ve thought of some ways to learn seemingly simple stuff such as, for example, estimating the probability that a certain hand range has hit the flop. Or estimating equities on certain boards and hand ranges.

Becoming better hand reader is one goal. (Actually, I\'m thinking of writing an article titled along the lines of \"de-mystifying hand reading\" or something.) It\'s \"easy\", just practice it more. The less known fact about it is that to become better at it, you have to explicitly and deliberately practice for it.

The one particular area that I feel I personally have much to improve is the gap between my current \"theoretical\" knowledge of limit hold\'em (which isn\'t on expert level yet but not on completely beginner level either) and the way I play in practice. Mostly they converge with each other, but there are many, many times that I\'ve played in a way that I don\'t agree in my personal analysis. This is actually something that is clearly visible in the coaching video (commented by DeathDonkey). There are some terrible weak-tightisms I did that I definitely don\'t agree with. Analyzing sessions and posting hands on forums is the easiest way to cure this, I guess.

Books are a bit problematic as there aren\'t too many limit hold\'em books that are deep and that I haven\'t read already. I hope there will be new books published this year. (Tommy Angelo\'s book I will probably order and read, but I currently don\'t know of any other.) I will reread and restudy books like The Mathematics of Poker and Stox\'s and such, but they only go so far. I think the next step is to try to build up one\'s own strategy. Not in the sense of contradicting the current knowledge, but in the sense of building on one\'s own understanding. But maybe that\'s for the year 2009. ;-)

Great post Javirta. I am looking forward to your progress, as I know you will have success!

Regards,