There are many DVD’s on the market to help teach you how to play poker. Most were recorded a few years ago at the height of the poker boom with players racing to release products to capitalise on the sudden interest in the game and glut of new players entering the poker market. This compromised the quality of what was on offer due to the speed the products were released and with the game developing this article asks whether any of the DVD training materials in the marketplace are value for money. In my research I have found that unfortunately this does not appear to be the case, but there is another solution.

Phil Hellmuth, Mike Caro, Howard Lederer, Phil Gordon and many others released DVD products to satisfy demand in people wanting to know how to play poker. These types of things are often cleverly placed in Supermarkets and stores and regularly get picked up by well-meaning family members as stocking fillers at Christmas. You even have had one in the last few years, I know I have!

Before you buy these DVD products to help a family member or friend learn Texas Holdem remember that these products are for the absolute novice. If the person who will watch the poker tuition DVD is already playing online poker and winning then the material in the training will not be advanced enough for them and they will gain little from being told what a raise is and what a check is when they already know the basics. Once you have watched these DVD’s you should have a good grounding of how to play and this is also important.

Because online poker has become a game played primarily by intermediate and advanced players with the odd fish here and there these DVD’s are too basic for the standard online poker player. Whilst you may well enjoy watching the poker players go through the basic concepts in poker, perhaps marvelling at how slim and young they look, you will need to look elsewhere to take your online poker game to the next level. Note that there are few DVD’s available that have been released after 2006. So where are the players going for that all important poker training?

The answer is online poker training websites. For a monthly subscription of around $20 – $40 players can stream tuition videos made by the best online poker players. The advantages over this type of training are that the players selected to make the videos by the training sites are selected for two reasons. Firstly, their ability to put into words the strategies they use for their success and second, their poker resume online is very good and they are therefore worth listening to and learning from. Most of the players selling the DVD’s are well-known, but not for online poker play. Whilst you may not buy a DVD with Adam Junglen on the front of it you would benefit greatly from what this great player has to say on beating online poker because he does it everyday.

If you get a Poker DVD for a birthday or Christmas present then do not despair. Perhaps you should have dropped better hints for a subscription to Card Runners or Deuces Cracked! Fortunately the price of these products are low enough where you can watch it once and take whatever value you can get from the advice (they are not all terrible) and move on. Certainly there are more advanced lessons on three betting, continuation bets and check raising that are generally not covered by the DVD tuition on the online poker training websites and that is where you should go for modern poker training.

By Malcolm Clarke