Poker Training sites come and go, but the best continue to up their game every year. Whenever we update this list, we find sites that have flourished, others that have reached new levels of sophistication, and yet others that have faded away. Once again in 2020, we’ve taken the time to review all these sites and compile a comprehensive list of sites that offer the best training materials for your buck.
We would like to emphasize that these are the opinions of the TestYourPoker.com team on these sites. The list is not necessarily in order, as different sites have different strengths and weaknesses.
1. Advanced Poker Training – This site provides an online poker training software program that enables users to play up to 500 hands an hour against intelligent computerized opponents, receiving advice at each play. It also features in-depth training reports and a weekly poker training plan that shows you exactly where you should be targeting your efforts. Their unique “Beat the Pro” Challenges pit you against big-name pros – Jonathan Little, Scott Clements, Ed Miller, and more. There is an active member forum, a variety of training games and materials, and a series of challenging Combat Trainers to help you master tricky poker situations. It’s truly the most fun of all the poker training sites because you are actually playing poker instead of watching videos.
2. Omaha Poker Training – Omaha Poker Training (OPT) is brought to you by the same team that created Advanced Poker Training. Like APT, OPT provides an online poker training software program that enables users to play several hundred hands an hour against intelligent computerized opponents, receiving advice on each hand. The wide range of OPT game options allows you to customize training to target your home game, local card room, or even a $10,000 championship event at the World Series of Poker. Opponents can be selected from easy, moderate, or expert play in order to model training at a level that is right for the individual’s typical circumstances. You can even set starting hand ranges that are particularly troublesome so as to focus and improve on the exact situations currently causing you difficulty at the tables. Even better, the Expert OPT bots have been programmed for Game Theory Optimal (GTO) play. If you can beat them, you can play any OPT table anywhere.
3. Tournament Poker Edge – This site is known for the depth of its Multi-Table Tournament (MTT) training content. The focus is on watching videos of successful players (over 800 videos), but they also have podcasts and a forum, and a “TPE University” feature with multiple courses.
4. Heads Up Sit-n-Go (HUSNG)– This training site is specifically for people wanting to win at sit-n-go and spin-n-go tourneys, and it is probably the best site for this area. In 2018 they acquired Sit-N-Go Grinders, another sit-n-go training site, so they aren’t just for Heads-Up SNGs any more. It’s a little tough to navigate the site, but they sell video packs for $40 to over $200.
5. Red Chip Poker – This site has been rapidly evolving and has recently focused on their “CORE” – a series of guided poker lessons, videos and quizzes. In addition to their CORE offering, they sell a “PRO” upgrade with more advanced material and monthly coaching sessions. At the other end of the spectrum, Red Chip offers free content, including strategy guides, a podcast, and a member forum. Red Chip Poker has several wonderful coaches: Ed Miller, author of 8 poker books; James “SplitSuit” Sweeney, who has done private coaching for nearly 500 students; and Doug Hull, author of the unique tactical playbook “Poker Plays you can Use”.
6. PokerNerve– This MTT training site run by Kelvin “Acesup” Beattie offers three series of training videos. There is a free MTT training option, Basic MTT training, and Premium MTT training. The premium “Road to Success Course” is a comprehensive video series which takes you all the way from beginning MTT concepts to advanced topics such as donk betting and check raising. The premium course covers over 90 hours of video training. PokerNerve also offers a paid YouTube channel and private coaching.
7. Jonathan Little Poker – Jonathan Little has become increasingly prominent in the poker world across the past few years. He has written multiple strategy books, produces a weekly poker strategy podcast, has become a poker commentator for a number of live tournaments, coaches, and writes a blog. His site features a wide array of training videos ranging from $47 to $997. His PokerCoaching program offers over 650 interactive quizzes, 130 video classes, and 45 coaching webinars. PokerCoaching Premium offers additional classes and webinars, along with access to Johathan’s Cash Game MasterClass.
8. Run It Once (RIO) – Run It Once (RIO) was created by Phil Galfond, and describes itself as “the world’s leading poker strategy community.” Run It Once offers an enormous and constantly expanding library of video content geared toward a wide variety of players. An impressive line-up of professionals have contributed videos to RIO, including Fedor Holz, Jason Koon, Stephen Chidwick, and Sam Greenwood. As with the other poker training sites listed here, Run It Once offers a healthy set of user forums to help students further their training.
Run It Once offers two tiers of membership: “Essential” (low stakes) and “Elite” (high stakes). “Essential” costs $24.99/month and gives users access to five new “Essential” videos per week and the 1,500-plus video Essential Library. “Elite” members get all of that, plus nine more “Elite” videos each week, and the nearly 2,400-video Elite library at a cost of $99.99/month. Galfond describes “Essential” as geared toward games with stakes under 500NL, with “Elite” directed toward 500NL and up.
9. Test Your Poker – A shameless plug, but our method is different from any other poker training site. Through our huge database of member hands and the ability to get hand by hand feedback, you can improve your full ring cash game using our unique professional replays. We are one of the few non-video poker training sites, and more than 300,000 players have taken our test.
10. Poker Tracker – So this isn’t technically a training site, but as an online poker player it’s one you can’t live without. Every online poker pro has PokerTracker 4, and you should too. It tracks every hand of poker you play, and lets you look at your win rates with various hands, and every other statistic under the sun. Plus, using the “Heads Up Display” (HUD) plug-in lets you get information on your opponents, while you’re playing against them.
This list is by no means exhaustive, and there are some decent training sites left off the list. However, the sites above are a great place to start your training!
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