What’s up internet?
It’s Ron here at The Poker Academy.com. I haven’t been playing much live poker lately, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been spending a lot of time on poker.
We are doing a new course for the website and I’m in front of the camera this time co-hosting with Rep. It’s Intro to NL Cash.
On set in Washington for the Intro to NL Cash course. Coming soon.
I thought it might be interesting to talk about the production a bit. I think it’s one of the big things that really sets us apart.
Before I got involved with TPA, I was a serious recreational player. I have a day job, and enjoy poker and wanted to get better. So I started checking out and joining different websites. I quickly became frustrated. The standard model for almost every poker website is the same. An online pro will either record himself playing or talk about a hand that was televised.
With the standard screen capture thing, you see a computer screen of of poker table and the pro talks you through his thoughts as he makes his decisions. The more of these that I watched, the more frustrated I became. To me, this was a lot like watching a pro golfer tell you how he’s hitting a shot. It’s interesting, but it doesn’t really help me much. Even more so in poker, because many times, you just teleport in to a specific hand and they pick up the action there. You have no idea what happened before, what the dynamics are, and how rare this situation is. You don’t know any of the other players, and the pro might make some super advanced move to win a pot. How does that relate to my game?
I went through a lot of money joining and quitting a bunch of different websites. I thought to myself, “If I ever did a site, it would look more like a TV show on ESPN and teach things like it was a class. Start at the beginning and go from there.”
So when I met Rep and we started talking about doing a poker education website, I was happy that he was on the same page as me.
I can see now why we’re the only poker training site that shoots its videos TV style. It’s a pain in the butt. First of all, everyone needs to be in the same place at the same time. Then we had to buy a set, and cameras, and lights, and microphones. You get the picture. Shooting a TV show is expensive and time consuming.
But I really believe it’s worth it. It’s so much easier to learn that way.
And I think the way Rep lays things out is super logical. He starts off at the very beginning and defines all the terms. Just to make sure we are all on the same page.
Just about every time, I find that I need to tweak a very basic concept to have a better understanding of it.
Then we don’t just drop you right into a hand and start breaking down tactics. We talk about big ideas and why they work. Why the math supports them, and then explain how to use them.
The longer you play poker, the more you realize that every situation is unique. Ask a pro his opinion on a hand, and most likely he’ll start off with, “Well, it depends…”
It depends on how much you understand the forces at work in the game. Rep does a good job of doing that.
I hope you also like the format. It takes about 10x longer for us to edit a video than people that just do a screen grab and the post it. We do multiple passes on each video. Color correct, audio correct. Create graphics and hand replays. Then we send out the videos to some testers, incorporate their feedback, then triple check it for accuracy, and then put it on the website.
I’m hoping I can hold my own on this into to NL cash course. I think it’s going to help a lot of recreational players make better decisions on the felt.
Ultimately, those better decisions equal more money.
I hope you run good.
Ron