Do you learn more from playing hands or reviewing them afterwards?

optimus.poker · Tuesday at 10:37 AM

Something we’ve been thinking about a lot lately:

When you’re trying to improve your poker game, where do you feel the biggest improvement actually comes from?

For me there seems to be a big difference between:

Playing a lot of hands and learning through experience
Reviewing mistakes after a session
Drilling specific spots repeatedly
Studying solver outputs away from the tables

I feel like simply seeing the “correct” solver action isn’t always enough. The biggest improvement usually comes when you understand why your decision was wrong and then encounter the same type of spot again.

Curious how everyone here studies.

If you only had 1 hour to study poker, how would you spend it?

Das991992 · Tuesday at 10:50 AM

I think playing gives you the experience, but reviewing hands afterwards helps you understand your mistakes.
For me, the combination of both is where the real improvement comes from. ♠️

austral · Tuesday at 11:36 AM

You learn by playing, but you improve much faster by reviewing your play.
PLAY → IDENTIFY UNCERTAINTIES → REVIEW → FIND THE MISTAKE → CREATE A RULE → PLAY AGAIN → RECOGNIZE THE SPOT

RisingRoyal · Tuesday at 12:01 PM

Hi RisingRoyal here. I am looking forward to this group. I have played for several years. However, I had to step away for a while, now I am slowly getting back in the swing of things.

Coolcassv9. · Tuesday at 2:29 PM

Well, I think both. I believe that to succeed at this you need talent; it's a matter of patience and discovering your own playing style, remembering that you don't always win the big prizes.

fzap1983 · Tuesday at 4:02 PM

Honestly, I don't really study poker. I mostly try to remember the mistakes I've made so I don't make them again, but somehow I still end up making the same mistakes. I think that's probably one of the hardest parts of improving. Knowing that you made a mistake is one thing, but actually recognizing the same situation at the table and making a different decision is another.

optimus.poker · 2026-09-04T09:27:39-0400

austral said:
You learn by playing, but you improve much faster by reviewing your play.
PLAY → IDENTIFY UNCERTAINTIES → REVIEW → FIND THE MISTAKE → CREATE A RULE → PLAY AGAIN → RECOGNIZE THE SPOT

This is actually very close to the idea behind what we’re building at OptimusPoker.

We call it the Study Loop: play → identify mistakes or uncertainties → review them → understand why → practice similar spots again → recognize them faster next time.

For us, the key is not just showing the “correct” action, but helping turn that mistake into something you can actually recognize and apply in future hands.

Your “create a rule → play again → recognize the spot” part is basically exactly the kind of learning loop we’re trying to build around.

If you’d like to try it, you can test OptimusPoker for free here:
https://optimuspoker.com/en/train

Would genuinely love to hear what you think after trying it.

optimus.poker · 2026-09-04T09:31:45-0400

fzap1983 said:
Honestly, I don't really study poker. I mostly try to remember the mistakes I've made so I don't make them again, but somehow I still end up making the same mistakes. I think that's probably one of the hardest parts of improving. Knowing that you made a mistake is one thing, but actually recognizing the same situation at the table and making a different decision is another.

That’s exactly the difficult part.

Knowing you made a mistake is one thing, but recognizing the same type of spot when it happens again is completely different.

That’s why we think repetition matters so much: review the mistake, understand why it happened, then practice similar situations until the pattern becomes easier to recognize in real time.

Do you usually save interesting hands to review later, or mostly try to remember them?

optimus.poker · 2026-09-04T09:34:00-0400

RisingRoyal said:
Hi RisingRoyal here. I am looking forward to this group. I have played for several years. However, I had to step away for a while, now I am slowly getting back in the swing of things.

Welcome back! Nice to see you getting into poker again.

What kind of games are you playing these days? And roughly what level would you say you’re at?

Always interesting to hear how people approach the game when they come back after some time away.

fzap1983 · 2026-09-04T09:50:27-0400

optimus.poker said:
That’s exactly the difficult part.

Knowing you made a mistake is one thing, but recognizing the same type of spot when it happens again is completely different.

That’s why we think repetition matters so much: review the mistake, understand why it happened, then practice similar situations until the pattern becomes easier to recognize in real time.

Do you usually save interesting hands to review later, or mostly try to remember them?

Man, I usually don’t review my hands, but whenever I realize I really screwed up a hand, I write down the mistake and turn it into a commandment, hahaha.

For example:

1st Commandment: Never go all-in preflop with just any hand.

2nd Commandment: Only go all-in preflop with these hands: ...

And that’s how I keep creating more commandments as I go, trying to apply them in my tournaments. Hahaha. It’s kind of my own way of learning from my mistakes.

JuniorCordeiro10 · 2026-09-04T10:37:36-0400

I really believe that studying hands you were unsure about is essential for improvement. Personally, I should do that more often; I used to do it a lot when I started out, but these days I play more than I study—or rather, I pretty much just play, haha.

Mazembe · 2026-09-04T11:31:12-0400

Yes, started screen recording my tournaments and I wish I started earlier, real game changer

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Do you learn more from playing hands or reviewing them afterwards?

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