As a beginning student of poker, I have sometimes found the amount of information to absorb to be a bit daunting. I've studied the books Harrington on Online Cash Games and more recently Ed Miller's The Course. One of the first challenges was getting a good handle on opening hand ranges. For experienced players I'm sure this sort of thing is second nature, but when I play a decent amount of mental bandwidth is taken up by considering if a hand is one I should be playing.

Of course, the concepts tend to be more important than the specifics, but I find it helpful to stick some data in my brain about opening ranges to establish a sort of “calibration” that lets me focus more on other parts of the game. Playing online I can refer to notes, but one of my goals is to start playing live cash games so I'm trying to get more comfortable with it.

I'll share a couple techniques that I've found make remembering these sort of things a lot more efficient. You can use them for remembering those fancy new ranges you've constructed, push/fold ranges, notes on live players, studying foreign languages, etc. You can also use them for remembering important ideas you come across in your studies.

The big one I use is a free program called Anki. You can find it at …..kisrs.net/ It's implements a Spaced Repetition System (SRS), which you can think of as an optimized flash card studying scheme. You create a deck of cards, and rather than just going through it repeatedly the same way, it delays repeating cards based on how easy you found them. So a card that was hard you will see again right away, but something easy you might not see again for a couple days. Each time you successfully recall something it's delayed longer. It's based on a pretty cool idea that you really only need to see something a few times (say less than 10) in your life to remember it forever, given the right intervals.

If you're intrigued by this program I recommend this article “20 rules of formulating knowledge” …..0rules.htm for some great tips for how to go about learning and organizing information and concepts. The short version is you want to keep things concise and avoid piling too many things into one card. For the opening ranges I have cards like “Suited Ace on Button vs Loose Raise” and then the answer side is what ranges I raise, call and fold. You can also make cards for some of the important ideas you come across. One thing that is a cool side effect of making cards is that making good flash cards can be kind of tricky, and the extra time you spend thinking about how to organize the information can help form a clearer picture in your mind.

The other technique I use a lot is writing by hand with pen and paper. The more deliberate and tedious process of writing things out by hand really makes things stick in your brain. I write constantly while reading or watching videos about poker, and while reviewing my Anki cards. I typically don't worry about transcribing the full details, rather I try to write down any ideas or concepts that stand out as important. I don't keep any of these notes, and if you get in the habit of writing down things you want to remember you won't need to refer back to them anyway!

Hopefully you will find some of these techniques useful. Share if you have any study techniques that you find effective!