Using Social Media To Improve Your Poker Skills

Save for Later

Social Media was defined by Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”  It has become all the rage for marketing products, reporting news and communicating with friends and family.  It includes communication tools like Twitter and Facebook, but also video sharing sites like YouTube, social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon and Delicious, blogging platforms like Blogger and LiveJournal as well as multiple other sites and services.

While social media can be great for keeping up with friends, sharing the occasional random thoughts, and following the news, it also offers a unique opportunity to poker players that was not as readily available just a few short years ago. Sure you had forums like Two Plus Two to browse for poker strategy. But with the growth of social media, you can now have virtually unlimited amounts of information at your fingertips just by logging in to your computer or turning on your smart phone.

Let’s review just a few of the specific social media platforms you can utilize to start improving your poker skills.

Twitter

We might as well start with the application that has been most widely embraced by the poker community.  Twitter is a micro-blogging service that enables users to send and receive short messages (called Tweets) up to 140 characters. Poker players quickly recognized that Twitter would be a great tool for communicating chip counts and other information during poker tournaments allowing friends and family at home to follow their progress. Similarly, it became a very easy way for poker fans, and peers, to follow their favorite players without having to rely on third party reporting.

You’ll often hear the top players say that one of the ways they got so good was through discussing hands with other players they respect. Twitter provides a unique opportunity to listen in on these types of conversations. Players will often post the details of a hand they had trouble with, and other players will then respond with advice on what they could have done differently. For anyone looking to get better, this is a valuable opportunity that you should really be taking advantage of.

Additionally, there are a handful of really respected individuals in the poker community who are constantly posting links to interesting poker articles, useful message board threads and other valuable information. Just a handful that I would suggest include: @kevmath, @SavagePoker and @navarrotells.

Blogs

A blog is really just a website or part of a website. They are usually maintained or written by one person and contain regular updates, commentaries or description of events.  You can really think of it as an online diary that anyone can read and comment on.  There are a variety of platforms or websites that can be used to create a blog (such as Blogger or WordPress) but the technology behind it is really not as important as the content.

Depending on what you are looking for, you can find a poker blog on almost ANY subject.  There are blogs dedicated to poker legislation, poker news and poker gossip just to name a few.  Since this article is about using social media to improve your poker skills, I’ll suggest just a few blogs that fit that bill.

ThinkingPoker.net is a site maintained by Poker Stars Team Online Pro Andrew Brokos. It contains some of the best blogs and articles on poker that you will find anywhere on the web.  Check out the site to read some of Andrew’s articles on Poker Strategy and also read his blog to see what he is up to, including details of his recent deep run in the World Series of Poker Main Event.

In addition to his new role on the World Poker Tour, Tony “Bond18” Dunst is one of the most respected poker bloggers. His blog is actually posted in a few places, but the feed over at http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-blogs seems to be the most regularly updated. Tony does a great job of recounting live hands and analyzing his play in those hands. He also lives a pretty entertaining “poker lifestyle” that is fun to read even when it is not purely educational.

Social News and Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a method for organizing and sharing resources online and often include ratings and comments.  They will often also include “tags” which allow other users to easily search for content. One common use of social bookmarking is for discovering and sharing interesting online articles.

One of the most popular social bookmarking sites is StumbleUpon.  StumbleUpon was founded in 2001 and is a discovery engine that finds and recommends web content to its users.  When you use the site you will only see pages that friends and like-minded “stumblers” have recommended. So you can simply sign up, start adding other people interested in poker as friends and then start “stumbling upon” tons of interesting information.

Another popular social bookmarking site is Digg.  Digg acts much like StumbleUpon in that it allows users to “friend” other users and then allows users to vote on the best content.  Digg will also allow you to share interesting web content with your friends via other social sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Social Networking

Social Networking sites are probably the most popular type of social media site and include many of the sites you might already be using.  These sites essentially provide a platform for building relationships and sharing information via online communities.  This includes sites like Facebook, Orkut (very popular in Brazil) and Bebo.

Many of you will already have a Facebook account so let’s start there.  One of the most obvious uses for Facebook to improve your poker skills is simply to add your “poker friends” and start sharing information with them and follow what they are sharing.  You can take this one step further by joining groups and “liking” some of the more popular Facebook pages.  For example, Tournament Poker Edge has a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/TournamentPokerEdge where we provide interesting links to new content on our site, updates, interviews, photos and other such information.

Another social networking site that you might not have considered is LinkedIn.  LinkedIn is essentially like Facebook, only with a business slant.  It’s sort of half social network and half online resume.  So if poker is your full time job, there is really no reason not to start building your LinkedIn network. This is especially true if you are on the business side of poker (writer, blogger, media, training sites, etc).  Keep in mind though, that if you are going to decide to list your profession on LinkedIn as “Professional Poker Player” you might need to do some tweaking to your profile if you ever decide to get a “real job” Obviously this is an individual decision that you’ll have to make depending on the career field you might be moving in to.

Video

There are multiple video sharing sites on the web, but obviously the most popular is YouTube.  YouTube has become the default method for discovering and sharing online video.  Obviously there are other video sites including Vimeo, MetaCafe and Viddler. But the content on these sites is dwarfed by that of YouTube. 

Probably the most recent example of the great poker content on YouTube is some of the live coverage of the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event. Essentially the entire poker community has agreed that this years coverage was the best that has ever been seen. And from a strategy standpoint, the analysis provided by poker pro Oliver Busquet is some of the best that we have ever seen in any televised poker programming.

Podcasts

There is actually some debate on if podcasts count as social media or not. We’ll leave that argument to the social media experts and for the purpose of this article just say that they do. Poker Podcasts absolutely provide some of the best learning opportunities in poker. And the best part is, once you download them you can listen to them anywhere and anytime. 

There are a ton of great podcasts out there.  Some of them focus more on poker news and poker gossip, such as the 2+2 Pokercast and Donkdown Radio. But many of them are more strategy focused.  At Tournament Poker Edge we produce a podcast (https://www.tournamentpokeredge.com/podcasts/)that focuses almost exclusively on MTT strategy.  Cash Plays focuses mostly on cash game strategy and can be found over at PokerRoad.com along with a host of other interesting poker podcasts.

The most efficient way to find the best poker podcasts for you is to simply log in to iTunes and search the iTunes store for “poker strategy podcast”. You’ll find many to choose from and I’m sure at least a handful will fit what you are looking for.

As a poker player you should be looking for every possible opportunity to gain an edge. There was a time when reading books and magazines was the only way to find good poker information.  But the internet, and specifically social media, has opened up a million new doors to improve your game. I encourage you to start exploring some of the sites and resources I have covered here. As with anything, you will find that some of them are more useful to you than others. But even if you just add one of these to your arsenal then it will be time well spent.