As you might be aware, the amount of available poker training materials has grown tremendously in recent years. Whatever your game might be and whatever level of skill you are at, there are some great courses out there that will help you get where you want to be.
But, the challenge with poker training courses is twofold. The first — and more obvious — one is figuring out which one to pick. Reading reviews and talking to those who have purchased the course already can help a lot in that department.
The second challenge or fear that many players have is whether they’ll be able to get value out of the training materials. How do you actually go about learning poker in the most efficient way and getting the best value out of the resources you’ve paid for?
The Game Plan by Kevin Rabichow is a course designed primarily to tackle this second challenge and teach you how to consume poker knowledge. If you’re hesitant about getting involved with a poker training site or have tried it in the past but felt like it didn’t help your game as much as you had hoped, this course is for you.
Run It Once and Kevin Rabichow have come together to offer the ultimate course on how to learn poker in the modern era of training courses, HUDs, and solvers, to create a very interesting and unique product. If you’re still confused as to what I’m talking about, don’t worry; this detailed Game Plan course review will tell you all you need to know.
The Game Plan Basics: What Poker Learning Consists Of?
The first couple of videos of Kevin Rabichow’s Game Plan lay out the foundation for everything discussed in later lessons. The introductory part is split into two parts, simply called:
- In Theory
- In Practice
With the ‘In Theory’ segment, Rabichow explains how you should approach the idea of poker learning before digging into any particular course or lesson. He explains the process you should go through to try and figure out how comfortable you are with major strategy sections such as preflop play, postflop play, GTO, and exploitative adjustments.
While the first video asks the player to try and evaluate their theoretical level of knowledge, the ‘In Practice’ segment asks a different important question: how does your theoretical knowledge translate into actual gameplay?
Rabichow goes through several major areas that you can use to evaluate this segment, such as:
- Generating edge: you’re not automatically making money from your opponents making mistakes.
- The skill of execution and table presence: the difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it.
- The river decision-making: a lot different from earlier street decisions as there is much more nuance.
Evaluating Your Abilities
The next two segments of The Game Plan are named ‘Evaluate’ and ‘Improve,’ and these tie in together.
The ‘Evaluate’ section is geared to give you the tools needed to identify strengths and weaknesses in your game and figure out where your biggest edge comes from.
The next few videos present you with detailed forms that you need to fill in to evaluate the current state of your poker skills. There are four core segments Rabichow focuses on in separate videos, namely:
- Strategy evaluation – identify your strengths and weaknesses and figure out what are the fundamental areas of your game that need improving first.
- Theory evaluation – figuring out how good your theoretical understanding of the game is. In this segment, you’re trying to figure out how confident you are about your background knowledge in those main areas that have been identified earlier in the course.
- Study evaluation – this segment is designed to help you figure out how effective your current studying process is.
- Skills evaluation – trying to determine what’s the skill gap between you and your opponents. The goal is to figure out where your execution can improve and what areas you should focus more in your studying routine.
There is a separate Google document for each of these sections, and after watching the video, you can go ahead and try to fill out the form for yourself, answering the questions inside, i.e., rating your skills and abilities.
This is a very important step in the process, as it all leads to building your study template, which is the final lesson in the ‘Evaluate’ section of the Game Plan course. Based on the different evaluation sheets, you’ll come up with your own conclusions about what you need to work on and what should be your highest priorities.
READ MORE: Kevin Rabichow on the Ecstasy of Choice in Poker Training
The Game Plan: Improving Your Play
The previous section of the course should end up with you having a fairly clear picture of where you are as a poker player, what your biggest strengths are, and what areas of your game need to improve. Based on these conclusions, you can start building your study plan.
Rabichow recognizes there are many different study methods, and not all of them are best suited for all types of players. He also identifies the biggest strengths and weaknesses of certain types of training materials, such as:
- Poker content (videos, streams, etc.)
- GTO sims and poker solvers
- Analyzing your own play using a hand database
- Community participation
The main idea behind this module is to help you identify the type of resource that would be the most effective for the type of knowledge you seek to acquire and for the type of person you are.
Like the previous section, this one also requires you to be honest with yourself and admit if you’ve faced the type of issues that Rabichow discusses when addressing particular poker training options. It is important to understand these pitfalls and take them to heart so that you can avoid them the next time you get down to studying.
The Gameplan – Putting the Process to the Test
The final section of the Run It Once Game Plan course features Kevin Rabichow putting his own studying plan to the test in a training module focused primarily on the heads-up play.
This module takes you through all the steps that go into building a successful learning strategy, starting with preflop ranges for heads-up play, going over flop and turn strategies, and wrapping up with river considerations.
The ‘Gameplan’ module is a very solid course on heads-up play in its own right, but it is also a great example of how the process described in the course can be applied by an actual player serious about improving their game.
Run It Once Game Plan: Summary
In the sea of different poker courses, The Game Plan by Kevin Rabichow manages to stand apart from the rest. It is an excellent resource for everyone wanting to learn how to study poker. And, as much as that phrase may sound strange, this is a big issue that many players face these days.
If you feel like studying poker is a struggle for you and that no matter how many hours you spend, you don’t get the desired results, The Game Plan could be the best investment you could make.
Instead of buying different courses, hoping that one of them works for you, you can learn the process that helps you get the best value out of every course out there. The Game Plan teaches you how to recognize your strengths and weaknesses, how to approach removing the leaks from your game, and understand what is the best type of training for you, specifically.
I’ll admit that my first thought was that this was a bit out there, but after watching the course, there is no doubt in my mind that it can be of great help to anyone looking to study poker seriously. The Game Plan is not designed for beginners or casual players, that much is clear, but if you have serious plans for your poker future and those plans include poker training in one way or another, this course can give you a great kick start.
