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Introduction to the GrinderSchool low stakes poker school

Grinderschool Poker Training helps small and micro stakes players crush cash games, SNGs and MTTs. At Grinderschool, a team of skilled poker enthusiasts/professionals create daily poker strategy videos and weekly poker podcasts dedicated to small stakes poker strategy. Grinderschool’s focus on low stakes poker strategy, combined with low membership rates, makes them the best resource for poker players
on a budget looking to improve their game.

Membership costs

Grinderschool Poker Training has two membership options: Micro Stakes and Full Stakes. For $10/month, micro stakes subscribers have access to the private Grinderschool forum and all cash game videos at or below $10nl and any tournament videos with a $3 buy-in or less. For $19.99, full stakes subscribers have access to the full Grinderschool video library of over 1200 poker videos. If you would like to pay for more months in advanced, the monthly rate drops to as low as $10/month for a 12-month subscription. The 12-month subscription is the best value on Grinderschool Poker Training.

Personally, I recommend choosing the full stakes subscription over the micro stakes subscription at Grinderschool. The added value of having access to all videos clearly outweighs the small additional subscription rate (or none at all on average if you choose the 12-month subscription). In the following, I have chosen several features I like the best on Grinderschool.

GrinderSchool poker school features – poker videos

Along with the Grinderschool private forum, the Grinderschool poker video section is the heart of the low stakes poker strategy content on the site. You can find poker videos covering all of the aspects needed to beat low stakes no limit hold’em. I play a lot of multi-table tournaments so I checked out some of the poker videos in the MTT section. One thing I liked was that each poker video has its own introductory page where it is possible to comment on the video as well as read other user’s comments. In addition, Grinderschool offers all videos in FLV and WMV video formats with 0 DRM (Digital Rights Management); members can download the Grinderschool videos and use them however or where ever they please so long as they remain personal use only. Also, several hundred of Grinderschool’s 1200+ video database are in an iPod compatible format (M4V), including all videos released after January 1, 2011.

I looked through a 5-part $11 Rebuy MTT Video series and the instructor successfully walked me through the different stages of the tournament hand by hand. I appreciated the way the instructor explained his thought process behind each hand he played. I was also pleased to have confirmed my suspicion that you need a fair bit of luck to take down a big MTT (the 3h2h vs KK was especially amusing). It also made me realize, that I have to focus more on putting my opponents on a hand range when I am playing MTTs. Here is a list of I wrote down after watching the entire series; I believe these pointers can apply in today’s game just as much as when the video series was released.

• During the rebuy period, be prepared to push all in with small to medium pocket pairs and high card combinations
• It is better to lose playing aggressively than lose playing passively
• PokerTracker is a great tool to get stats on your opponents. Having a database of player information will give you an edge in many situations where tough decisions have to be made. Especially in tournaments where you get moved around a lot and don’t often have time to get a read on players. It is great to stumble into players you already have data on from previous tournaments

GrinderSchool poker school features – coaching

For an even faster way to improve your game, Grinderschool Poker Training offers private coaching at a great rate for small stakes players. I will go so far to say that all serious professional competitors – whether they are athlete, race car drivers or chess players – use private coaches in their careers to fine tune their abilities.

GrinderSchool poker school features – forum

The bulk of the Grinderschool forum is closed to outsiders to avoid the usual spam that these kind of forums tend to accumulate. This means that almost all of the content in the Grinderschool forum has poker relevance. Think of it as a poker article database! Once you learn how to navigate it you will literally spend days soaking up the poker knowledge.

GrinderSchool poker school features – store

How cool is this? GrinderSchool has an online shop where you can purchase GrinderSchool low stakes poker school merchandise such as t-shirts, caps and mugs with the GrinderSchool logo. Payment can be made with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover and Gift Certificates.

GrinderSchool poker school annoyances

In my opinion, Grinderschool faces similar challenges to many other online knowledge based sites. How to give users an overview of a lot of information while maintaining a clean and stream-lined user interface? Grinderschool has approached this problem by including a TAG cloud on both the forum and video sub-pages, as well as a search bar and drop down menu. I’m not sure how fond I am of the Tag Cloud. The problem with organization of information through tags is that if you do not have some kind of system on how to apply them to information, you run the risk of losing overview.

As a first time user, my impression of the Grinderschool forum and video sections was that it would take me a very long time to get an overview of all the information present. What I’m missing is some kind of underlying information structure that will allow me to faster navigate the site. On Grinderschool, the administrators try to organize the information as best as possible. Given the amount of information
present, I can see how it would be very difficult to have all 1200 poker videos and dozens of poker articles perfectly navigable.

Finally, I believe the overall appearance of the site is not up to today’s standards; their product is great but it definitely deserves better wrapping. Don’t let the design of the site take away from the fact that Grinderschool Poker Training is packed with high quality poker strategy material aimed at the small stakes player.

Conclusin

In conclusion, I would recommend anyone who wants to learn how to crush the small stakes game to sign up to Grinderschool Poker Training. The sheer amount of poker strategy material available on the site makes the low monthly subscription rate a steal. This could easily be one of the investments you make in your entire poker career.

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