Learn poker to a winning low-stakes player in twelve months
A year of study and disciplined play — about 30 minutes a day plus a few sessions a week — gets a thoughtful adult to a small but real win rate at micro-stakes online no-limit hold'em. Roughly 250 hours total. You will not quit your job. You will stop being the fish.
12 months · ~250 hours · break $100 over 50,000 hands at NL10
1.Sklansky — The Theory of Poker
Sklansky's 1987 book is the only poker book you must read. Expected value, pot odds, implied odds, the Fundamental Theorem of Poker — every concept the modern game stands on, written before solvers existed. It is dense and unillustrated. Read a chapter, play a thousand hands, reread the chapter. Available on Internet Archive's lending library and in print.
~$25 in print; free to borrow on archive.org
The Theory of Poker on Internet Archive →2.Acevedo — Modern Poker Theory
Once Sklansky's mental model has stuck, Acevedo brings you to the solver era: range construction, polarization, minimum defense frequency, blocker effects. He translates GTO solver output into rules a human can actually deploy at the table. This is the book that closes the gap between intuitive small-stakes play and the modern winning style.
~$50 in print or Kindle
Modern Poker Theory →3.GTO Wizard — solver-era practice
Stop guessing what a balanced range looks like and start drilling against one. GTO Wizard pre-solves the most common spots in cash games and tournaments and lets you practice them as flashcards. The Starter plan at $39/month is enough. Skip this until you have finished Sklansky — drilling solver outputs without the underlying logic is how people memorize themselves into stuck.
$39/month, Starter plan
GTO Wizard →If this doesn't fit you
If you want live $1/$2 cash games at a casino instead of online grinding, skip Acevedo and GTO Wizard entirely. Read Sklansky, then read Ed Miller's The Course. Live low-stakes is exploitative, not theoretical — players are bad in predictable ways and pure GTO is overkill. You will get hours of cheap practice and the rake will be ugly.
Why this path
Poker is the only game on this site where bad bankroll discipline can actually cost you money. Before you play a hand, set a bankroll of at least 30 buy-ins for whatever stake you play, and never play above it. Most losing players lose because they move up too fast, not because they play badly. Sklansky gives you the why, Acevedo gives you the modern shape, GTO Wizard gives you the reps. Without the bankroll rule, none of it matters.