Learn poker with a small, free study path.

You do not need to buy a course, open a playing account or finish a reading list to begin. Start with one small task. These five sessions are a suggested route through the free material, not a test of whether you belong in poker.

Choose a task, then stop when it is done.

Work at your own pace. A session can be split across several days, repeated, or skipped when you can already do its task. Use a deck on a table, a fictional example or a completed hand. None of these activities requires a wager.

Keep two headings in your notes: “What I can now explain” and “What I still need to check.” Those notes are more informative than the number of pages opened. The linked external pages are free to read as listed, although their publishers may also sell products or advertise gambling.

1. Tell the story of one hand.

Read one hand from deal to showdown. Then close the page and describe the order: private cards, preflop betting, flop, turn, river and showdown if more than one player remains. Name who still has a decision at each step.

Use the official hold'em rules and hand-rankings references below when you get stuck. Your output is a short explanation of a single hand, not a memorized glossary. Before moving on, explain why a hand can finish without anyone showing cards and why winning a pot does not equal gaining that whole amount in profit.

2. Reconstruct a small pot.

Use bets, calls and side pots, then write the separate contributions in a fictional heads-up river example. There are 60 chips in the pot before an opponent bets 30. Calling costs another 30, making the final pot 120. With no further betting or fees and ordinary showdown equity, the break-even share is 30 / 120 = 25%.

Your task is to label the 60, the opponent's 30 and your additional 30. Do not divide by 90 simply because that is what you can see before calling. The free expected-value article below offers a second explanation. For a longer worked exercise, use the pot-odds workshop.

3. Explain a decision before seeing the ending.

Open the river Decision Lab. Before opening the answer panels, write the cost of calling and the assumption about the opponent that would matter most. Then inspect the two endings. Your output is one explanation that distinguishes the decision from its result.

You do not have to guess the best action. Finding the missing information is useful. “The opponent could have a bluff” is a possibility, not a measurement of how frequently that opponent bluffs.

4. Choose the kind of poker you want to understand.

For live tournaments, use the field guide and identify three event details to confirm. For cash games, read the cash-game study guide and name the relevant costs. For Omaha or a mixed-game broadcast, use the game comparison before judging a showdown.

Your output is a statement of the game, betting structure and question. An introductory hold'em rule is not a universal instruction for every game with poker chips.

5. Study one lesson, not an entire archive.

MIT's 2016 course page below provides a free university course with video lectures. It is historical teaching material, not a current commercial solver manual. Choose one lesson relevant to your question and note the assumptions behind its examples. The site listing does not mean every video has been watched or every claim independently reproduced.

Finish with three sentences: the question, what the lesson helped clarify, and what it did not establish. Keep the next step small using the resource-check sheet. When the lesson is too advanced, return to the specific missing concept instead of concluding you need a more expensive course.

A useful checkpoint

You calculated a 25% break-even call. Have you shown that calling is correct?

No. You have priced the call under stated conditions. You still need the hand's equity against an appropriate range and, when relevant, later actions, fees or tournament prize effects. The price and the evidence for meeting it are separate.

Four free starting sources

These are complementary starting points, not a ranking. Current listing descriptions, access and review limits come from the same catalogue as the full directory.

Prepared with AI assistance. Published October 8, 2026. Worked examples are fictional, not Nolan's hands or results. Sources and review limits accompany each listing. Use study material before or after play, not as live assistance.