What I see a lot of beginners do is trying to act as a professional holdem player, when they really are not. Most of the time they think that merely reading a book makes them instantly better players. A short winning streak hits them and even before you can say “bankroll management”, they have jumped up in limits and lost all their savings trying to pull off something that was suggested in the book. If it really was that easy, all poker players would be millionaires.
If you decide to read a book, then yes, you must apply what is said in the book to see if it actually works and if it helps you in any way. Finishing a book does not mean you know how play poker as good as the author does. To effectively read something, means that you must apply it while not assuming that everything said is correct and not assuming you know every subject the author touches upon. If you fail to realize that, you will waste a lot of your time or money. This is of course not the case if you just love reading books without trying to improve yourself.
When someone asks me how much should one focus on learning theories compared to actually playing then my answer is that the golden ratio between theory and practice is roughly 1 to 99 or 1% theory vs 99% practice. It is of course just my estimate, but I have found out that also a lot of other professional poker players agree with me on this. If not with the exact ratio, then definitely with the idea that in order to become successful you need to practice several times more than study theories.
That being said, you should read books if you want to become successful. However you are just wasting your time, if you decide to start reading another one, without putting the theories of the first book into practice. By the time you finish another book, you won’t even remember what was said in the first one.
