Most people – especially younger ones – have little experience with diverse people. They live in relatively homogenous towns and neighborhoods and usually relate to people who are fairly similar to themselves.
In online and casino poker games, you have to play with whomever sits down. You must compete against very different kinds of people: aggressive and passive, friendly and nasty, educated and uneducated, quiet and talkative, intelligent and stupid, emotionally controlled and uncontrolled, and so on.
You therefore learn how to understand and adjust to people who think and act very differently from you. The faster and better you do it, the better results you will get.

David Sklansky & Alan N. Schoonmaker – 09/2007 – in Two plus two Magazine

Make sure to think outside the box. It’s not enough to simply memorize how to play certain hands, it’s important to understand why the hand should be played that way. Poker is a beautiful game with so many variables, you can’t play it with a defined set of rules as you would in blackjack. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different strategies. Even if they fail, you will have learned something.

Daniel Negreanu, in Hold’em Wisdom for all Players