I'm a beginner at poodle training, but we have had some good results working with a local trainer.
We have been training our (now) 6 month old standard for five weeks. We mainly use a martingale training collar and 6' leash tied around our waist. For the first two weeks we did a lot of in house work with our boy (Amos) on a leash as we went about our usual business. One important feature of the 1st two weeks was that we tried not to talk to him at all when training. Got him to focus on our body language, not human speak-noise. Normal, gentle movement around the house led him fairly quickly into a following mode, as he was always interested in what we were doing.
Out of the house, of course, he had a lot of competing distractions, so we started by walking in "random" patterns (actually, we walked in a path that spelled out our names and our phone numbers -- we knew where we were going, but Amos didn't!). He needed to pay attention to us to know where we were going. When he messed up, our body weight automatically and immediately provided a short, quick correction as we went off in a new direction. I think poodles get bored if they know you're going to walk in a straight line for very long.
An important part of the training was a commitment *never* to go in a direction he was pulling. If he pulled one way, we immediately went in the opposite.
Lots of praise and a good body massage after each short session, of course..
Long story short, after 4 weeks he went from alternating "brakes" and "bolts" to following us on a "dropped leash" for more than an hour at a time -- never any further than 3 or 4 feet away. He focuses on us and ignores most of the surrounding distractions. We usually stop and toss a stick or a ball for retrieving every 20 minutes or so. He's just as good with no leash, but we have lurking coyotes and the odd bear around, so we always leave the leash trailing just in case. We have 99% confidence in his "Come" and "Stop" commands, too.
He still needs to learn to walk without pulling when we get close to strangers or other dogs in the country or on the golf course. (He's fine walking down a crowded downtown street.) He acts like an absolute party animal, loving every person and every dog he meets. Actually, I think he's a bit insecure when he senses eye contact from a single person or person+dog out in the open and responds by acting out the "I'm a goofy puppy" routine. When that happens we either walk away, or put him in a "sit/wait" until he's calm enough to let the person approach. Sometimes a single, firm collar correction lets him know we want his attention on us and not the other person.
Still a work in progress, but we have seen a fantastic change in him.
I hope something in these ramblings has been helpful.