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I want to learn the game. I'm a Swedish tryhard with a working understanding of probability and a lot of experience with tcgs but virtually no poker experience whatsoever. Where do I start learning? Where do I start playing? Oh, and how do I know when I've stopped sucking? Is there any sort of ranking system in play?
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Aug 9, 2016 20:53
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 04:17 |
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Sheep-Goats posted:Poker words That was very thorough and exactly what I needed, thanks. I was a little put off initially because I underestimated the monetary investment, but the more I think about it the more I realize ~$300 isn't all that much compared to what I've spent on games where I couldn't even win it back. Plus PokerStars seems to have games as low as 0.01/0.02, which which seems like it'd stretch the money further. Exactly five times further, as a matter of fact. Imaduck posted:Everything Sheep-Goats said is gold. I'd only add step 0: If you don't know the rules at all (what hands beat what, when you bet, etc.) play a week or two of play money games to figure that out. You'll definitely want to jump into real money games as fast as possible though. And this is probably the last little thing that'll push me into actually doing it. I have basic familiarity with the hands, but I'm really fuzzy on the betting structure so a few games of pretend sounds like exactly the kind of training wheel outing I'd need to feel comfortable betting real money. I'll read up on the basics, play a few free games and sink my teeth into the Little Green Book. Thanks a ton!
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Aug 10, 2016 11:02
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Sheep-Goats posted:4) Start posting hands you have questions about to forums like 2+2 or here to get people advice on how you should play them. Never post "what actually happened" until discussion is dead as this will taint people's advice really badly -- give them the picture you had step by step and try to see how their thinking differs from yours. Let's try this thing: I'm playing .01/.02 cash games on PokerStars. I'm small blind and have AhAd in the hole. Preflop, everyone folds to me. I raise to 3xBB. Big blind calls. Flop comes up 10c2d3h. I bet 1/3 the pot (2xBB), thinking I probably still have the best hand and might be able to entice them to put more money in. Big blind immediately raises to 2.5x the pot (20xBB). What do I do now? Have I made any mistakes up to this point? How badly dig I just mangle the jargon? e: in case you don't feel like counting, at this point there are 27BB in the pot, and calling would cost 18BB Terrorforge fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 19:55
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Thanks for the input. For reference, the stacks in this case were me at 1.5xMax buy-in (150BB) and them at 1 buy-in (100BB).
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Aug 16, 2016 21:23
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Sheep-Goats posted:If it's heads up you can say "effective stacks are 100bb" instead of naming stacks discretely. I'm sure you can see why the effective stack is always the smaller of the two stacks. Is this true even if the stacks are of vastly different size? If they're at 7bb, should my play not be affected by whether I have 14bb or 140bb? Sheep-Goats posted:I also usually try to give my current reads on a) what I think he plays like and b) what I imagine he thinks I play like if those things have developed in that session. I find it a little irritating when people ask about a hand that they played live and don't offer any of this. Online it's sometimes too early to tell and you have less time to develop these thoughts anyway (though you should still put a lot of effort into doing it). Live though I'm never playing any given hand the same way against a grey haired old man in bad health that I am against a 22 year old Asian kid. As you might imagine, the issue here is that I don't have much of a read and even if I did, I'm not sure I would trust it. Apart from just being new, I have a nasty habit of assuming everyone is worse than me until they stove my face in. I'll make sure to actually say that in the future, though.
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Aug 16, 2016 22:01
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Sheep-Goats posted:A) If they only have a 7bb stack AND you're heads up then what good does your extra 143bb do? Phil Gordon (and lots of other people) regularly mentions that he likes to play certain ways when he or his opponent is or isn't short stacked, so I thought if one player is short stacked and the other isn't, that might be relevant. As twodot says though, I guess there isn't really such a thing as being shortstacked in a cash game. Sheep-Goats posted:There are people that play with small stacks on purpose in cash games, especially online, but in general they're kind of a blight. They way you play when you do that is way more speadsheety which really doesn't appeal to me. You're also more vulnerable to the rake unless you're playing high enough they the rake is getting capped preflop a lot. In not saying some of them don't make money but it's a pretty aberrant way to approach poker. How do they play, then? What advantage does reduced stack size give? Imaduck posted:You should still have some information on this player. Actually, prior to this post I'd been paying no attention whatsoever to what anyone else was doing. I'd been so wrapped up in the mechanical aspects of play that I barely even considered the fact that other players have cards in their hands. I suppose I was getting a bit of a sense for when certain players were complete pushovers or seemed to be made of steel, and this one hadn't stuck out to me in either way. I did start trying to figure my opponents out after reading this post, and unsurprisingly I've been doing a lot better. I've actually been going positive these last few days, in no small part because merely allowing myself to even entertain the possibility that the dude who just shoved half his stack into the pot might have good cards does wonders to shut up the little gremlin living in my ear constantly screaming "He's bluffing! He's bluffing! Go all in!" Speaking of which: So what actually happened with the AA hand is that I let the gremlin get the better of me, told myself this dude is clearly bluffing, and shoved it all in. Unfortunately, they called with what turned out to be 33 and took me to the cleaners. I realized almost immediately I should probably just have called, but in the end I learned two far more important lessons; don't assume that the best hand before the flop is still the best hand after the flop, and don't trust the loving gremlin. Thanks for all the advice, btw
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Aug 19, 2016 19:04
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Imaduck posted:Yeah, you can't be results oriented. Like we pointed out, a really strong hand was rare, but still a possibility. Rare things in poker happen all the time, so you just have to ask if this play was probably good or bad on the whole, and move on. Oh, absolutely. Like I said, I come from a TCG background so I'm well acquainted with the fact that taking the 90% line is always correct, even when that particular hand turns out to be part of the 10%. Imaduck posted:You should never think of any spot as an opponent "clearly bluffing" or "not bluffing." Good poker is all about understanding and playing [i]ranges[/i. In this spot, your opponent is probably bluffing or playing a weaker hand more often than not, which makes it a good spot to get more chips in. However, they will also play this way with their very rare, really good hands. They happened to have it here, but that really doesn't tell you anything; we knew ahead of time that they could be doing this with a really good hand. The only question is, would they do this with a bad hand as well? Yeah, that's kind of what I learned. My big mistake here wasn't going all in, it was going all in on a gut feeling without considering why the opponent acted the way they did. I also realized pretty quickly that my gut feeling and my play were actually at odds; as you say, if I assumed they were bluffing I should have called, because they'll fold to a raise but I might be able to get them to put more money in the pot by calling. I think at the time I was just really unsure how to play postflop and later, so I made a lot of really bad decisions just because I didn't want to see any more cards. Speaking of calling, when is a good time to call preflop? I'm particularly unsure what to do when I'm in late position with lukewarm hands I wouldn't mind opening with (A7, say), but someone in an early position raises before it gets to me.
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Aug 21, 2016 14:19
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So I've been having a lot of fun with poker for the last month or so, and I just started my HM2 trial and moved up to 0.02/0.05 stakes. Thanks to the tracker showing me just how wide/weak most players are at this level I've been able to make a tidy profit bullying people out of their money with light 3bets and bluff cbets. It seems like the average 5NL fish will fold like a spring-loaded deck chair the moment you throw any amount of money at them, which is obviously great for business but brings up a new problem: How do I get these people to pay me off when I actually hit the flop? Betting low feels so transparent, and most of the time they fold regardless. Do I try anyway? Do I just bet the same as when I'm bluffing and hope they'll call with second best? Do I check down and hope they'll improve or go for a bluff on the turn or river?
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Oct 4, 2016 14:19
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Imaduck posted:Conversely, if you're bluffing a lot of the time because they fold too much, then yeah, see if they'll fold to smaller bets. There's no use risking an 80% pot bet when a 50% pot bet will fold out just as many hands. We want to make our opponents make mistakes for the cheapest price possible. If they're still folding to 25% pot size bets, then just do that. Yeah, it's looking like 1/2 pot is having about the same effect as 2/3. Might see if I can push it even further, but already people seem to be at least considering calling (sometimes they tank then fold rather than snap-fold) so idk how much further I can go. Would depend on individual opponents, I suppose. Imaduck posted:Against weak/tight players that are folding anytime they don't have a strong made hand, it's going to be a slow grind. Typically, you'll make more money from players that call too much instead of those that call too little. Still, there's money to be made by just wearing them down. Speaking of weak/tight, I've been struggling to find the terminology for these people. Is someone who plays loose preflop and Fit or Fold post really weak/tight? Imaduck posted:Just keep betting. Sheep-Goats posted:There are very few spots in poker where you can have it both ways. Thanks. I suspected this would be the case, but now I can proceed with confidence. Sheep-Goats posted:E: I assume you know what a dry and a wet board is, if not just ask. It is my understanding that the "wetness" of a board is how conducive it to someone having a huge hand, or at least to be drawing to a huge hand, usually a straight or flush. Does it apply to other hands, though? Is a paired board or one that just has some high cards (say AQ9 rainbow) considered wet?
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Oct 5, 2016 20:35
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Thanks for all the advice last time around, guys. Here's another hand that's vexing me: Playing .02/.05 6-Max on PS. Effective stacks at 100bb. Villain is 13/11 over ~30 hands. Not a huge sample obviously, but shaping up to be pretty tight-aggressive. Villain opens to 3bb from UTG+1. I call from SB with 5  5 intending to setmine, thinking that a TAG is fairly likely to pay me off when I hit, either by hitting a strong but second-best hand of his own, or trying to bluff. BB folds and we go heads up.Flop comes J  9 5I've hit my set, so I figure I want to get the money in. But how? Donking doesn't seem like a great idea, because what does call-donk on a board like this signal other than "I've got a big hand"? So I check, hoping he's got a Jack, a pocket pair or some overcards he's willing to bluff with. And indeed, he bets 3/4 pot. And here's the million dollar (or, well, $5) question: call or raise? I'm a bit scared to just call because of the flush draw, but i think that's kind of chickenshit? I doubt a TAG opens a ton of suited connectors from that position. But then, if he doesn't have the flush draw, isn't a club going to make him shut down anyway? My call-check-call would certainly rep the kind of timidly played flush draw you might expect from a relative unknown at 5NL, right? So maybe I should just try to get the money in right now. But on the other hand I'm worried that a check-raise would fold out all his bluffs, weak pairs and maybe even TPTK. Since I doubt he'd open J9, let alone J5 or 95, that pretty much only leaves me with QQ+ plus maybe Jx and club draws for value. Since the only thing that outright beats me here is exactly pocket Jacks or 9s I suppose this is a profitable play, but is it optimal? Does it make me more money overall than keeping his bluffs in and giving him the chance to improve or bluff again? And of course, did I make a mistake getting here? Should i have donked after all? Should I even have taken this setmine?
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Nov 20, 2016 13:59
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Sounds like my instincts were on point, which is good to know. And it's even better to see all this logic supporting it. So for those interested in the story, what happened is that I did indeed check-raise. Check because as mentioned I'd rather not fold out his bluffs and I expect anything I want to tax is going to bet into me. Raise mainly because I want him to pay for the draw. To recap; the pot is 35 cents. I check, he bets 25. I raise to 75 (Is this a good raise size, btw?). At this point he ponders for a moment and 3bets to 1.75. The shove seems pretty automatic at this point because yeah, I have the third best hand possible and he looks like he wants to stack off. Just to be sure I double-checked afterwards and Equilab + the Red Chip Poker fold equity calculator confirm that this is indeed a massively profitable shove provided he doesn't do this with sets and only sets, which seems like a ludicrously paranoid assumption. So I shove, he snaps it off with JJ and I lose the pot. And before anyone says it, I am well aware that this is just a cooler. I'm not nearly as bothered by the fact that I happened to get it in vs the nuts as I am by the fear that the check-raise wasn't getting enough value against second-best hands. Now that that fear has proven unfounded, I feel really good about this hand.
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Nov 23, 2016 12:03
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Sheep-Goats posted:Here's a chart I made for a presentation I'm doing later on today Are those all supposed to be on the same timeline? Because it looks like it's saying some of the things you said in your long intro post to me ("read this book, start playing, then ask question about hands you're unsure about" for example), but it also kind of breaks apart in places. For example, it seems to be saying I should get an account, read the entirety of "Small Stakes No Limit Hold'em" and only then deposit any money. And then not even play until I've watched some Poker Guys. Maybe that's just my autistic brain getting stuck on the most literal interpretation, but I think you could combine and move some of those bubbles around to make it a bit more comprehensible.
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Nov 30, 2016 15:14
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Imaduck posted:Sure, but keep in mind that "the good side of variance" might mean you're cashing like, 30% of the time, which means you're still losing 70% of the tournaments you play. Or it might mean that you just get 1st in one really big tournament, and then go lose 20 other ones, and still come out ahead. And it's always hard to know if you won because you were playing well, or just running hot, because winning a tournament really requires both. A tournament player's life is tough. Yeah, if there's one thing I've learned about poker it's that you don't win $10 by winning $10, you do it by losing $100 and winning $110. Which, as I understand it, is why poker pros tend to not remain poker pros forever. You can make a hell of a lot of money playing poker, but all that stands between even the best of the best and a month in the red is a roll of the dice. Winning player or not, that kind of uncertainty eats away at you.
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Dec 4, 2016 19:14
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 04:17 |
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I LIKE COOKIE posted:so I play poker, but I'm really impatient and tend to over-bluff when I don't get cards. I'm a pro bluffer(in my head), but the people I play with all the time have come to learn that I'm typically full of poo poo. so my question is Do less of it? If you bluff 100% of the time (or any other too-large % of the time) people are going to call you on it, and you're going to lose money. Even if you have the stoniest poker face in history people can see your tendencies and you'll be taken advantage of. Bluffing only works if you do it rarely enough that they don't win money by calling you every time. Now of course you don't want to just blindly cut your bluff % across the board; you should bluff less, but let the board, the action and the players dictate when. You want your bluffs to be credible, which is an artform unto itself and I'm not nearly good enough to speak confidently about it. But to give you an idea, here's a couple of articles on how to c-bet bluff the flop: http://www.thepokerbank.com/strategy/plays/continuation-bet/tips/ http://www.thepokerbank.com/strategy/plays/continuation-bet/when/
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Jan 29, 2017 14:00
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