I've been playing some MTTs at a local casino recently and while it's really fun, I'm finding I'm making far too many mistakes. I used to play online quite a bit before the law changed a few years ago so I'm not a complete noob but I really need to up my game. I'm reading a lot and watching online hand analysis but I'm having a hard time developing a cohesive game plan. Any pros on here who can offer advice on the best approach? Is live coaching the way to go?
This is not how you do this thread. First, you've been going to the local casino. You're winning thousands from not only the local drunks, but also world renown poker players, international playboys and famous rally car drivers.
I don't recall asking you to fix my post. I'll meet you halfway at a local electric kart track and put you into the wall like Josh Owens would do to a ten year old having a go-kart birthday party, bitch! Where's halfway? Kentucky?
Certainly no aspiration of making a living at it. That's about as likely as a club racer getting a free ride. I enjoy the mental challenge and I just want to improve and reach my potential. With golf I managed to get to be scratch after 5 years of hard work and professional instruction. I'm trying to take the same approach with this, just want to get to be a respectable level amateur player.
If you want to get better at racing motorcycles, race people that are better than you are racing motorcycles. The same approach applies to poker and they both take a lot of money to get proficient at.
Cash games or tournament poker? Little different mindsets. Cash games i tend to grind out, look for one big pot per hour. Tournaments i tend to be more aggressive and mix up how I attack hands. Never over-value A-K, never slow play A-A. You will get burned every time. Get one of Negreanu's or Doyle's books. And become familiar with odds. Cheaper games are very loose. High limit pot limit cash games tend to be the best games. $200 max NL tables suck ass, and $500 max ain't much better. But 20-40 limit tends to weed out the weekend warriors. Those guys respect legit raises and hands, and don't tend to suck out runner-runner straights over your top 2 pair on the flop. As far as "reading" a player or picking up their tells, there's some things that can't be taught but Daniel's books give an insight. That guy is insane with how he calls hands.
"He has pocket Ace and King. I call them an Anna Kournikova because they look pretty good but they seldom win!" - Norman Chad
Start reading!!! Online playing was a great tool because you could run a HUD with stats, and then check your stats after however many hands. But honestly it takes a long time to really get a feel for the type of player you are. The HUD's probably aren't worth squat nowadays if the tables are not cash games like they were back pre-ban days. I haven't played online since like 2005 or so, it seems. Since then it's just been some occasional poker rooms at Vegas or whatnot. Casinos are great for pulling in some money on the cash tables but I don't feel I ever got much better in my game when doing that... however reading people improved since I was so used to online poker it gave me something to pick up when I did sit down in the casinos. Aside from that I used to play at a lot of the local bars/restaurants when they would do poker nights but I wasn't much of a tourney player so my results were hit or miss. But it was good practice for random stuff. But damn does in-person poker take forever. The online stuff, the action was so fast you're playing so many more hands per hour. And playing multiple tables. For books, I've always just kept with the 2+2 Publishing books. There are a lot of other good pros out there that have some good books too. There are good forums (at least when I was playing) where you can post up your hands and your thought process, and then get critiqued. But I've found such a varying style difference in some players that even though their explanations make sense, their re-raise or fold suggestions would have been tough to follow in the heat of the moment. Either way, like most things, it just takes as much of a time investment as you can. I was playing online about 4 hrs per day 4-5 nights/week and would just consider myself "decent" at MTT's and such. But in the end I had more patience than tourney skill so I did most of my playing on the ring/cash tables.
What the hell y'all taking about... This thread ain't about no damn card game. It's fixin' posts and a Gdee map! @pickled egg, ain't a man in your family if you don't make that drive!
Basically pj and ld said it all. First understand the odds and read some books from the top guys and get familiar with the game which it sounds like you are. Second, play with as good or better competition and hope you're good enough to not run out of money before you figure it out. Last, money management is key to all gambling or investing. I've done a ton of poker playing and sports betting. It's a grind to get good at it! I've been successful but still am happy to leave a table up! Always remember. No one has ever been fired taking profits! It doesn't always work in tournament poker but cash games it's critical!
To tack on to this dude and the others... The Little Green Book of Poker by Phil Gordon, i felt like was the best read of the 5 or 6 books i read at the beginning. They all kinda say the same thing after a while, but his is easy to understand for a good foundation. I started with reading a few books, and throwing away a few hundo online back when you could do that, learning and getting used to things. I also had 2 buddies, one of who was a semi-pro in Vegas and he made a damn good living at it for a few years... they used to watch me play at my tables online and i'd tell them my hand, watch me bet, watch my actions, and then give criticisms. That helped a bunch honestly. In general though... I play tight, I hardly bluff, and I mostly just play the math (I do math for a living all day every day so its natural for me). Also, if you play the odds and stick to it, you may catch some bad beats, you may miss out on some "i shoulda" hands, but in the end you'll come out on top. I pay attention to the dudes betting habits and lying frequencies (especially if they're table bullies and like the show off their lies a lot, etc...), so i'll fuck with certain dudes more, or avoid certain dudes more, and try to run over donkeys... but generally i'm just looking at in this order: my position to dealer, the strength of my hand, bets before me, bet amounts pre-flop, then decide... then on the flop i'm simply mending together hand odds with pot odds for any bet before me. for a quick reference... after flop, number of outs times 4 is your percentage, after the turn its number of outs times 2. flush draw is 9, open ended is 8, inside is 4, trips on a pair is 2, etc... multiple that by 4 or 2, and there is your odds of hitting your hand. so then you get into situations like... open ended straight AND flush draw... you have 4(9+8)= 68%. so at that point in the hand, you have literally nothing and are still technically favored to win... i'd chase that some. what you do based on the math becomes a little more subjective sometimes, but generally following the math puts you ahead. if you have a 10% chance after the flop, you wouldn't chase a pot sized bet to see the turn. on the other hand, if you have a 45% chance after the flop and 4 dudes call a pot sized bet, 45% might be worth chasing money at 5:1... that kinda thing. i like 7,10 suited a bunch for some reason i dunno why haha, its my favorite hand to play cheap. and i like getting in with mid-suited connectors and mid-pocket pairs for cheap. if they hit, nobody ever sees it coming. people always see A's and K's coming. i play tighter the worse my position is to dealer, and loser as i'm up more or as i have better position, by a slight margin. if dudes are super aggressive and loose, i play tighter and just wait for my turn. there's no rush to do anything brash at a cash game. i always try to get AA's and AK's out of the way and play them super aggressive because i don't wanna see the hand play out. mostly just superstition cause the math still says you're gonna win, i just don't like it. i bet consistent, every time. if i'm raising pre-flop (not a re-raise) its the same 4 or 5x the blind. if i'm betting out the flop or turn, its usually 2/3rds the pot unless i'm trying to really force a strong decision. consistent betting keeps you from giving away information. if you bet all over the place with different strength hands, you're giving away information. give as little info away as possible. i'll say this much... i'm no pro, but i've won a few small tournaments, and there was a 2 year period where i was playing 2-5 cash games at casinos twice a month. in each of those years i ended up, up, about $15k a year at a win ratio of 1 losing night for every 6 nights in went. i only ever brought $600, i never go back to the ATM or re-up. if you lose, you lose, walk away. so the most i'd ever lose was $600, and on average i'd say i usually always walked with doubling or more of my money. for 4 hours of work... $600-800 on average isn't bad. more than some doctors make that's for sure. as my actual job paid me more, i felt less desire to sit at a casino all friday night, but this year i've gone 3 times so far... up $700 on one, up $2200 on one, down $600 on one. Chris Ferguson i think is my favorite player to watch/emulate. he thinks and plays how i aspire to think and play. very logical and lots of math. that's the thing man... people lie, people get emotional, people get frustrated or angry or bored or wreckless... math and logic don't lie. they're always the same no matter what you do or who the user is. if the math says its right and you stick to the math... if you play long enough, eventually, you'll be the winner. the part of my game that i really feel like i still need to work on (i mean, i'ma nobody, my game could always use work, but one in particular that's glaringly to me)... is when i get to the river and i know i have the winning hand and its not some crazy all-in type hand but a general decent sized pot, how to best maximize the return from the opponent thru that last bet or action. do you check raise? do you bet? do you bet a lot? pot bet? over bet? small bet? trying to gauge that is still what i find to be the hardest. if you check does he also check? if you bet little and he calls, could you have bet more? if you bet too much does he just fold? that's the hardest single part of a cash game to me.
That's some really good info, I wasn't the one asking for it but thanks anyway. I've played a ton of poker but I've always played on feel and have never read a book or any advice on how to get better. In retrospect I probably would have lost a lot less money over the years had I done my homework, but instead I got sick of losing money and have pretty much gotten away from gambling all together. I think I like not gambling better but if I could learn to play the right way and win consistently maybe it would be worth it to read some books and try again. Also, for those talking about online poker, there are still sites where you can play for real money in the US. The shitty part for me is that I hate no-limit and almost all of the online tables these days are no-limit.
Well... MD has casinos now, so its not as big of a deal to play online as it used to be before Charlestown, WV or MD had rooms. Driving to AC was a twice a year thing, not an every weekend. I don't really trust algorithms for bigger money, i wanna see the deck. Some people just seem to have a magical read on people or a behavioral strategy that works for them, but still, can always get caught out. There's a reason the same pros are always winning. At the same time, tournament play is way different. Stack managment and psychology is way more important there. I play cash games totally different. But again, math don't care, which is why i like it. I once sat for over 2 hours without playing a single hand. The discipline and self-control is key. On the flip side, i once watched this total dick bully and lie and show off his lies for 5 hours, then took $1300 off him with only a pair of 8's cause i watched him all night and had him read so well. I once woke up with quad queens on my first hand... i once had a $2800 pot with 3 other dudes where 3 of us all flopped flushes (i had king high, another guy had the ace), and the 4 dude who was the worst hand, ended up with a runner runner full house and beat us all. You play enough, you see it all i guess. I'll say this much... these days when i bust, its usually from a better flush beating my flush or a better full house beating mine. Sometimes thats life, but if you're going out cause of a bluff or a chase or a shit hand like 1 pair when theres straights and flushes out there, you need to re-evaluate.
