I have a good 20 or 30 buys I can use (not all in my poker account, but I can deposit if necessary). Obviously I don't want to be using it if I can help it. I easily saw how I can get through 3 or 4 buy ins in the blink of an eye this morning. It was scary actually.
I've found that book now, so thanks for the recommendation.
Actually the first page made me realise an area of tilt that I experience that I was unaware of. I pride myself in staying emotionally rock-like and not going crazy. However when I've done well (like this afternoon I went from $100 to $330) in about an hour, which is a nice win rate, I suddenly about half an hour later find myself back down to $150.
I don't remember losing any massive pots, but I think I have a tendency to think 'I can afford to take a couple more risks here' - particularly on calling that final $30 or $40 river bet when I'm fairly sure I'm behind, but I just want to see for myself.
In a sense, at this stage there's a part of me that feels it's worth spending the money just to get confirmation of whether my assessment of the game was correct.
But there's a bigger part of me that would rather just have the money in my pocket
if u have only played your 1st holdem game jus over a month ago had u played any other poker game or learned the game before this.. ?? u seem to have much more knowledge the the standard 'novice'..
if u have little experiance dont be jumping into 50./1 speed- u really need to be learning pretty much from the bottom up without risking it all too quickly- u may have a few winning days and win a few hundred, then go on to lose ur whole roll due to not wanting to play lower for smaller amounts - easily done imo
You really need to read up more on bank roll management! Basically, 20-30BI is not enough of a roll if you are using it as your main source of income. You really need to have at least 50BI's and ideally 80+
20-30BI's is a very aggressive BRM and the chance of going bust is fairly high. If you've read Lambert180's diary, he turned pro a few months back and experienced a 120BI downswing - so you can see how only 30BI's can lead you to going bust quite easily if you are running badly.
Lnarin - thanks for the implied compliment there. No, I'd never played any form of poker before the start of November. However I do think I'm a pretty quick learner and when I decide to do something, I throw myself in fully.
F_Ivanovic - you're absolutely right. I'll drop down the stakes a bit. It's exciting to win £250 in one hour. You start thinking 'wow, I could make £3000 a day doing this', but then you lose £300 in the hour after that and you have to revise that plan somewhat.
I need help with a situation that's been bugging me for a day or so.
Twice now I've lost my stack when I've raised with suited connectors from the dealer button and the blinds have reraised me.
Often what happens is the blinds give you less credit for being on the button and think 'he's trying to steal my blinds here' so they push back. So what I do is then 4 bet them, and usually they fold.
However on 2 occasions I got called following the 4 bet. Flop comes down and they donk bet back into me, fairly big. I look at the flop and think 'I don't believe he could have connected with this, I think he's trying to bet big here to push me off the pot'.
So I shove on them, thinking they have nothing.
On both occasions I got called. First time the guy has Ace high. Second time he has 3rd pair.
But on both times they were still good enough to beat my suited connectors.
If I was at low stakes I would think 'fish will call anything, they don't know where the fold button is'. But mostly at these higher stakes I'm playing good players here.
I was thinking that given the level of strength I showed preflop, and then the postflop shove, that they would wave the white flag and say 'ok, you must have Aces or Kings to play the hand that hard'.
So I'm wondering if I'm just playing against guys with more money who were happy to take on the gamble, or were they able to spot something in me that allowed them to call with Ace high? Was it just a case of 'well I've invested half my stack now, I'm fully committed to the pot'?
On the one side I was pleased that I read the situation correctly in terms of them betting with air. On the other side I was annoyed that I expected them to fold and they didn't.
So what do you guys think about this play overall?
EDIT: Also note that I'm playing speed poker. After every hand you get taken to a new table. I hadn't seen either of the players in question before, so it's safe to say there were no reads on either side.
You do not seem to be taking into account other players will now have "notes" on you and your range. So you assume you're being "donk" bet into, when other players will have information telling them you'll 3 bet/reraise with next to nothing.
An raise's from the button is standard play as the button can raise a much larger range than other positions. So a lot of players may see your button raise as a standard blind steal. You need to take into account what other players are doing/thinking, not just you and your cards/bets/raises.
Also perhaps before risking a stack, notice who will potentially call and how strong is your hand. If you're on a table full of limpers then raising suited connectors is maybe ok. But if you have a calling station or 2 then you need to think differently about your raises. The odds of suited connectors hitting are not that great.
Are you aware of something called a HUD? Basically, it's a piece of poker software (that other sites allow) that gives you a mryiad of stats on your opponents including VPIP (% of hands you are playing), PFR (your pre-flop raising %), 3bet%, c-bet%, 4bet%, aggression factor + many more.
Without this you are at a big disadvantage especially playing speed poker because you'll have limited notes but your opponents will have plenty of stats.
As an example: Your opponents might notice you are opening the BTN 100% in unopened pots and 4betting 25% of the time. If you look at the top 25% of poker hands, that is A LOT of hands. And it allows your opponents to exploit you by doing stuff like 3-betting wide for value and then 5-betting wide for value. (Or just flatting 4-bets and getting it in wider post-flop) So I would be qute happy 3betting and then 5bet shoving vs you with a hand like 88 because 88 is a 54% favourite vs a 25% 4betting range.
Sky don't allow HUD's and it's one of the reasons I prefer playing this site over any other.
they still may be gathering reads from u using a HUD - regardless if its speed or not
sounds to me like ur playing more experiance players rather thgan fish, calling an aggro 4better and donk leading IS a viable counter stratergy.. u have indeed learnt alot in a months play, but may be trying too much withouht really knowing why ur doin it..!! 4bet bluffing unknown players (to urself) is not a stratergy i would be using in speed.. and also i think you would probally find that the people u are playing would have been gathering info on u.. so if ur playing far too big a range, whther its opening , 3bettin or 4betting, villains will be playing back with more accurate stronger ranges and being good more often than not (hence being called down with ACE high)..
You may well be right on the HUD side of things F_Ivanovic. I used holdem manager for the free trial but it's expired now. Guess I should pay now for the full version since not having it is costing me far more.
Lnarin - not saying that that donk leading isn't a viable strategy. That said, sometimes I get donk lead on and I throw in a reraise and they insta-fold. This time I shoved and I get called with nothing. I do think you're right that I may have gotten ahead of myself slightly. This level is definitely a much higher standard of play - just the simple fact that pretty much nobody limps preflop is testament to that. It's great news in that I get to play 300 hands per hour against good players and improve even more quickly. It's bad news in that it can get expensive!
F_Ivanovic - I mean it's one thing to call a preflop shove with 88 knowing that I would shove light. But to call a shove postflop, or even on the turn with Ace high or 3rd pair...surely that is suicidal, even against someone that is willing to be aggressive with very little? Oh and I get that annoying timeout thing on here as well...I wish someone from Sky would do something about it!
But to call a shove postflop, or even on the turn with Ace high or 3rd pair...surely that is suicidal, even against someone that is willing to be aggressive with very little?
Well it depends on stuff like board texture as well as pot odds. Calling with ace high & 3rd pair can be completely standard in some situations.
eg. You raise BTN to £1.50 (playing 100bb deep), get 3bet to £5 and then you 4bet to £13 with QJo. Flop is 237 and they donk £9 with AQ, you shove your remaining £37. So it's £28 now for them to call. 2/3 of the time you are going to miss a flop and even more so on this flop because your 4betting range won't include many 7's, 2's or 3's. Your opponent only needs to call £28 to win a £100 pot which means he only needs 28% equity vs your range to profitably make the call. Given you are shoving flop with a decent amount of air, ace high has plenty of equity to call here. Vs a range of 99+ and some bluffs (A5, A6, QJ, KJ, KT as an example) the AQ actually has a 60.74% equity so folding would become a huge mistake.
Thanks for that explanation 'F', that makes a lot of sense.
I think I need to go away and play with Poker Stove (that sounds wrong) and understand more about equities and calling ranges etc.
What do you think of the above hand that I picked out from my history?
You can see he's in the small blind with 39o and I'm the opening raiser with Q10.
He calls and then bets back into me on a J92 flop.
His bet is $10 into a $7 pot.
At this point I'm thinking 'what could he have here?' First thought is some kind of J, or maybe even J9. But then I'm thinking when people get a nice hand like this on the flop, they don't want to raise any alarm bells.
More likely is that he's going to check back to me and let me keep on betting at him. Last thing he wants is me folding when he's got a great hand. So often when I see an overbet like this (which is rare) I think that the guy doesn't have much and is trying to push me off the hand.
So I raise him up, he calls.
Turn comes and it's a 5. He now bets $20 into a $47 pot. Now I'm thinking now 'his initial overbet donk didn't work and now he's taking a final stab at pushing me off. He's not even betting 1/2 the pot now so I think he's virtually given up'.
So I shove my remaining $84.15 and he calls. His paired 9 holds up on the river. However, working out the call, it cost him $64.15 to call a pot of $151.15, so he only needs to be right about 1 in every 2.5 times he calls.
My initial thoughts following the shove was that when you call an all-in bet, you have no further play in the hand. You have to be either right or wrong, and I was thinking that the raising the bet from 20 to 80-odd would be enough of a jump to make him give up.
Now I'm thinking that actually those pot odds I was giving him on the call weren't so unattractive after all. My guess is that he called expecting to lose the pot, but thinking that the odds made it a worthwhile punt.
I reckon if I'd had a stack the size of his ($200 instead of $100) he would probably have folded here.
What do you think about this, in terms of mine and his overall play in the hand, and my current assessment of it? Be as brutal as you like
I can't see the actual hand (photo pending approval) so it's good that you've gone through the hand and explained it!
Anyway on every street but the river you can't just look at it as how often you are right but rather the equity you have against opponents range. Imagine you have QT 2/3 of the time but have a hand that beats him the rest of the time. Even though villain is right 2/3 of the time here, he only has ~ 25% vs our range so calling would be a mistake. If we were on the river though then calling would become correct since there are no more cards to come.
Playing draws aggressively is fine - we have 2 ways to win the pot, either by hitting or by getting our opponent to fold. We can't always play our draws aggressively though and have to know when to draw the line. Selective aggression is key.
You played the hand reasonably well but possibly chose the wrong opponent to make this play against. (that, or you had been playing so aggressive that his call was reasonable) Making this play with QT is fine for example but if we start adding in hands with no/little equuity (complete bluffs) then we will become too unbalanced and it makes it easier for our opponent to call down with weaker holdings.
edit: I forgot to add before I was going to comment on your tendency to 4bet SC OTB. Whilst being aggressive is good, this sounds somewhat a bit too aggressive. We are allowed to just call and see a flop sometimes especially so when we have the BTN and position. SC can be great hands to see flops with if we are deep enough because they can flop well disguised hands. Ideally we want to be 4betting with value hands & hands that aren't quite good enough to call a 3b but make good candidates for 4bet bluffs.
edit: I forgot to add before I was going to comment on your tendency to 4bet SC OTB. Whilst being aggressive is good, this sounds somewhat a bit too aggressive. We are allowed to just call and see a flop sometimes especially so when we have the BTN and position. SC can be great hands to see flops with if we are deep enough because they can flop well disguised hands. Ideally we want to be 4betting with value hands & hands that aren't quite good enough to call a 3b but make good candidates for 4bet bluffs. Posted by F_Ivanovic
My reason for preferring to 4 bet than call are simply that I feel it makes my life easier. If he then 5 bets me or shoves I will assume he has a monster and give up the pot. If he calls then I feel I have the advantage. Even if I don't have better cards, he is thinking that I probably do.
Often in this scenario a well sized c-bet on the flop causes the fold and I get a very nice pot, despite having no hand whatosever.
However I have particularly run into problems in the following circumstance - he's holding AA or KK and flats my 4-bet instead of shoving. I misinterpret that as weakness - I guess he's got AK, AQ or even AJ and doesn't want to risk all his stack on a coin flip or worse. When the flop comes and nothing hits that range I assume a c-bet will push him off. Often this works nicely, but when he is actually holding a monster I can lose a lot.
I guess at the moment I'm unsure which circumstances are better to call a 3-bet rather than raise.
I just hate that situation where you're OTB and you call the 3 bet. The flop comes down and you miss. He c-bets and you decide to call it as a float. Turn comes and he bets again and you're forced to fold.
In this situation I never know whether he was ahead or not. I feel at least as the pre flop aggressor that I'm the one who has the option to make this play. Does that logic make sense or is it flawed?
Not played a huge amount of real money poker the last 2 days.
Reason being, I wanted to take time to consolidate and figure out where I went wrong in the previous days. Time for honest reflection is a very important part (in my opinion) in learning any skill quickly. Too many people want to take credit for their good wins in poker and blame variance for their bad luck.
Whilst this is sometimes true, it's also true that sometimes we get very lucky at times and we also play badly at times too. I know I have experienced both of these on a number of occasions.
I've also read the book that benc recommended 'The Mental Game of Poker' cover to cover (well top of scroll bar to bottom of scroll bar).
There's a few different nuggets I've taken from this, in particular the different kinds of tilt that I had no idea existed. I always assumed tilt was simply a reaction to a bad beat or losing a lot of money and the player turns into a raging all-in monster, throwing his entire stack into the pot the second he hits a pocket pair or an Ace.
More to it than that. Some subtle tilt areas I have been displaying:
Entitlement Tilt
The book describes it as being 'I'm a good player and I should be beating these fish easily'. As a result you make plays you really shouldn't be making because you feel you deserve to win, simply by virtue of being the best player at the table.
In my case I tend to feel entitled to win when I get dealt good hole cards. Especially if I've been sat there 20 minutes folding trash and I get dealt AK, I find it very hard to fold this. I've lost too much money in calling people down when I have AK or even KK and a Ace appears on the board and I can't bear to hit the fold button.
Injustice Tilt
Linked to the above, I feel a strong sense of injustice when my good cards get beaten. Particularly the hand where my KK got crushed by K5 - that still annoys me even now. I have to keep reminding myself of all the time where I got it all in with AQ vs AK and similar and won.
There's also another subtle form of tilt that affects me when I'm winning. Partly from the overconfidence that making a lot of money in a short space of time gives you and partly from the mindset of 'well I'm up 3 buyins here, so I can afford to take more risks'.
You stop playing in the manner that got you the wins in the first place and play a more loose game as a result.
Also, I identified that I have a habit of losing big pots when holding AK. So I got back on Advanced Poker Training and told it to deal me AK every hand (that's one good thing about APT - you can tell it to deal you the same hand over and over so you can practice. Or you can say 'only give me pocket pairs', 'only give me playable hands'. etc).
So I came up with a new strategy of playing AK that still gives me the potential to win big when I hit, but not lose all my chips when I don't. After all it's a very dangerous hand in my opinion. Yes it's a strong hand, but you're still capable of losing to a pair of 2s. Played a few hundred hands of AK and I think I've got that handled now.
Don't know if you're familiar with Pareto's Law - this is the 80/20 rule. The rule that 20% of your actions are responsible for 80% of your results, and vice versa. So as part of my regular review of my game, I try to find where are the 20% of hands that are giving me 80% of my money? And where are the 20% of hands that is losing me my money?
Doing this kind of analysis doesn't take that long, but is really useful to spot weak points to be worked on.
I've also been playing speed poker on .1nl rather than 1nl. I was able to win without too much bother on here, but the problem is that it's a totally different game at this level than it is at the higher limits. I'm not totally convinced how useful practice is at the very low stakes like this.
The day promised much but ultimately flattered to deceive.
Played 25/50 speed poker...made $100, then lost a $50 pot when my internet went down on the turn.
Then I thought 'this is too easy, I'll go back to .5/1...promptly spewed off $80 in about 10 minutes.
Later I entered the £22 UKOPS Bounty Hunter. Although I said I was going to stay away from MTTs, I thought I might as well take a spin for the last day of UKOPS.
Played and ran well to start with. Took 3 head prizes and was chip leader for a while. Started dreaming of taking down the whole tournament...
...then I found myself in 3rd place with 17k chips all in 3 ways on the flop with JJ vs JQ vs a flush draw.
The flush draw didn't come in, and the river card was a harmless 8. I was celebrating a massive increase in chips, plus 2 more head prizes...until I realised that the 8 completed a straight to the Queen.
So that took away 10k chips...I then got it in later with KJ (paired Jacks) vs an unpaired AQ flush draw on the flop...Queen hits on the river.
I had some good cards and good runs to start with, but that ended badly. Quite disappointed to finish 132nd when it all looked so promising.
On the plus side, I think my game is holding up pretty well at the moment. And at least the 3 head prizes meant I was 50p up for the BH
It appears as though you have many obstacles to overcome to be consistently profitable in the cash games you are currently taking shots at. Firstly I would say you play way too loosely for a new player and should focus purely on value betting and value calling (Only continue vs bets/raises postflop and preflop if you think they can have worse value hands in their betting range- this means you won't be bluffcatching and making big equity mistakes whlist learning). Obviously you can call pre/post if you have good equity/implied odds with draws, setmining etc - requiring MUCH better equity/odds OOP than IP.
For example you should rarely be calling 3bets with suited connectors getting less than 30:1 implied odds because your opening range should be tight enough that you can call with hands with good equity against their 3bet range without being exploited. If they make a standard 3bet OOP then you can often fold 66-75% of your opening range, 4bet the hands in your opening range that are stronger than the hands they'll 5bet with, and flat call with the remaining hands in the top 25-33% of your opening range - add 22+/SC's IP with 20:1+/30:1+ implied odds. (EG you open 25% range in the CO and get 3bet by the SB/BB - you only need to defend the top 6-8% of your range to be unexploitable - which might mean you 4bet and get in QQ+ & AK, and flatcall the 3bet with 99+, AQ, AJs, KQs. You can construct these ranges for each of your opening ranges and then deviate with more info on the villain.
I don't think playing a balanced strategy like this is needed at lower stakes but you are much better off learning how to play balanced, and then deviate away from your balanced strategy when you have better reads/notes/stats. Playing balanced as you move up will be more and more vital when playing mainly vs regs.
As others have said I would cut out all postflop bluffs unless you have 6+ outs, or the villain has a lot of air/weak hands in their range (Eg cbetting good boards, barrelling scare cards)
Also try not to put people on certain hands, instead think about the range of hands they can have, starting with their preflop range, and then removing hands as each street progresses and new information allows you to eliminate parts of their starting range.
Also, sign up to deucescracked or similar and download as many vids as possible and watch hundreds of hours of these so you can learn how to think about ranges and equities.
Some people can get away playing poker by feel and intuition but they are in the minority. The rest of us need to study away from the table, do the maths, develop our own ranges, and then hopefully develop an intuitive style based on the thousands of hours of studying we have completed.
Sorry for the long post. I only post once in a blue moon and don't play online much anymore, but I used to coach new players and make training videos for a site a couple of years back and you seem to be making the same errors that I would see new students making over and over.
Hi Nathan - thanks for the effort you made to type all that, it is helpful.
An update - it's winter and the horse trading is a bit quiet at the moment. So I've decided to get a short term IT contract as my bankroll in general is not as healthy as I would like it to be. Plus I'd like a nice shiny new car
There are 2 good prospects. One is a Test Manager role in London, another one in Knutsford in Cheshire where I am one of only 2 people being submitted for the role apparently. So at the very worst I would hope I'm in a AK vs 99 situation there. Should find out on that pretty quickly.
The good side of that is that I'll suddenly have a very pleasant influx of cash that I can use on poker. So I'll be setting aside an amount of money per month (maybe in the £500 range) that I use on playing decent stakes cash games and MTTs.
I may be deluded but I honestly think my game is decent enough to be competitive at these levels, if not necessarily profitable. But I'll learn much more quickly from playing good players at levels above my station than simply messing around with persistent limpers and callers and lower stakes.
I realise that this is likely to cost me money, and I'm willing to spend that in order to get to where I want to be more quickly.
As for the challenge...well I guess I failed in making a consistent £50 a day.
Best day was £180. Worst day was negative, about the same amount. So I can make money, but not consistently enough to call it a wage.
However, the focused effort I've put in every day means that my game is virtually unrecognisable from what it was 3 weeks ago when I started this diary.
So thanks to all who've commented and taken the time to help me along.
Comments
An raise's from the button is standard play as the button can raise a much larger range than other positions. So a lot of players may see your button raise as a standard blind steal. You need to take into account what other players are doing/thinking, not just you and your cards/bets/raises.
Also perhaps before risking a stack, notice who will potentially call and how strong is your hand. If you're on a table full of limpers then raising suited connectors is maybe ok. But if you have a calling station or 2 then you need to think differently about your raises. The odds of suited connectors hitting are not that great.