**** Beginner's and Low Content Questions Thread****

[Benjamin the Donk]

Yes your sample size is VERY small, but a positive ev line is a good thing, you have just been unlucky in these few games. If poker was 'fair' you would be up 5 buy ins

Something to keep in mind, you can be a winning player and have a breakeven or negative ev line over short samples (short probably being anything up to 1000), as you may just be getting 'unlucky' and running in to the top of villain's range (i.e. you shove your KK into his AA).
Apparently some of the regs have played up to 6000 game streches with only breakeven ev. It was in one of the other threads on here (maybe the superturbos thread?). I assume that a large portion of this breakeven line was reg on reg, so no-one really had much of an edge.

Also I wouldn't care too much about your ev line over such a small sample, as long as your confident you are playing well. If you don't know if you're playing well, post some HH's or videos of you playing here.

[egoismforever]

If you wish to know how you are doing you need to analyze how you played your session. Also, you need to have a really big sample size. Please also be aware that your EV line shows that you would be 5 BI up does not mean that you played well, it simply means:

- You got sucked out

But usually you do plany the equity of your hand versus the opponents range, but eventually you will not be all vs his range but vs a specific range. For example: your opponent pushs into you and he does that with 88 - AA, you call him with 99 and he flips over 88, the one hand you really dominate. You lose the hand. So, whil you were incredible unlucky ones the hands were shown you have been incredible lucky to put it all in as a favourit in this very particular spot. But, you EV line will not consider this fact, which is another reason why you need a big sample size.

Long story short: you wanna make less mistakes then your opponent and in order to achieve that you have to the session after math.

[DASNerdly]

Thanks guys. I'm definitely reviewing HH and plan to start posting some - I just wasn't sure if there was any "top down" analysis I should do as well. I'm also reading the eBook from HUSNG and watching as many free videos as I can find.

And the only thing I'm confident of is that I'm NOT playing well - if we define "well" as "has reasonable level of competence and not too many leaks." I THINK I'm playing better than the average fish though...but maybe not!

I plan to pay for a membership at HUSNG to watch other videos at some point, but I figure right now while playing Cake's .75 HUSNGs and being a complete noob there's plenty of learning I can do without spending the $25.

[egoismforever]

I would recommend to get the HUSNG-Basicmembership anyways. There are some videos who should improve you way better than the HUSNG Ebook from Mers. I am not saying that Ebook is not good or the likes (because it is very good) but I see it definitely as advanced content and players that are fairly new might be better off starting at the bottom.

Furthermore, all the videos from HUSNG.com are downloadable, meaning, that even if you only watch 4 videos in your first month of membership you still can download like 20 or 30 videos and since they are not locked (= you do not need an running internet connection or a running membership in order to view the video - once you downloaded you will have it untul you delete it yourself).

[DASNerdly]

Oh, thanks ego - that's good to know. I think you just made HUSNG $25!

[egoismforever]

I hope Ry does read that .

No, seriously, I hope you will improve accordingly with the content. Please keep in mind that you should work trough a teaching video and not just watch it passivly (that's what movies are for ).

Would you mind if I ask you a Bankroll-related question? It seems to me, that you can afford those $25 relativly easily, yet you are playing the 0.75$ HU SNG, is that correct? Is there any deeper thinking behind it? I am asking because those stakes are rarely beatable because of the payout structure and the usually very big (%ual speaking) rake. The only reason to play in such super-micro-games is in my opinion if one is not familar with the basic rules yet.

The skill level of the $2.50, $3.50 oder $7 HU SNG is still low enough so that you should be able to take on fish all ready but should not meet too many regs, who make your life hard.

[DASNerdly]

I'll be happy to tell him it was you who "sold" me. And yes, I understand the point about "active learning" and agree that watching something passively is not likely to help much.

As for the bankroll-related question, I don't mind the question at all - I'm here to learn, and what to play is part of the learning process I suppose.

So this may be more info than you were bargaining for, but basically I have about $240 sitting in an account at Cake. It was doing nothing and I decided to check out SNGs...did a few 9 and 18 man ones, even made a couple bucks, but once I got into the $ I quickly got knocked out. Wanting to learn more about how to play against 1 or 2 opponents late in an SNG I stopped by this forum, started reading, played a few HUSNGs and just absolutely fell in love with the format. So now I'm playing H-T HUSNGs. As for what buy-in level to play at, I simply started at the lowest...there was no more thought put into it than that!

I forget if I mentioned this earlier, but I'm an old fart, nowhere near college age, so $ is really an issue, within reason (I *would* have to convince my wife if I told her I wanted to put more into that account ).

Above the $0.75 HUSNGs Cake has $1.50, $3.50 and $7.00. Rake is 4% at $0.75 & $1.50, 2.86% for the $3.50s and 2.14% for the $7. So for my skill and bankroll what level should I play?

Thanks for all your help!

[egoismforever]

I have never played on cake myself, so I do not know the structure (X minutes to increase from Blind level ?? / !! to xx / yy), but if it is a turbo structure and you start >50 BB deep and the blind levels do not increase like every minute or make big jumps, 50 Buy-Ins should be fine and I would recommend you to play the $3.50 once you feel that you know the basics.

However, if the structure is very fast (increase every minute or makeing big jumps) and you start out with a short stack (usually <30BB) this is more like a Super- or Hyperturbo structure and you might wanna chose to go with a 100 BI - BRM.

The reason for this is simply: postflop is where you can get the biggest edge if you are better in skill then your opponent, but if you are very short and have like 8 to 12 BB leift you eventually will start with openshoveing (push all in preflop) or folding and there you really can get the edge if your opponent does not adjust to your open-pushing range. The lower the edge, the lower your return on investments (%ual speaking ofc, you still might have a bigger $ hourly if playing the faster structure, but this is because of the bigger volume only). If you play hypers other than turbos or regspeed HU SNG you will end up playing push or fold after less hands are played.

/edit: that you should talk to Ryan about it was a joke. As I said, I jsut like to help some new HU SNG player out.

[DASNerdly]

Hypers - 25 BB to start, blinds go up every 2 mins. Cake does have some HUSNGs with 75 BB to start and 5 min blinds, but the rake on those is 4-8% depending on level. So I guess I'll go with 100 BIs, which means I could play at the $1.50 level but not the $3.50 (well, unless I decide to put an extra $100 in I suppose).

Thanks again!

(and yeah, I figured it was a joke...I was just playing along, which I guess is hard to get across in text! )

[egoismforever]

From the kind of cotent that you will receive from HU SNG.com you actually should be better off, playing hyper turbos, since there seem to be much more hyper content (which makes sense, since hypers have become more popular than turbos quite a while ago and there is simply more traffic - alltough I cannot speak for Cake).

Yesterday I watched a video which coffeyay has recently released. It is the first part of a 3 to 4 parts series and focus on the math of poker in general but also with extra focus on the hyper-turbo stuff.

http://www.husng.com/content/coffeey...-husngs-part-1

[DASNerdly]

ooohhh, fun with poker maths!

[egoismforever]

[coffeeyay]

in general a lot of hyper content on husng.com. Part 2 of that series will be coming out this weekend or monday (tuesday at latest). Also recommend leakfinder videos as a great way to learn.

Playing low stakes is a great approach. One thing to keep in mind is that if you're planning on playing micro stakes to learn, I think it's really worth it to invest in training vids and/or coaching as it will also accelerate your growth as well. Playing low stakes with high rake is paying $ to learn, but a more efficient way is definitely training material.

Posting hands here is also good.

[DASNerdly]

Thanks coffee...I'll definitely be doing all of that, b/c I want to eventually play with the big kids!

[Bluenowhere]

Should my standard end game strategy be switching to nash? If so at what stack depth would you advise this?

Also on HUSnG.com do videos go over basic concepts (and some ranges I should be shoving in common spots pre)? I've got like a 5% ROI at micros but I've generally just taught myself as I've gone along. I feel like I'm probably making some significant errors that I'm not even aware of so would like to check that part of my game is not going to hurt me when i move up.

Another question about HUSnG. How much download space (not sure of technical word) does an average video use. I have a 15GB limit per month on my internet so how much of that would each download use?