Cash Game Player Who Has Seen the Light
05-18-2015
, 10:41 AM
0. Nobody really understands ICM, or in other words ICM only partly understands the underlying things it's trying to measure. You get to understand it more by looking at bubble spots away from the table and also thinking about the ones that are exceptions to ICM and why.
1. Obviously you should use Kelly or something when you know your ROI but a good starting point would be 100 BI for the level you want to play.
2. ROI is the key one. If you have a truly massive volume you can look at distribution of finishing positions. I think all-in chip EV is probably less than useless due to ICM.
3. That they play tighter 9 - handed? A bit, yes. 6 handed tend to play deeper for the same blind level length because any given player has slightly more hands per level and significantly more playable hands per level.
4. It's more opponent specific than level specific but balancing is not especially important below $5 - but you do get into levelling based on previous history. Above $5 I will tell you when I get there
5. Don't know. I often use nash calculator online.
6. This is individual (4 for me though). Be careful when you get heads-up as the game requires a lot more of your attention. I recently played HU for a 45 against someone 11-tabling. He was folding about 80% of hands including on the button. The final hand we had pretty much even stacks - I had AKs and he 3-bet all in. I considered folding and just going back to stealing the blinds because he was playing so badly - probably because he was stacking 11 tables and insta-folding his 85s when it came up before he realised which table it was (I called and won though). It might make sense to reg a set of tournaments and play them all out, have a break then continue - this way you are playing fewer tables when you reach the bubble and probably only one table when you are heads up.
Good luck.
1. Obviously you should use Kelly or something when you know your ROI but a good starting point would be 100 BI for the level you want to play.
2. ROI is the key one. If you have a truly massive volume you can look at distribution of finishing positions. I think all-in chip EV is probably less than useless due to ICM.
3. That they play tighter 9 - handed? A bit, yes. 6 handed tend to play deeper for the same blind level length because any given player has slightly more hands per level and significantly more playable hands per level.
4. It's more opponent specific than level specific but balancing is not especially important below $5 - but you do get into levelling based on previous history. Above $5 I will tell you when I get there
5. Don't know. I often use nash calculator online.
6. This is individual (4 for me though). Be careful when you get heads-up as the game requires a lot more of your attention. I recently played HU for a 45 against someone 11-tabling. He was folding about 80% of hands including on the button. The final hand we had pretty much even stacks - I had AKs and he 3-bet all in. I considered folding and just going back to stealing the blinds because he was playing so badly - probably because he was stacking 11 tables and insta-folding his 85s when it came up before he realised which table it was (I called and won though). It might make sense to reg a set of tournaments and play them all out, have a break then continue - this way you are playing fewer tables when you reach the bubble and probably only one table when you are heads up.
Good luck.
05-19-2015
, 01:50 PM
05-20-2015
, 08:15 AM
Quote:
Actually the 3bet stats and cbet stats are pretty vital. 3bet and fold to 3bet are especially key, since there's a lot of restealing going on.
The catch is twofold: first, you never get a ton of stats on most players, unless you're seriously grinding. Second, the stats you do get on regs will be "dirty", in that most of the data will prob come from early play, where they'll be tighter, but their play (and yours) will change dramatically once you get to the M<10 stage. I suppose once you get over 1K hands on someone you could get your HUD to filter the data, though I'm not aware how to do this.
Also, I'm sure you know this, but depending on how many tables you've got going, there's not a lot of time to get deep into your HUD stats beyond what is on your popup. So positional awareness is important, but idk how often you get both enough data and enough time to process it.
I play both Sng/small MTT and cash games, and the biggest mental switch is that there's not a lot of room for creativity in turbos, because everyone is always short. Math memorization (when to push, when to call) is somewhere between very important and extremely important.
I think the only way to measure your success in tourneys is ROI, though when deciding whether the light was worth seeing or not, you should look at your hourly in MTT vs cash. Also, I'm not enough of a grinder to care too much about FPP, but I assume with cash you'll earn far more than in 3.50 SnG.
The catch is twofold: first, you never get a ton of stats on most players, unless you're seriously grinding. Second, the stats you do get on regs will be "dirty", in that most of the data will prob come from early play, where they'll be tighter, but their play (and yours) will change dramatically once you get to the M<10 stage. I suppose once you get over 1K hands on someone you could get your HUD to filter the data, though I'm not aware how to do this.
Also, I'm sure you know this, but depending on how many tables you've got going, there's not a lot of time to get deep into your HUD stats beyond what is on your popup. So positional awareness is important, but idk how often you get both enough data and enough time to process it.
I play both Sng/small MTT and cash games, and the biggest mental switch is that there's not a lot of room for creativity in turbos, because everyone is always short. Math memorization (when to push, when to call) is somewhere between very important and extremely important.
I think the only way to measure your success in tourneys is ROI, though when deciding whether the light was worth seeing or not, you should look at your hourly in MTT vs cash. Also, I'm not enough of a grinder to care too much about FPP, but I assume with cash you'll earn far more than in 3.50 SnG.
Actually many people have told me that cash games are just more fun because of the 'creativity' factor that you mentioned and after a week of SnGs and I can really see what they mean.
I enjoy live tourneys the most and was thinking that SnGs would be of most help.
I've been playing live tourneys for the past 7 years and it has easily been the most profitable form of poker for myself. I've been playing online cash for about 3 years and a break even player.
People say play the game you enjoy the most but when you spend many hours away from the studying you want to see some return.
Anyone know a poker counsellor
