So I love the game of NLHE, but I haven't really been playing it consistently. When I lived closer to a poker room I read some poker stuff and originally made this account with the intention of getting into poker and becoming more of a competitive recreational player. Well I needed to put that off until I graduated college, but now that I've done that I have some extra income and time, and I'd like to learn to play some poker. I've played in a handful of $20 live tournaments at charity rooms (<10) and cashed 2, one of which I got like $300 bucks for. Cool, well at least I'm not a complete idiot, but I attribute those wins to luck. I knew just enough about poker to be dangerous.

Anyway, now it's time to learn and coincidentally at the end of the month I'm going to visit my buddy that lives in Vegas. He's been a cash player for a while and recently moved to Vegas (unrelated to poker). We're gonna play some 1/2, 1/3 and some tournaments. This will be my second time setting foot in a casino. My questions are as follows.

What should I do to improve my game (other than read hand analysis, think critically of WHY certain plays are the right ones)?

What poker rooms should I check out in Vegas for these stakes?

What the hell is a comp? I get that you are rewarded for playing for a certain amount of time but what if I'm only visiting for 3 or 4 days?

I've been reading that table selection is very important. How long should it take me to get a decent read on my opponents? In tournaments I usually get a feel after 5 or 6 orbits. Is this too much? Should I be paying more attention?

Thanks for all the help guys/gals.

1) The best way to improve is to play ... and while you are playing pay attention to every hand, not just the ones you are involved with. When I traveled I would print off odds charts and shorter 'fact' sheets to study when on the plane so they would be fresher in my mind.

2) Most rooms will have those stakes. I would avoid the 'daily' tournaments held at most casinos since the structures really stink but you may be on a budget. I really like The Orleans on Friday nights. They had a $135 that paid $6K+ up top and the cash games were both full of action and decent stacks. I played the rest of my time at Aria, MGM and Bellagio (mainly Aria). I checked out Venitian, Planet Hollywood, Bally's, Treasure Island and Cesar's but didn't really feel 'good' at the tables. The Aria has 2 daily $125 tournaments as well. You can try the Bravo App for your phone to see what's going on around you, but some casinos may not be members.

3) Comps are generally time based and each casino 'may' have their own programs. Some will just offer a discount on your room rate if you play so many hours a day in the poker room. Since you will have a place to stay they wouldn't do you any good. Most places will 'pay' $0.60 to $1.00 per hour and then you can buy food/gifts with the money once it is earned.

You probably wont get any 'comps' for playing in a tournament since 'the take' on those is fixed up front for the casino.

If you plan on moving around then it may not be worth your while, but most places offer some free slot play for just signing up for their card.

4) You don't get to pick your table for a tournament, so ... But for cash play you want to pick the table where you have the biggest advantage. And then you want to pick the best seat at the table to gain position on certain players.

You wont be able to pick your initial table, but you can request a table change and/or seat change as soon as you get into a game.

Since you are fairly new I would assume you are pretty ABC in both tournament and cash sooo ... just play your 'current' game and don't try to be too creative with your own play. Your biggest decisions will come from how you read the other players. The better players will pick up on your game and try to push you around. Just be patient and play smaller pots.

Yes you will miss some value, but just always think about what options you are offering your opponent when you bet, especially on the River. Are you ready to call a raise on a A76QQ board with your A9 in a $60 pot? You bet Flop, checked Turn and now you want an extra $21 on the River from UTG because you like A9h?

1) You should've bet the Turn
2) Why didn't your opponents bet the Turn? Not sure ... Maybe you have KK and they have Qx.
3) Who is really going to just call you here? Maybe A4 .. and you lose to AJ/AT
4) All Qx and good players will see an opportunity to bluff/raise you on this River.

Just get to showdown and not expose yourself to these types of spots.

If you see what you think is a shark .. change tables or just play a tighter range of hands against him. I am not trying to scare you, if you have had some success so far you should be fine. I am just trying to 'calm' you down, just because it's Vegas doesn't mean you need to get creative with your game. If you hit, then be happy but trying to force the issue will end up a very big issue. GL

Well, you won't improve by playing alone. In fact, there's no way you can improve by just playing. If you're bad, playing more will just see more errors and mistakes and you won't actually learn a) what those errors are or how to identify them and b) you will not be able to rectify them.

Play a bit sure, but when you're bad studying is going to be much more valuable to you.

OP, you might find this series of articles interesting, especially the blurb at the end of chapter 4:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...18/?highlight=

tl;dr

You're going to take $200, $400, or $600 or whatever to a casino. My advice is to do so with realistic expectations.

First of all, let's say you're going to the casino with only $200 or $300 (one buyin for 1/2 or 1/3). You simply won't be able to make the best possible decisions at the table if you bring only one buyin because you'll be afraid to *lose* that buyin. Even if you're in a situation where you have a 65% chance to double up, there's still a 35% chance that you'll lose. If you have a 45% chance to TRIPLE up, you have a 55% chance to LOSE. It's just not mathematically optimal. If you take 2 or 3 buyins with you it can help to mitigate this, but still, you have to be realistic about how long your money will last.

I'm not trying to talk you out of going to the casino. It can be a fun experience. If you pay attention like everyone is suggesting it can be a great learning experience too. All I'm saying is I suggest that you go in with realistic expectations.

I talk a lot about mistakes. If you haven't played 100,000+ hands of poker, you *will* make mistakes at a live 1/2 or 1/3 table. Each mistake can cost you $30, $60, or even an entire buyin. your alternative is to take the $200 to $600, deposit it online, and play the lowest possible stakes you can find for as long as humanly possible. You won't get rich that way, but your learning experiences will be the least financially burdensome possible.

Hope that helped. If you do go to Vegas, have fun - it's an awesome town with tons to do and see!

Thanks for all the tips guys!

yeah, nah

You don't agree? Surely you see more value in a combination of playing, studying, database review and posting hands than in playing alone, no?

yes, but he's saying you can't improve by playing alone

You need to play to win in poker, obviously. But if you're just playing, you're not going to make any real changes to your game. You won't review trouble spots, you won't learn what a range actually looks like in a spot, and you'll go on playing your same game.

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."

There's no way you can get better by playing alone. Unless, of course, you've played like <20k hands lifetime.

says who?

You can't do those things while playing. You need to review off the table. Even opening FlopZilla while PS is open now could get you in trouble.

you're just echoing what you're saying that I disagree with. I asked for a source or evidence of your claim

The reason you're disagreeing with me is, I'm guessing, to make you feel better about the lack of study you do?

My thesis, if you will, is that it's impossible for someone completely new to the game to move up the stakes by playing alone. The best they could do is 2NL-5NL off just playing.

The best regs today spend hours each day studying.

ad hominem

argument by repetition

red herring

I'm guessing you post those hands in uNL while you're playing?

Certainly isn't the case lol.

K, non sequitur.

Anyway if you had an argument you would've made it by now

Tiltninja is right here.

Meale, the problem is you opened by saying "there's no way you can improve with just playing" and since then everything you've said has only justified something like "the most effective way to improve includes studying and off the table work." These are two super different things. Of course you can improve by just playing.

And how would you do this?

Take your Einstein quote but do something different and see if you get a different result

How about explaining how one would get better at poker by just playing, without the caustic flippery?

Just "doing something different" is going to be impossible to quantify as to whether it was better or not. It could produce a better result but could be worse the next time around. You end up just clicking buttons without any rhyme or reason as to why you did it ("just trying something different").

it's not impossible. you can learn a lot from what you're shown. e.g, if you run a bluff and get called, you see what they called you with and ask yourself "did you include that hand in your range, did they call you with a hand much stronger than what you thought they had and why did you not include that hand in their range, or did they call you with a hand you thought you could get them to fold but they didn't"? then you not only build your knowledge from experience, but you also learn something you can use against that villain for that session.

and it's like all the questions that come up all the time "should I check raise bluff here?" do it and find out. how else are you gonna know?

and another prudent question other than "how" to do this is "why"

I remember when you first posted on this forum. I helped answer all your questions. They weren't discussions or debates. just answers. Just like most questions in BQ. So why would you go out of your way to figure things out for yourself when all the answers are out there? You're a student of this era, so naturally you take the path of least resistance so you can't be blamed for thinking this way.

But every strategy was figured out by playing. And there wasn't individual revolutionary strategists who figured things out and told everyone else. There was a time every winner was somewhat ahead of their time, and they all figured out things through their play. and they discussed it with each other and found that they all independently reached the same conclusions, and so these ideas were given a name. For example, take this old chestnut - the beginnings of what we call GTO.

anyway, there's a lot of good in just playing, figuring things out for yourself while you're right there on the tables. you may think that it's not worth your while because all this info and technology that makes it unnecessary, but eventually you have to develop your own game

Do it and find out is probably the lowest EV approach to answering the question.

By doing concentrated sessions off the table, you can analyse certain textures and learn to visualise what the ranges actually are. For a myriad of boards/spots.

If "just playing" is 1 EV, then studying and playing, at least when you're very new to poker, is surely 100 EV.

That's just not true.

Name one mid/high stakes cash pro who started from the bottom and got where they are by "just playing". The people who excel now spend countless hours using tools like FZ, GTOrb, Snowie, Piosolver, etc.

You just cannot do this. You may improve very marginally but there is no way you will make drastic improvements just by playing. You need to learn how to think differently, why you should think differently, and when you should think differently.

If what you're saying is correct, I'd be ballin 200z having played well over a million hands. You get to a point where "just playing" reaches a point of diminishing returns and I'm quite certain it happens within your first 50k hands of poker (online).

You develop your own game with these tools, not by grinding out more hands and "thinking" harder about spots as they come up. Trust me, it doesn't work.