Hi, I decided after several failed attempts at building a solid bankroll to look for advice on 2+2, I had heard that this is a good place to talk about poker and get advice on become a better player.

I will first of all tell you a little about me, I have just turned 20 and I am currently in my 1st year at University where I study Business Studies and Marketing. I study in Scotland and this is also where I am from although my father is iranian so I have a duel nationality.

As far as my poker goes when I first turned 18 me and my friends became obsessed with casinos and gambling, we would spend around 3-4 days a week going to casinos etc, anyways onto my poker. I started playing poker as a way to get away from roulette and blackjack and soon found out there is lots of money to be made playing poker. I started to go along to daily tournaments at my local casino in edinburgh and obviously wasted alot of money to start off with. As I improved I opened up a Pokerstars account, on my first day of opening I wasted around $2,000 playing $3/$6 NLH. I stopped playing nearly 1 year later I came back but I am a losing player online and cant seem to turn this around.

In live games sometimes play tourneys at my local casino and generally do pretty well in them, I am in the £+. However I also play the £1/£2 and £1/£3 games there with whatever money I have and for a short time i was winning but now an overwhelming loser.

I have terrible Bankroll management and a few months ago I put in £400 roughly $720 into my account I started off playing 25c/50c HU NLH however lost a large amount and was soon down to $300. I then started playing SNG's $7 6-max hyper turbos and started tracking my results I had an ROI of 25% and with a 4th place finish in a MTT I was back up to my $700. I then jumped up to $15 hypers and I was breaking even, I then started losing and running pretty bad, I tilt very easily so I then started playing 50c/1 zoom and 25c/50c zoom along with 25c/50c HU NLH (which i cannot beat) and lost my BR.

I am really keen and determined to make myself a good player and start winning money, I have recently realized cash games is not my forte. I dont currently have any spare $$ to play with so I am taking this time out to try and improve my game, I am looking for help from more experianced players on what I should do next? What sort of coaching would be good for me and overall what am I doing wrong and what can I do to prevent me from doing these things. What sort of sites are good for SNG players and what books would you recommend. I also find it VERY hard to stay motivated without seeing big results, for example if I am playing $7 hypers for 1 week and make $400 I then want to move to $15s. how can I stop this? could anyone share stories of how there patience has payed off?

Sorry the post is so long and boring but I would be grateful if someone would be able to help, whether its recommending a book or a coach or just roughly telling em what the think my next steps should be.

Thanks guys

Khosrowpour8

you should not play poker as a way to make money.

learn about ...

actually, Ill stop there.

Go and read the stickies at the top of this forum. then come back with any additional questions you have.

ok, I will go and have a read.

One main thing straight away I need help understanding is what the VPIP, EV etc all mean and how they effect my game, could you help me with that? I have holdem manager but dont really understand it just use it to look at my graph. thanks

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...ncement95.html

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78...ntents-397190/

Thanks for the reply, I cant find anything that explains what EV, VPIP etc mean?

I know I am sounding like a real idiot here, but I really am just looking for help sorry if it annoys anyone, just struggling to navigate around the threats

would anyone be willing to help me over SKYPE? thanks

That's OK

If you read this COTW thread, and the threads that are linked within it, you will get a ton of information about HUD stats etc and how to use them

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78...em-pt3-498759/

EV means expected value. EV / All In EV is a tricky subject, search for an in depth explanation if you're interested.

VPIP is Voluntarily Put In Pot - how often the villain raises or calls preflop - what % of their hands they are playing

PFR is Pre Flop Raise - How often the villain raises preflop when they enter a pot

AF is Aggression Factor - How often villain bets or raises rather than calls

OP, stop playing anything except the lowest possible stakes using proper BRM.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78...-stats-699669/

+1. OP, If you had found this site before you deposited, you could've saved $2000, because someone would've told you that jumping right into 3/6 NL is bankroll suicide. I doubt there's a regular in this forum who can beat that limit.

The problem is that you're trying to use poker as a get-rich-quick scheme. That doesn't work. It's going to take hundreds of hours of play, and hundreds of hours of work away from the tables, before you'll be able to realistically make money from the game (and even then it's not a given; many people just don't have either the mindset or the skill set to be a long-term winner).

Its generally accepeted that online poker is harder than live poker.

If I was keen on making right away, I would learn the basics on this forum, get a training site subscription depending on what games you want to play( Duecescracked, card runners etc), watch a video a day, and play live AFTER every 10- 20 k hands or so at the lowest stakes you can realistically be rolled for( $1000 for 10-25c, $800 for $10-20c, $640 for 8-16c, $400 for 5-10c, $200 for 2-5c, and $80 for 1-2c) If you can afford more than 1000, then I would try it our for 15-20 k hands and stop playing if I'm getting crushed


What you may not realize is that poker is a much more complicated game than it appears to be.

I don't understand everyone's fascination with jumping right into playing a very specialized and specific type of game, be it heads up or weird structured hyper SNGs etc. Personally I even think zoom is a bad way to learn poker.

Yeah heads up can be insanely profitable, but don't you think you would be better off learning the fundamentals playing 6max or FR(leaning towards 6max since FR is just wait for the nuts and shove) before you go spew off all your chips to someone who has been waiting at a table for 3 hours to stack you.

Your overriding problem has nothing to do with terminology. Unfortunately, you became involved in the casino scene at a very young age and are now a GAMBLER and not a good poker player. You have not shown the discipline necessary to be a good poker player. If you truly have a desire to be good at poker, whether it be online or live, you will start at the bottom and work your way up using very disciplined bankroll management. If you don't do that you will never be successful, nor will you be able to determine how good you are or how good you could potentially become.