There is nothing wrong with starting that way. If you are consistently profiting and having fun, then go with it until you get the urge to dive deeper. Watching the Poker Go documentaries I am reminded that many of the elite pros seem to have had some run good at the beginning of their careers that whet their appetites for more. Once you start getting money I am confident you will start thinking "I want to win more." and then you can take the steps needed to do that.

There was a Roy Cooke article 6 months or so ago that said, basically, you just have to be good enough and better than your opponents at the moment. I couldn't agree more. Don't worry about being a master right now.

Answer20,

I appreciate the time you took to make that reply, thank you. I do think I understand where you are coming from. It's come across my mind more than once in a multiway pot that checks around that I should be betting and picking it up so for sure, that's a miss in my "game".

I was thinking through this today and, yea, my decisions need to be more player dependant.

You make a lot of good points that hit home, well played.

Grunching here, but in a nutshell, yes.

Your win rate is a spectrum, its not just binary win|lose.

For live poker specifically, most say 10bb/hr is achievable up to 2/5. I personally think the number is closer to 8bb/hr with a few exceptions.

For the first 2-3bbs, you simply need good hand selection and sizing. This will put you in the top 20% of live poker players and as you say, make you "not as bad" as most. You can stop here and be a winning player.

For the next 2-3bbs, you get good at line reading. You know what a bet/bet/check means. You learn when to bet/fold more. Check/call more. Raise/fold. Etc.

For the final 2-3bbs, you get very good at tilt control and range building / understanding texture. Tilt control, while the simplest poker concept to understand, is the most difficult for most players. Range building is something that comes naturally through lots of volume and/or also through further education. With a solid understanding of ranges and texture comes the proper forms of aggression.

For a bonus 1bb, you get exceptional at reading people. This sounds silly to many but in live poker most people are giant tell boxes. Even normal players give off very reliable tells in certain spots, and you make can extreme adjustments in a vacuum.

All imho

What you are describing is a common strategy at the entry level stakes. I don't know if he coined the term, but Ed Miller refers to it as "fit or fold." It's an approach where a player chooses to continue if he has a hand that hits or fits with the flop and the associated actions, but then folds in all other circumstances.

Personally, I love having a table full of fit or fold players. I think they are the easiest to play against because they are the easiest to read. Their betting patterns usually make pretty clear whether they believe that they are ahead or behind. It's easy to recognize when to get out their way, and it's not too much of a challenge to find spots where you can exploit their willingness to fold marginal hands.

I don't want to be misunderstood, and I'm not advocating "fancy play syndrome." At the entry level stakes, playing fit or fold poker can be EV+ because the average player plays too many hands and calls too often.

Having said that, if you have aspirations to move up in stakes, you need to be able to learn to play with different gears. Also, even if you always want to stay at the entry level stakes, being able to adjust your strategy based on table conditions is an important skill. Despite all the posts you see to the contrary, the existence of card rooms filled with players who will call you down with bottom pair or chase any draw is not quite a myth, but not actually reality, either. What's more accurate is that any given table has a combination of grinders, LAGs, newbies, and wanna-be pros. You need to learn what adjustments to make against each of them because a fit or fold approach will not necessarily be EV+ against each different player type.

I want to comment a bit on "hand reading." OP, you seem to say that it was useless because people are playing almost anything. I look at it differently than many people do.

What I look at is what does this player think is a good hand, great hand or monster and how they play those. For some players, TP is a great hand on the river. Others need a full house on a pair board or the nut flush to start betting. Once I have that read, I'll backtrack into what their starting range could be.

Take player A. He'll call just about everything that is Ax, broadways, connectors down to double gap connectors. However, he's going to only call down with a pair past the flop. He's only raising 2 pair or better and never semi-bluffing. So if I raise pf with QQ and he calls, I don't really consider what he has at first. If the flop come 985r and he raises me, I'm confident he could have a bunch of combos in his range that beat me and I can let the hand go.

Now take player B. He only raises QQ+, AK pf. If he has an OP, he considers it the nuts on the flop. So if I call pf with 98, the flop comes again as 985r and decides to shove over my raise of his bet, I'm calling confidently. He's never going to have better.

This much simpler than trying to think, "he's got 58 combos and how many of those can beat me?"

Venice10, thank you. Good advice and I understand where you are coming from.

BINGO

In your shoes, you should be happy playing your style, but you should also venture into more aggression in key situations as you gain more experience, and become more comfortable in the game. It may feel awkward to occasionally bang a flush draw on the turn as a semi-bluff, but it is also a profitable play if done in proper moderation.

Zachary Elwood has a great book on hand reading specifically for the LLNL ballers, which I'd recommend. Though I am a mid-stakes LHE player myself, I thought it was great material. I wish it were longer.

Nope.

Factor in gas, time (opportunity cost), cost of inevitable life tilt, ego, [...]

New lesson learned last night, you can suck less than others at the table and still get wrecked.

Sit down, flop a set of 6's, bet it the whole way, 8 on the river makes a bigger set.

AK on a flop of A K 5, bet it the whole way only to lose to a set of 2's on the river.

All in pre with AA vs TT, ten on the flop. At least it wasn't on the river.

And my personal favorite KK open to $16, two callers, flop 78K. Bet $35, two callers. Turn 3, bet $75, two callers. River 6, shove the rest, two callers both with 9T. WTF.....

Drive home talking to myself, get pulled over for a headlight out. Cop doesn't write me a ticket, finally some run good.

You really only give the action in one of the hands. The Board (and action) for the 66 v 88 hand would be interesting.

Was the Turn a 3 or 4 for the 22 hand? Otherwise just obnoxious play.

AA v TT is 'poker' .. again, how did the betting go?

At least from the KK hand it looks like your bet sizing is OK although I would've bet more than (or shoved) $75 with 2 players left in the hand on the Turn. You offered 3 to 1 to call (225 to 75), which is about what you need for an OESD and the 2nd player gets 4 to 1 to call. What did you have left behind.

This sounds like an 'exciting' room to play in. How deep are you? How many hands do you play that folks are just calling you down like this with no respect for your bets? You are either showing down just many 'ridiculous' hands as they are or you are just dealing with 'maniac' gamblers. GL

The one I remember with some clarity is the AA v TT hand. TT opened to $15, no callers to me in late position and I re-raise to $40, he instantly shoves a stack of red and I jam the last $220 I had and he snap calls.

As far as the frequency of things like I mentioned happening, it depends. It's a relatively young room that seems to get a lot of new players all the time so the table dynamics change frequently. I'd say it fits the description of "Nobody folds, ever" more than a lot of rooms. Some good regs, but not many. It's weird, the good regs all seem comfortable playing against each other because it's the only way to get a 2/5 game going.

If you get to the river at 1/3 the only way you aren't showing down is if the other guy completely whiffs a draw. If you are making hands it's free money most Friday/Saturday nights.