First off, I would like to take this opportunity to thank 2p2 and more specifically STTF for all of the help you have given me. I hope I have answered enough dumb noob questions to repay this some what. Your advice to me since I originally joined has been very valuable. There are too many people who have given me good advice, so I will pass on individually pointing people out.

I figured I'd spare everyone from a strat post, since me giving strat advice is probably the equivelent of a kiwi bird giving survival lessons. So instead, I figured I'd try to impress some knowledge about some ways that may help you understand and use this tool that is the STT forum. So...



New posters guide to the (hopefully) successful use of STTF
Read the FAQ already dag nab it
I know much of this is covered in the faq. I will not be covering why the flack do they keep locking your threads. FAQ, if you haven't read it, STFU, GTFO, and go read it nao! Noone cares about your BBV. Yes, you need valid sample for your ROI % to mean jack-ish. Yes, the best site for SNG's is a site with SNG's.

Forums in general
If you are fairly new to forums altogether, he is a nice video that I first saw from BBV4L forum sticky that may shed some light on this monster that is teh interwebz. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/197209...ve_on_a_forum/


Posting hands
GIGO, Garbage in Garbage out
This section on posting hands can be pretty much summarized with this term, GIGO. GIGO means garbage in, garbage out. If you give people crap tail info in your OP, you are going to get crap tail answers, because you started a crap tail thread that does noone any good because you did not take enough time writing the OP to get useful, applicable, and accurate answers.

FFS convert your histories
Use converter if at all possible. 'Nuff said here.

Please god include some reads and/or relevant history in your OP.
I have no idea if your TT is good or what the best line is on the J high flop if I have no idea what villain will call your PFR with. I'm not saying you should have a booklet of notes for every hand you post, but try to provide the best information you can have.
Also, if you have no reads, you have no idea how your opponent is playing, you have no idea WTF is going on in the hand, that's a sign. It is a sign that you probably have: a) too many tables going on; b) need to turn the tv off; or c) probably should have a few less brandys/puffs of the magic stuff in order to expect to play profitable poker.
If relevant, include your image at the time. How did you double up? Do the other players think you are the son of two related primates because you have tried to steal every button folded to you? Maybe they will 3bet you lighter if this is the case. Your image is very important in many situations to what the correct play is. It is not always important, but it can't hurt!

Posting Wiz Hands
Wiz hands should not be forbidden IMO (some may disagree on this). With that said, noone wants to look at hands that your pocket calculator tell you are obviously good or bad. If you didn't run it first, you should not be posting it. PERIOD.
Additionally, starting threads with obvious answers you can figure out on your own are a great way to make someones ignore list. Once that happens, you will not be getting much if any advice from them again.
If you are going to respond to one of these threads, be pretty dang sure what the correct play is unless you have ran the numbers also. It makes you look like a total mouth breather when you do so and are wrong (trust me I have learned this from personal experience).
Please don't let this deter you too much from posting Wiz hands, because ICM is not always right. But please, please, please at least run the freaking hand first THEN ask questions.

Stopping the action at the critical decision in the hand
'Oh crap the FD got there on the turn.' Well maybe the critical decision was 'should I protect my hand on the flop or try to CR.' If so, you are only biasing peoples responses by putting more action in. Even good players can be results oriented, especially if they see the results, ldo. Also, while I don't think posting the results later in a thread is always a bad thing, you can from the point you post the results discount all advice you are given. Once you post results all advice in the thread will be tainted by you posting the results. Obv you need to protect your QQ on the flop, the K of is coming on the turn!

Theory Posts
Theory posts aren't bad. With that said, posting individual hands will give most new players more mileage. Some times the theory is grey behind the scenes. Play pocers, post hands from those pocers games, get advice on said pocers hands imo.


Replies to threads (even your own!)
Noone is obligated to reply to you at any point
If they post in your thread, they are nice enough to respond to the OP at all! If they don't reply if they would do the same with AQo in your AKs thread, get over it and dredge your PT database trying to find a AQo hand that is the same.
Many of these players charge people like real maneys and stuff for coaching, so don't expect free coaching just because they replied to your OP. It is fine to ask questions you have about replies, but you are not entitled to an answer to them (again, or entitled to an answer to your OP).

Derails
It is generally impolite to 'derail' someone else's thread (and by generally I mean never unless you know it is ok because you and the OP are friends).
What is derail? Derail is when two idiot posters argue with each other about something that probably isn't even realavent to the hand in question. Try to respect other's threads, and try to keep it on topic.
If someone is derailing your thread, ask them politely to stop. If they don't listen, hit the report button, or alternatively tell them to go ***** and stay the **** out your thread.
Also, many posters on STTF try to avoid confrontation (and some not so much ). They got over that to respond to you or someone else. That doesn't mean they have to put you flaming them or respond to someone trolling them saying they are stupid (again, say hello to my lil friend, the ignore button).

Engrish only at the tables!
Many of the posters here do not speak or read engrish as their first language. Us Yanks, Brits and other english speakers, we all feel bad for them.. but it is not their fault they grew up with such a disadvantage. Just be glad a player who is probably better than you was nice enough to read the crazy A, 9, and UTG raises to 100, then break out the google language tools to tell you what they think.


Why didn't I get the response I was looking for
Fundamental problems with your play before the 'critical decision point' in the hand
If you played the beginning of the hand like a donk, you may not get a good answer to the rest of the hand. 'Ok, so I limped my AA from early position at level 1 and 7 people limped behind me, is my hand good on this flop?' Expect a lot of replies to the effect of 'wtf raise pre /thread.'

Bumping 'old' threads
Suppose 4 people responded to your OP. See that number called views next to the replies counter? Probably some very good players viewed it and didn't have anything to add.
Again, speaking from personal experience, when a poster give noobs (or other players) ****ty advice, someone usually steps in to tell that person said offender are a moron, or at a minimum give good advice to make up for your crap advice. It is fine to bump your thread within reason, but don't expect anyone to respond with much different if a couple established posters have given you the same advice (and it is 90+% because they were giving good advice).

Threads where a reply can provide info on how to exploit a player
Answering some questions will give away too much about a player and his/her thought process/strengths/weaknesses. Some spots are very sensative to ranges. Giving away ones full ranges can open you to exploitive play by other thinking players. If a respondent has a flaw in their thought process, they do not want people they play with to reconginze this from their posts!
Because of this, you will not always get the responses you are looking for with the 'what range do I do XYZ with ABC chip set up' questions. They aren't going to play the STT for you. Many times, they are going to post a reply of what they would do with THIS SPECIFIC hand, or stay out of your thread altogether.

Reading comprehension FTW
When you make a thread asking for advice, for the love of god, read the advice before trying to defend your point, your play, and what you think is the best play. They posted in your thread trying to help you. Please listen to their advice before you respond about how what you did is best.
It is fine to disagree, or even continue to play like a donk if you so choose, but posting hands is supposed to be an interactive activity. You post hands, and they reply. You think about it, and you take what you like. If you are just posting to state your case and ignore everyones responses, go to crappypokerplayer.blogspot.com.

ZOMG dey bein meen two mi
Tough love and welcome to STTF.
One day young padowan, you to may tell micro donks how much they suck. Maybe people telling you how horrible you are will help you become a good STT player too... or perhaps you will have to resort to making 1k posts about forum ettiquette like me.

Summary
In summary, everyone uses the forums differently. It can be a great tool if used properly. You will not agree with everyone on everything, and that is fine. There are a lot of great players that frequent these forums and give much better advice than me, perhaps if you use the forums correctly, they will give advice to you! Don't take it personally if they tell you how bad you play. Just try to listen to people with an open mind and learn.


IB4 a bunch of replies that don't answer my OP questions or people say what a cop out this is since I just plagiarized the forum sticky. To all of those people GTFO, *****, and just be glad I didn't do a strat post!

Thanks again all.

Congrats CB on the 1000th post. This should help some of the new players. We all had to start somewhere.

Bump

Congrats on the 1k posts. I think yours is a good post and doesnt totally repeat the FAQ - in fact has some stuff that could be added in.

With regards to the quoted section above, this is something I (so I'm assuming others) have a problem with. Of course while I'm playing I have good reads, HUD stats and consider my image. However, most of the hands I post are from later review of my play or hands that I marked to come back to in Poker Tracker, so I forget any specific reads or image I had whent the hand happened. So my question is for all those who post reads etc how do you do this when you're multi tabling?? Do you take a screenshot or something?

Nice post for newbies, it should be stickied, imo.

Lemme just derail this thread by telling Korlit "newbies don't read stickies.." :-)

Oh and congrats!

I usually mark down hud stats when I copy paste the hand or look them up later after the set is done. I don't play as many tables as any of more seasoned players with that said. IMO, for new players, they should not be playing as many tables, because they are still working on their fundamentals.

Congratz on 1k, your way faster than I am...

castlebravo you are my hero

Grazt,nice post

GJ on 1k. Nice post.

Nice post. Some good advice there. GL in the future.

very nice! now ban OP.

Congrats on the 1k

Nice 1K post, but you missed an acronym dictionary!

BTW FWIW a lot of ppl just think FFS, imo I can't understand all this txt speak in the OP, I just want to know when to shove AK FTW AINEC ldo lol. Off to look at some NSFW.

Edit: I'm going to STFU now and GTFO before I derail and get hit with the beero-ban-stick

http://www.urbandictionary.com

lmao

Congrats on 1K dude. Wish you all the best!

Congrats on 1K but obv. don't agree with about half your post. If threads never got derailed, this forum would be close to worthless, and posting hands that are easily resolved with Wiz and/or common sense should earn infractions. Also in the "golden age", theory threads were much much more common and the forum was much much better. Why you think standard 6.50 hands are more illuminating is a mystery to me. But whatever.

While I am playing I always have notepad opened in the corner. When I come across an odd hand that I wasn't sure what to do I hit the HH reviewer thing and when I have a chance I copy/paste the hand into notepad, along with any relevant hud stats I have from the players.

And congrats on 1k bravo

Congrats on 1K. Would like to see something about hands that are "out of the ordinary" like bluffs, metagame stuff, etc. Those always seem to provoke useful conversation and thought.

^^This.

Everyone has OP's permission to derail this one.

Sincerely, TY for your response. Many times you have had very harsh but honest with me. I believe your advice is geninely meant to help the OP's and it is always appreciated in my threads.

I think we are saying the same thing here actually. My point about derails is this.. for new posters, interjecting some theoretical set of circumstances into someone's thread that is probably not important to the OP was a cause of much frusteration for myself personally (projection much?). I'm trying to splain to the new guys and gals that the reason these posts aren't being responded to is because you could go on with infinite woulda coulda shoulda iterations of any hand! You can attempt to derail all you want, but I am trying to shed some light on why these types of responses are generally not answered.

As far as the 'great derail' threads, I suspect many of those threads you are thinking of are in fact not derails at all. Think of the classic thread archtype where someone asks a question, and gets two responses. The two responses then fight to the death STTF style and improve all of the participants understanding of what is most likely the optimal play in a situation where two lines are fairly close or at least debatable.

The problem here is I think you are missing the target audience of this post (which I have seen no replies from so far unfort all experienced sweater knitters ITT AFAIK). IMO, if its a $3, $6, or even a casual player's $110 thread, expecting them to understand perfect optimal STT play is a bit much. Also, common sense is not always as it seems. For example, I think there are points in STTs in which we are not even trying to determine if something is a positive expectation play, we are trying to determine how bad of a negative expectation play we are willing to accept to avoid worse later. This is far from common sense, or wiz saiz 2+2=4 imo.

Ah, but today you are in the golden age of tomorrow my friend.

To quote a saying a friend of mine use to alway use, "Puppy love is real to the puppy." In short, trying to figure out what to do with 99/TT UTG at lvl 2 is probably pretty illuminating to the $3 player. If you are opening a $3 thread expecting to see the next great evolution in sng theory, I think you are expecting a bit much.

I like these too. My point is for most new micro players, figuring out the playbook is probably going to be their best approach while they put the pieces of the theory puzzle together.

Thanks again all for visiting. I hope a few new posters read and learned something with this thread.

Hey Castle great post! You are a great contributor here and I am glad you are a member of this forum. Keep up the great work!

VF93

Castle, while that's true, we have archives stuffed full of how to play standard stuff, and there is now so. much. ****. And if you think I'm harsh, try not to ever say anything bones thinks is stupid.

About wiz hands, they should be posted cause **** wiz and wiz =/= wizard of pokah