Quote:
Originally Posted by LordRiverRat
And I'm really losing confidence in this forum. I present an unconventional idea because I want to discuss moving beyond ABC nit poker, and I get a lot of backlash. I'm not surprised. Then I back up my reasoning with math and get accused of showing off.
My friend who plays higher says 2+2 is useless and a waste of time. Starting to see why. Everyone on this forum either seems to advocate ABC nit poker or is holding back and doesn't want to give actual advice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LordRiverRat
Well he played 5/10 in Las Vegas for five years
As people work to improve their game, they pass through a number of stages. This particular forum attracts people in one of the stages, which is the HH stage. People post basically the same question: I'm in this hand and now not sure what to do. By far the biggest reason they don't know what to do is that they don't have a read on the villain or a minimal read.
Your read on this villain is 50's year old WG who is a little sticky pf. That's it. Without a better read, the default play is going to be the advice you get.
If you want to play more unusual lines successfully, you need to have better reads on your villains. Let's say you knew that this villain will donk only if he has a hand of medium value that is vunerable to giving a free card away. In addition, you know that he'll fold to pressure to a raise because he's never going to put himself in the position of stacking off with that medium hand. Now, it is possible to give advice to reflect the facts of the situation. The paradox is that if you have that good of a read, you don't need to make a HH to ask what to do.
If your friend who played 5/10 was a good player, I'm not surprised he would find 2+2 useless to him. He would have excellent reads on the entire player pool since recreational players don't just show up to the poker room and play 5/10, even in LV. He would know if an unknown player showed up at his table, he would observe his play for a while playing ABC until he developed a read on that player.
I've used this analogy multiple times. This forum is a way station on the poker railroad, not a final destination. Our goal in this forum is educate and entertain you while you're here and then move you on your way to the next stop. For many, this is as far as they go and they take the spur to the rest of their non-poker life. The rest are going to move on to other places to further their education. If this forum isn't helpful to you any longer, then I understand moving on.
However, the biggest thing holding you back now is your observational skills about your villains. That's where you need to focus your attention if you want to move up. In this HH, there are about 10 things you should have observed about the villain that you could have given as reads even if this was the first hand you played against him. Whenever I read a HH that says, "no reads" I take it as, "better just give you the conventional line because you aren't ready for anything other than that."