Hey kid....nice going. Great posts. Really happy for you

My live SSNL results were pretty good as far as hourly went but honestly the game just got so boring and slow that I always ended up going back to LHE. Since like you I wasn't playing full time and I wanted to play the game that I enjoyed the most while still making some $ from it. Plus out here in CA most of the live SSNLHE structures are totally lame.

Keep it up matey!

Your lack of hubris is refreshing and will most certainly play a major role in how far/how good you want to be in this game.

Cheese and Rice, Brother. Talk to Mason, see if you can get a book deal put together. I'd read quite a bit, then started scanning down and realized how much you'd written. Whoo!

Funny you cite HOC as a big influence. I'd picked it up at the library a few days ago and started on it. Looks like I'll be bouncing back and forth between Harrington and GcluelessaboutdeepstackG, lol.

You're "table selection" section was a good read. One thing I'd add is trappy players. If I note someone that likes to slowplay or trap, I prefer to be on his right, as I'm more aggro, and would prefer to just lean into him and force him to react to me rather than allow him to comfortably play his game and keep me guessing.

I stopped reading @ "preflop". I'll come back to it I know, just need a break. I know one thing we disagree on is limping. I don't do it, and punish those who do when I choose to play a hand, while you'll happily limp along. This is a leak imo, especially deepstacked, where you'll just have too much trouble getting your stack in when you hit gin.

Congrats on your 1000 hours.

One question I had which I didn't see answered: you said you only play one night a week. Which night of the week is this normally? Friday or Saturday, I'm assuming, as most other nights at most rooms I've been to are usually reg-filled.

This is the non-confrontationalist´s holy book for poker and life.

The cliffs seem to be

Have a clear plan that you understand
Employ discipline
Balance work and play
and enjoy what you do - there is no better advice.

Playing one session a week, every week, is the secret to playing poker for the rest of your life and not getting sick of it.

Listen up, grinders!

p.s. a gentlemanly, light-hearted presence is appreciated in forums as much as at the table. GG, mate.

urgh those limit WRs are so depressing

GG, you have the mental fortitude of a freaking robot to survive that grind for so long.

Awesome post, thanks for the thread.

+1 to this

although reads and tells are related but different things.

I would rarely put stock in a pure tell without any hard data to back it up. Let's say a player verbalizes a bet when he usually doesn't. This is often a sign of strength but it's not going to change my decision unless it was marginal to begin with. But suppose we're not in the hand, player verbalizes a PSB on the river and someone calls and player shows the nuts. That's a tell that is now backed up by data, and I'd be much more inclined to fold in that situation to that player in the future.

I think GG is talking about pure tells, like reading Caro's book and trying to use that to make decisions instead of basing it on villain's line+history

thanks for taking the time to do this

Tells are just 1 piece of information to add to your read.

Also don't read Caro's book read Zach Elwood's book.

I like active and aggressive players to be across from me. I have position on them for several hands an orbit and when they have position on me, I should be weary to enter those pots anyway. It also lets a few people have a chance to call when I am going to 3-bet.

If the player is tight, I am happy being to his right as I can play a much wider range of hands from the co and HJ and still be reasonably sure to have position on table.

+1

Also have to say I supremely disagree with trying to take position on the best player. Your logic that it'll be difficult playing him OOP is exactly what he's thinking, so guess what; he isnt going to get tricky or out of line vs you. You are wasting a seat because he's never going to pay you off, because presumably he's a good thinking player, and good thinking players dont donk off chips OOP.

Always always ALLLLLWAAAYYSS take position on the fish. You can mitigate whatever disadvantage you have being OOP vs a good player by simply not playing much vs him, and unless he thinks you're a fish, he isnt expecting you to play badly OOP thus not much incentive for him to fight you either.

I will glady play with Dwan and Blom on my left as long as Ruffin is on my right.

congratulations on both the 1000 hours and also the post GG. Outstanding work.

I am in a very similar life situation to you in terms of age, job, kids and poker mindset and also spend way too much time here (minus the understanding wife) and am also a 300ish hours a year player with a similar win rate and approach. While 25k hands isn't 'online-robust' I'm certain it is enough for you to know you win and win well, in conjunction with your no frills approach.

Setsy's point is the key summary. It takes a good plan and masses of patience and discipline to beat low stakes live.

You have both. Congratulations and thanks

If I could write a guide to playing in and beating passive LLSNL games, it'd be pretty close to this.

gg reinforcing why he's my favorite poster in this forum. Good on ya.

I'm kind of curious about your aversion to playing deepstacked though. Especially since you probably play longer sessions than most of us, I would think you'd be more comfortable in those spots.

Nice thread.

Some adjustments to consider:
1. Open up your MP raising range, and throw away your MP limping range.

Open limping pocket pairs from MP is pretty weak. In MP in an unopened pot, my standard raising range is something like 22+, all suited connectors, all broadway cards.

In fact, if the button and/or the CO are face-up nits, I'll probably open up my MP range even more.


2. Open up your EP range, and stop folding KQ and AJ!
You seem to be a decent player. If want to take your game to the next level, you must start playing AJ and KQ from EP. Just raise smaller from EP; make it $10.
People are going to call you with much, MUCH worse hands. You're losing value by throwing these hands away.
If you're afraid to open these hands, then you need to move tables.

GG, let me just first say that I always appreciate your posts, and out of most of the SSNL commenters that I regularly see pop up, yours are near the top of my list on a "helpfulness" factor. Your approach of turning out genuinely good advice consistently instead of trolling or one-word responses is a welcome change around here, and I for one, am listening.

Now, I am a recreational player, and in the chicagoland area I have a choice of a few different casinos, some better than others obviously. I haven't started tracking my sessions using a spreadsheet yet, but that is now on my list. Quick question: what are you looking for, or what information do you find most helpful from tracking win/losses?

Hang on, isn´t this a well of sorts?

GG, are you going to be open to impertinent questions relating to the shadier sides of your existence?

Question one. Does your wife have any idea that you have one twoplustwo post (normally longer than the average, detailed and thought-out up to and including the signoff) for approximately every two and a half hands of live NLH you have played?

No worries about having a different theory on how to beat this game; the one bad thing about my method is that it is very results oriented based, and that might not be a good thing considering I've only played 1000 hours.

RE: TT raised to $20 with 3 callers with $300 stacks. I know my SPR is low here and I probably should be stacking off (and on certain boards, I might be leaning towards that). But I really really think I've failed miserably preflop. I've given 3 opponents immediate odds of 4:1 plus given them extra implied odds of 14:1, so 18:1 overall. So none of these guys is really making a mistake preflop (except maybe the first caller if it's not clear it's going very multiway, or maybe some idiots who are playing dominated crap). So preflop I have a small equity advantage for a mere 7bbs, and now postflop I'm playing for 100bb stacks and I'll have no clue if someone just flopped a set. For me, this situation is sucky, as there is a very good chance we make a big mistake here postflop (either folding the best hand or getting stacks in with the worst).

As for my believe of mostly checking the turn, realize that I don't do that in situations where I feel I've created a flop SPR where I should be stacking off on a safe board. So yes, in these cases I'm usually potting the flop to ship the turn.

RE: Suited connectors. That's the great part about the game I play in; a lot of my opponents aren't raising huge like I am. I can't tell you how many lol $8 / $10 / $12 raises I see preflop, even though it's abundantly clear that the table is such that this will see an eleventeen way flop. So I can get in there for a good price with speculative hands. I typically have far and away the largest preflop raise size at my table.

RE: raising a bunch of hands deep. We'll just have to agree to disagree here. With speculative hands, my goal is to get into a hand for as cheap as possible, see a flop in an eleventeen way pot where hopefully not one single idiot manages to fold preflop, keep a sky high SPR, and then simply capitalize on my opponents payoff tendencies postflop when I hit. Limping in for a mere $3 when I can possibly win $500 postflop (166x implied odds) gets me hard.

GgoodluckatthetablesG

With only a PSB left on the turn and with top set, we're fairly easily committed here, imo. Yes, I hate the fact that all the draws got there with two opponents, but I still shove. I could still be in the lead, and if not, I'll suck out 20% of the time.

Now, if we've got 3x PSB left, that might be a different story...

GcluelessNLnoobG

Just to be clear, I'm very big on "reads", but I think these are different than "tells". To me, a read is our overall general concept of the opponent. Does he ever bluff or has he always been ABC straightforward? Does he ever bet on the turn towards pot commitment without nuttish hands? Is he passive or aggro? Does his play differ in multiway vs HU pots? Etc. This overall read of our opponent will help us in making decisions against him. Versus "tells", which to me are shaking hands, leaning back in chair, leaning forward in chair, table talk, acting strong / acting weak, staring down opponent, how he bets chips, etc., all of which, in my humble opinion, are pretty much useless pieces of information and can (should?) be totally ignored.

Gleave"tells"inthemovieswheretheybelongG

Thanks M!

Gputsalittlebitofmyrungoodinanenvelopeandmailsitto MG

Pics! And stories of World Champions! Looking forward to it Skippy!

Gmakeitso!G

I don't really think I addressed this that much, and I really should have. I'm guessing it's one of the single biggest leaks the majority of our opponents have. They'll play fine (maybe even perfect) for hours, but then they'll take a bad beat or just realize they can't seem to win a hand, or whatever, and before you know it that sets them up for a single large mistake that they can't recover from. So a perfect night, albeit sucky night due to card deadness, is washed away all in a single hand or two. You really have to keep your head and prevent yourself from making these one or two really big mistakes.

I'll admit, I am human and don't always keep my head, but I try to limit my "spewy" mistakes to small ones. For example, yesterday I'm cruising along up $400 and then thanks to a period of card deadness / board suckyness / whatever, I find myself up only $65 halfway thru my long session at a great table (although I've played perfectly fine to this point, imo). But I'm human, and have an ego, I can't believe up only up $65 at this great table. So then I'm dealt T8s in EP and I know this is a really easy fold, but I say to myself: "I'm on tilt, and I'm going to limp this hand in EP even though I know I should fold it. It's definitely a mistake. But it's a small one". It ends up getting raised, but it's going to be a very multiway flop, so I see the flop and check/fold. I kinda got the tiltyness out of my system with this one bad hand, but I paid for it relatively cheaply, so I composed myself, took a breath, and went back to my normal game (eventually shipping a $810 win).

Gifyou'regoingtomakemistakes,makesmallonesG

We'll have to agree to disagree, but I think raising 86s over multiple limpers (unless doing it for balance purposes, or perhaps table is super tight and not payoff monkeyish postflop) is horrible, just really really really bad. We don't want to raise anyone out of the pot; we want everyone and their grandmother and their dog to see a flop with us, with us in position on the world, in a limped pot with a sky high SPR, and then we simply go to value town when we hit. All we do by raising this preflop is eliminate potential idiots from the hand that would have payed us off postflop (folding out an idiot preflop that would have flopped TP is beyond horrendous) plus destroys our implied odds (with $300 effective stacks, an overlimp gets me implied odds of a 100x, whereas a raise to $20 obliterates this to a mere 15x).

Gbutnoharminskinningyourcatyourwayifitisworkingfor youG

Thanks V!

Also, many props to all the forum mods (V, M, APD, hope I'm not missing anyone). You guys do a great job down here (as the little green elephant also does up in the limit forum); makes for a great forum.

Thanks ANL!

Ya, times are tough, but I really would encourage everyone to do their best to get a real / normal day job and only use poker as a hobby (or minimal side job at best).