Frondsarelli sighting!

Ya, the simple fact is that Limit >>> NL in terms of fun. And I could totally understand how a sucky NL game structure would also make it fairly pointless to play. So if fun is the main reason to play, stick to limit. 2/4 limit with a recently increased rake to $4 (making it unbeatable) is the only limit game that goes in my room now, so I just can't justify putting in the hours on it just to breakeven (although it is super fun). Ha, I still play 2/4 limit while waiting for my 1/3 NL seat to open up; shipped a $42 win yesterday in an hour, lol.

Ggoodluckatthetablesfrondsy!G

Marked for later read. Grats on the 1k Hours!!!!

I do like HOC, and quote it a lot. It's not perfect though. I don't like the fact that it's example stakes are all over the place (I wish it would have just limited all of the examples to like 1/3 live). I think it's ideas are great, but I don't think it necessarily does a good job in some of it's examples using those ideas. For instance, there's a least one example where he recommends raising the flop with TPTK, which to me goes clearly against the "small hand small pot rule" (although, this might also really be overall style dependent; if we've got a nitbox image, we should probably never be raising here, but if we've got an aggro image this might differ). I also hate a lot of the weak game examples where we like flop the nuts and yet somehow we're not playing for stacks by the river. And I've also never randomized a preflop/flop play, although the idea isn't really that bad of one against thinking opponents. But overall, it's the nuts. Having said that, I really haven't read any books (other than Gordon's Little Green Book), so meh.

I don't agree with your thoughts on vs the aggro guy either. If he's deepstacked and aggro, I'd much rather be on his left (and I don't think anything else is close); this will enable me to pot control while also showing weakness and bluffcatching for reasonable pots that won't risk my stack. If I do happen to be sitting to his right, I actually take the exact opposite approach of yours and check/call my way to victory (bluffcatch against his super wide range instead of betting into him with our made hands and letting him play fairly decently against us). Each to his own, I guess.

I'm still a big believer in limping / overlimping, but I realize that's not going to be preferred method by most here. I could be wrong on this, but I just think many here come from a much tougher on-line background where limping obviously is dangerous; but in juicy moron infested live games, limping is where it's at, imo. And while deepstacked I might not necessarily be able to get stacks in, I can still fairly easily play for ~100bbs (which ain't chump change) with one postflop raise in position; besides, I'm not certain I want to play for 200+bb stacks with anything other than ~nuttish hands anyways.

I wish I tracked the day I played with my results (although I guess I could figure that out since I do record the date), but my guess is that it'll simply be to small a sample size and fairly useless to draw any conclusions from (~140 sessions, so on average that would be like 20 sessions on each day, so could we really conclude much from such a small sample?). Recently (since fall of 2012) I've been trying to get in my once-a-week session on a weekend simply so that I can get in more hours (usually a ~10:00am to 9:30pm shift). I actually rarely play Friday/Saturday due to family commitments. The Friday/Saturday shifts I have put in, I don't really notice much difference in the crowd; most tables I play at are reg-invested (thankfully, most regs are bad), and there are very few off-the-casino-floor-I-wanna-play-poker-like-on-the-tvs opponents. Course, I usually only play to 9:30pm, so there's a decent chance I might miss some noobish drunks sitting down after night clubbing or whatever on a Fri/Sat night.

Ggoodluckatthetables!G

Ha, we seem to be disagreeing with pretty much everything, but that's ok.

I think your example of having Dwan/Blom/Ruffin at your table illustrates how, imo, you're not taking into account the tables we play at. At most tables at our level, there's a very high fish quotient. Plus the tables are fairly loose. Which means attempting to iso the fish that is sitting to our right is going to be very difficult anyways. Sure, if it somehow folds to the fish on our right in LP and he open limps, we should be able to successfully raise to isolate. But this scenario just isn't going to happen very often at a typical low limit table. So it doesn't really matter where the fish are sitting at the table, or at least it is trumped by where the good/tricky deepstack is sitting. Winning a bunch of chips over many hours against the fish only to get into a big hand with the tricky deepstack who has position on us negates our whole night. So, again, I couldn't disagree with you more on this.

Ya, having the tricky/aggro/good deepstack on the other side of the table is fine. We'll have position on him when we are in LP, and he'll only have position on us when we're in EP (where we will be playing much tighter anyways: mullet poker, all business up front but party in the back).

And ya, having tight/ABC players to our left is the nuts as we'll often have the button like 3 times an orbit and never really have to fear being played back at OOP against them.

Thanks wrathy!

No understanding wife? That's too bad; a happy wife is a happy household. Before we got married, my wife-to-be and I had a long talk about my poker hobby. She was really concerned about it's gambooley aspects and of course it was a big red flag for her. So after talking it thru, we settled on this once-session-a-week-home-by-10:00pm rule, and of course poker is scheduled around everything else family wise. I also make certain I set aside many nights for just the wife and I (or w/ kids too); we probably have a date night about once a week, lately we've been able to get out and play hockey together about once a month, TV movie nights in bed, etc. It's all about balance.

Nice Job GG

I am very impressed by your progress and evolution on 2+2 and look forward to your continued growth

I'm uncomfortable playing deepstack against good/tricky/aggro opponents, especially ones who have no fear in putting big chips into the pot (and if they paying any attention, I'm the perfect opponent to blow off a hand with big huge stack committing bets). I'm fine playing against very ABC opponents where I know I can fold anything but nuttish hands to a raise.

Yesterday, I was playing at one of the craziest and loosest 1/3 tables I've ever played at (once saw a $60 limp/reraise get called in 5 spots; another time saw a $100 limp/raise get called in 3 spots, lol, it was nuts). I was sitting on the big stack of $1200, but at times two or three other players had $1000+ stacks plus another 3 had like $600+ stacks. However, for the most part I felt pretty comfortable against the other players since none of them were good/aggro/tricky-in-huge-pots, so I was able to play comfortably ABC. But I have left tables like this if one or two of the other deepstacks were good/aggro players, especially ones who usually played higher stakes and we're playing with play money.

The tighter the table is, the more I'll open my raising range in MP. However, the looser the table is (and my tables are thankfully usually fairly loose), then I'm still fine with open limping many speculative hands in MP. Again, my goal with speculative hands for the most part is to get into a very multiway pot for cheap with as many idiots as possible and get paid off huge postflop; I'm not here to nickel and dime some small wins (which I will only do if it looks like the pot isn't shaping up to be very multiway).

Really disagree with the small opening of AJ/KQ in EP. A $10 open at my table might as well be a limp; I HATE the idea of going 6 ways OOP to a bloated flop with AJo/KQo. If I'm playing these, I'm definitely opening big and hoping for HU. They are borderline hands for sure for me, but right now, I'm fairly comfortable with folding them from up front, especially at tables where no one 3bets hands that dominate me. And just to add to the flaming, I'm open limping the suited variety of these hands since I feel they play very well in a multiway pot.

Well, the main thing is to track your win/loss for the session and how many hours (minutes) you took to do this (per stakes), where then obviously you'll be able to calculate your running total win/loss as well as your hourly winrate. This will help give you an idea of how you are doing when you reach 200 hours, 500 hours, 1000 hours, etc. and be able to help answer the main questions: Am I a winning player? About how much am I winning? Obviously the winrate can easily go all over the map, but hopefully you'll at least have a general idea of how you are doing based on cold hard statistics rather than fluffy inaccurate memory. I've said this before, but honestly, if I didn't track my wins/losses/hours, I would literally have no clue how I'm doing overall; none at all, our memories really are that unreliable / inaccurate.

Other than than, you can keep track of whatever stats you want, mostly just for fun. From my stats I'm able to compute my average game session length, my session winning percentage, my biggest wins vs biggest losses, my biggest win streaks vs biggest losing streaks, etc. If you like, you could also track your results per casino, per night, etc. (although my guess is that for rec players it might be difficult to achieve a sample size worth basing any conclusions on).

I guess it kinda could be, at least one of sorts, cuz I'll only answer the questions I feel like answering. Don't take offence if I don't answer!

For instance, I don't feel like answering that question.

G0for1onansweringwellishquestionsG

Ha, thanks dgi! I've always loved your dickish aggro prison rape posts! (I say that with love!)

Regarding teaching, let again stress what I said earlier: I hope I'm not that guy who like "Hey, I scored 5 goals in the NHL! Let me tell you how to be an NHL player!". So far, my style has worked for me, and I'm purely basing that on my results (which possibly may be skewed by a lifetime of run good within my first 1000 hours of 1/3 NL).

ETA: Hey, some day it would be interesting to get a poobah-ish thread from someone who actually grinds this game for a living.

GIgot2goals3assistsinmyfunco-eddropinhockeygameonSaturdaynight,expectbooksoonG

I wanted to single out this section of your post and you made similar inferences throughout this thread...

What I think is of note here is that you display a very very advanced understanding of knowing EXACTLY WHERE YOUR EDGE IS!!!!

I can't over state the importance of this as it is an under appreciated skill.

Understanding our edge is vital to table selection and seat changes which can have a HUGE impact on our winrates....

Ya, this is it basically.

For the record, I'm a moron. Seriously. I'm not very good at this game, and if the games were populated with people that were simply 1/4 as good as the people who hang out on this forum, I probably would be barely a breakeven player.

Yesterday I saw a $20 raise get called in 4 places before a guy then limp/reraises to $60, only to see that get called in 5 places; so a 6way flop for $60 each, in a 1/3 game where a lot of the callers were only playing 100bb deep. Then I saw a tight woman who was table aware and hadn't played a hand since last October limp/reraise to $100 and get called not in one, not in two, but in THREE places, and quadruple up with her AA. Later on I saw a guy call a huge all-in raise on the turn with A high, no draw (lol, he may have actually been a genius as he was actually a slight favourite when he called cuz the other dude had a worse A high but had a draw).

I mean, I know exactly where my money comes from.

GG,

Sorry, maybe I already used my allotted question(s), but I was wondering...do you ever get the itch to play other games? and If so, do you? By now you have made it abundantly clear that you know where your edge is, and it is 1/3 nlhe. You seem to have an innate ability to avoid games where you feel that you won't have an edge. But you also say that you do it non-professionally, and to have fun.

You cut your teeth playing LHE, and I was wondering, do you ever go back and play a session or so for fun? Do you play any tourneys? any 7-stud or Omaha? I know you said you used to play 7-stud before you learned HE, any times you forgo the 1/3 game for something else?

BEAT, IMO

A lot of times I'll have a bit of a wait for my 1/3 NL seat and so I'll play 2/4 Limit while waiting. FWIW, I love the Limit version of the game, it's so much fun, but 2/4 is unbeatable $$$ wise.

Our room has very limited tables and stakes. Typically there is only 2/4 Limit and 1/3 NL. 2/5 NL rarely goes; I think the most popular time for it to go is Fri/Sat night (when I rarely play). The room did have a Pineapple game for a while, and once in a rare blue moon Omaha / split NL game goes, but (being the conservative guy I am) I would never sit in a cash game where I haven't gotten a solid idea of what the strategy is (and I am clueless towards those games). 7 Card stud I am also totally clueless of, but it's moot since that never runs here.

I've only ever played one casino MTT, which was one I won a free entry into. I don't know any MTT strategy either, but I do know this was a rapidly rising blind structure (lol, I think 1 orbit in we were like on 30bb stacks). The opponents looked beyond horrible (wtf, how can their be 4 callers of a raise playing 20bbs deep?!?!). I played 2 hands in my one hour at the table and decided it was probably far too much of a crapshoot with horrible payouts, plus no postflop strategy (as no hands really should be going past preflop/flop after a level or two) to make the game fun at all. I would perhaps even consider turning down another free entry as it's just wasting time I could be using to play in the cash game.

Ha, I actually met my wife playing hockey.

Co-ed hockey is so much fun and relaxing and enjoyable. A lot like Limit poker.

Gmyopeninglineatmyweddingspeech:"Wemet,inourunderw ear"G

Congrats at the 1k hours and 29k. Good $hit man.

Which casino were you playing at?

I'm actually not going to say cuz I'd rather not be outed. I could see playing against regs with a face up playbook being fairly -EV.

GfrompartsunknownG

yes, it sounds like you have a good one. My wife's pretty good tbh, but our kids are younger - 2, 5 and 7 - and I'm away from home 5.30am til 8pm Mon to Thurs, so her life is right in that intense zone. I can get out once a week with her blessing most of the time, I just have to make sure I'm on best behaviour and occasionally, I read the signals and stay home instead.

btw, I appreciated you breaking your results into 200 hour chunks. That's a great way to put some perspective on them. I think I mentioned in the chat thread, my last 130 hours are like 17bb/hr down on the ave win rate from the previous 500 or so, but breaking the whole thing into diff chunks is a good way to understand how variance is always there, good and bad.

well done again mate and congrats on the current hot streak

playing hockey with your wife.....wowee!

Is it a strip casino or some random station casino? The more details the better, just for my own personal use, tnx

Ya, you are in a different stage with your wife / family due to the total dependence of your kids on their every need every second of the day. I skipped all that part, so I'm not sure what that's like.

I've yet to have any significant bad spell. Never officially gone on a 5 BI downswing. Heck, even my longest flat stretch I still did win a little money. The 200 hour breakdown helps in pointing out the stupid variance you'll encounter. Am I the guy who played for the first 200 hours? Or the last 200 hours? I'm both, playing in the exact same game (although my game has changed a little bit since the start as I've become even more passive and more loose preflop), and yet the difference in winrate is staggering.

yeah, after a $900+ session on the weekend, I'm actually only down 800 or so now over the past 120 hours but it feels painful after winning so consistently. to your point in OP, I can't imagine doing this for a living and running bad for a length of time....although I guess for a pro, 120 hours of run bad is only 3 weeks, whereas for us weekend warriors it takes 3-4 months!

either way, i'll stop de-railing. I do think you should shot take at 2/5 when given the opportunity. I've been doing so when the table looks friendly and it reinvigorates your game/approach