It's a risk you have to take I guess. No such thing as a downswing, but a seriies of heaters or bad beats can happen at anytime.

Well, this thread is easy.

1. Don't ever tilt or take things personal at the table

2. Use Pokerstove ALOT. Without knowing equities against ranges I think it's impossible to be a long term winner.

3. Understand the math of poker. Memorize the odds of hitting a 4 outer all the way to a 14 outer. Memorize the odds for hitting on one card, and on both turn and river.

4. Pay attention to villain play styles.

5. Learn to recognize +EV and -EV spots. Sometimes it'll be hugely +EV to bluff all in with nothing. Sometimes it'll be slightly -EV to call a bet with a very very strong hand.

This thread is tilting. All the madness being said. Loose passive pre, waiting to make a hand, no 3betting and playing only premiums in raised pots. Any style can be a winner. When you play in a casino you never know when you will run across good players. So as a player i suggest the top approach to winning, Thats TAG/LAG. I have never sat at a low level game that had more then 3 good players at the table including myself. On average its no good players if you ask me. Most play a very leaky game. Op it just depends on how you want to win. I have read all the post in this thread i have yet to hear anyone talk about targeting weak players. Making hands its a hard way to make a living. Especially in limp pots. Calling and calling/waiting to make a hand makes you a sitting loose passive duck. Im starting to think most 2+2 players are fish because they play like one. TAG/LAG and adjust to your villains tendencies is the only way to play holdem the stats dont lie.

In my head I classify 3 kinds of card dead.
Type 1) Your preflop hands suck... The bounties of J2o just keep coming
Type 2) Your hand never connects the board. Yep, thats right, your AQ whiffed a pair for the 10th time in a night. Also featured here, losing preflop coinflips (AK vs JJ 5 times in a row, you're on both sides and lose all of em)
Type 3) You nail the hand, get it in good, and then get DESTROYED by some donkey you had nailed to the wall. His 1 pair crushes your nut flush. Your overpair gets murdered by his top pair of Ts that he shipped the flop with, etc.

What most people complain about are Type 1 and 2 card dead. And while at the table, I do too (20% for image reasons, 80% because I HATE having nothing vs. a field of horrendous players who have no concept of bet sizing, pot control, or poker in general). And I hold that most of these are because as learning live players, they are playing WAY too loose for their level of postflop skills.

Do you like to play suited connectors from MP (and I mean connectors below KQs); do you do it all the time? Are you playing offsuit connectors from MP? Then you ARE NOT PLAYING TIGHT PREFLOP. Now this is not so terrible by itself, but to play loose poker you need to be good at postflop play. Very good. You need to be crushing the opposition on the regular.
Playing tight is easier. Playing tight, for 80% of LLSNL players would make them more profitable. Let me give some sample posts that demonstrate:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...-here-1066543/ Hero is playing 89s and 89o from MP and is being a nit on the river. This is not optimal.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...-spot-1072487/ Actually wondering if he should call given stack sizes (and villain not described as 99 year old man who is the world's biggest nit)

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17.../#post27848522 Wondering if he should wait to bomb turn, given a million way flop, bottom 2 and a super-low SPR.

ALL of these players were playing too loose, given the level of question they are asking.

How tight is tight enough? ATo is a fold until CO. Suited connectors are almost all folds from all positions. Set-mining has so much value in LLSNL, that I basically bless doing it more than would be optimal in a deeper or better game. AJo is a fold until HJ. Completing the small blind should happen only when you have a premium hand.
Does that sound nitty as hell? It is nitty preflop. Will most players who get lost playing postflop in a live game be far more profitable with a tighter range? Yep, very.

All those hands you don't play and don't connect with are repeated blinds and raises you aren't paying. For added benefit. Live players will actually find folds if you are one of the 2 tightest players at the table.... But to do that, you need to be able to ball out with a gross bluff and have a villain who understands what you could be repping in the way that you repped it.

@Mask good post imo. To answer your question about playing anything under kqs in middle position, its a no. I generally start off in my sessions with a very nitty range. Then i start to open up on the button. After that ill expand to my right such as co and hj, when i have real reads/information on the players on my left. The biggest leak players have in low stakes is preflop. If anyone sees the game different i would like to know and why they think different.

I'll be at Borgata this weekend. Should be putting in some volume at 1/2. Can't wait.

I've let this thread run for a while, but TBH it is starting to ramble too much.

If it were possible to become a winning player at LLSNL by reading a summary of 5 or 6 lines of instruction, everyone would be a winner. The reason poker remains a profitable game is that many people believe that is true. This thread is contributing to that belief.

For the above reasons, I'm locking it.

If you really want to be a winning player at LLSNL, start reading the "Advanced Live Poker Guide" stickied at the top of the forum and follow all the links through. If you read it through and work on the concepts presented, you won't be worrying about how to beat LLSNL. You'll be playing 5/10.