I've been playing Hold'em for about 10 years now. I started out playing 1-2, 2-4 limit and in the last 5 years I've played mostly 1-2 NL with the occassional stab at the 2-5NL game at my local track/ casino. I'd say I'm up overall but not playing to my full potential. I understand the basic concepts of position, reads, tells, and EV but I have a hard time focussing and applying those ideas on every hand. I end up just playing "by feel." Using a lot of variance and then just playing the cards in front of me.

I'm headed out to Vegas next month solo for work and plan to spend a good deal of time at the tables. I've put together a 3k BR and want to maximize my chances as much as possible. Here are a few things that concern me:

Picking the right game: Casino and stakes. the 2-5 game at home is full of the same 7 or 8 regulars, strattling and raising to 50 pf almost every hand. I'd like to try 2-5 out there but are most of the tables similar? Or with my limited skills should I stick to 1-2.

Getting established at the table: Any tips on focusing and getting a feel for the other players at the table?

Choosing a style. At home I'm somewhat of a chameleon. Changing my style to suit my feel for the opponants or my stack. Should I pick one and go with it or stay versitile.

My appologies for the noob post. In studying this site there seems to be a skilled and welcoming group with great ideas. I'd be happy to hear any of them. Thanks for reading!

You need to be playing 1/2 with a $3000 bankroll.. period. Your risk of ruin @ 2/5 with 6 buy-ins is going to be fairly high. At least with 15 buy ins (assuming you're buying in for $200 @ 1/2) you'll have better risk management.

As far as the poker playing goes, only you can really improve your own game. It's not a matter of someone writing down a sentence that makes it all click for you... you need to do the work yourself. Read poker books, be active on 2+2 (which means not lurking, but posting and offering advice, hell, even posting your own hands). I feel that since I became a member on these forums last summer I have by leaps and bounds become a better player than the people I play with regularly. Half the battle is being just a little bit ahead of the other guys (experience wise).

GL in Vegas dude

Post a list of your starting hands from the following positions so we can comment:

1. Early
2. Mid
3. Late
4. Blinds

This will be a good tune up exercise, especially entering a loose-passive environment where in a zeal to play lots of hands against rec players, you can find yourself in ugly RIO spots or bleeding too much with limp-calls.

As far as table adjustment goes, just watch what people show up @showdown with, what starting hand reqs look like, and what betsizing looks like. Most LLSNL players bet their hand strength.

On a shortish roll of 1500bb, you might want to go with $200 BI instead of $300 to give yourself a margin of +5 BI, but if it's not your life roll go ahead and buy full.

Take a swing at 2/5 if your first sessions go well, I'm assuming this is more for the fun of playing in Vegas than grinding out a profit...

Go go go gl

Thanks for the quick feedback, and yes this trip is for fun so if I can come out ahead enough to book a helicopter tour of the canyon I'd be thrilled.

My starting hands vary a lot based on my stack, mood, and night of the week. I play alot on week nights which seems to always put me at a table with 6 nits and a couple "daddy's night out" kind of guys. There is more limping at this game than the waiting room at an orthopedic surgeons office.

Last week(my best ever run at the local casino 1-2nl)
I bi 200, played 4 hours and walked out 900 playing kind of maniac almost

raised my button to 7 every time it limped to me w/atc

limped or lr in mp with cards totaling 21 or more, small to mid pairs, or sc

ep and blinds lr w/ medium pairs up, suited totaling 24 or more, and limpling with just about any drawing hands.

I this sounds crazy and will get me crushed out there but it's legit and was working. I fold to most reraises in ep, no 3b, but played a few bluffs off the reraises by the non-nits in lp.

This night was a fluke i suppose and I was catching cards when I needed them and getting folds and calls at the right time. So maybe my variance and luck is all that pulled me through.

(feel free to say i'll be walking to the grand canyon playing like this)

You're too lose from ep. Do what ever you can to eliminate lrr from your arsenal.

I can assure you that one thread will not help you "put it all together". If you can't focus and apply what you know on every hand, there is nothing we can help you with. Especially if you are playing Level 1 poker and going by feel.

One recent suggestion I thought that was excellent was to pick one poker player who's play you admire and pretend they are sweating you on every hand. Play the hand as if you'll have to explain your decision making process to them.

Unfortunately, it sounds like you are easily distracted and you are going to the one place on the planet specifically designed to distract you from disciplined behavior. Sorry, but it doesn't seem like this story is going to have a happy ending.

I'll keep this thread open for a while, but if it starts degenerating into a blog of all manner of questions, I'll lock it.

"limped or lr in mp with cards totaling 21 or more"

wow is this how some players think? so that's why ranges are so crazy and i'll see a raise with K5 but only a call with Q9, wtf

I understand that I've got a long ways to go before I can even start to consider the more technical aspects of my game. Perhaps the condescending tone of the last couple of replys is inspiration enough to focus more so I don't look like a complete fool at the table. So for that I thank you. But to the previous reply I would suggest this. Be cautious of the player limping or lr with k5 and calling with q9. Some inferior players, such as myself, think that there best shot against more skilled players is erratic play. Hoping to only lose a little on hands like that and folding on the turn while maybe winning way more by playing the nuts the same way. I suppose the only advantage of not really knowing what I'm doing is being unpredictable to those who do.

The problems with the hands that you've described are that they don't "mix up your play" or make it unpredictable, and in fact, when and if I see you playing these hands at the table I start to isolate and value bet the hell out of you and exploit that. Things like this are leaks, leaks that are costing you money every time you play at the table. The thing about learning a good preflop strategy and having it down pat and solid is that on average your postflop decisions are going to be a lot easier to make. When you end up playing a lot of the hands you are playing now you end up making inferior hands that you will in the long run pay off your opponent with. Just my .02

Thank you. That makes a lot of sense. So I guess you would say that it's more important to vary your preflop bets on previously approved starting hands per position than varring the quality of starting hand played. But what about limping? Is it not worth $2 to see a flop with a questionable starting hand at a passive table?

I apologize for the harshness of this statement but based on your post, I can tell you aren't much different than the donks and rec fish which keep us well fed. How do I know? Because you sound a lot like me when I first came to 2+2. Man I was the biggest self deluded donk. Like all donks I had an unwavering belief in my magical gut and soul reading ability. I also had great excuses for why I didn't need to learn poker math beyond "pot odds".

I came on 2+2 & posted some of the fishiest opinions on some hands and got properly fisted and reemed by solid winning players who called me on my bs. Then I read their responses and mathematical breakdowns of hands and then it hit me like a bullet to the chest of how truly complicated the game was and how big a donk I really was.

So I started reading and posting more on 2+2 and also following the players that blasted me. I knew I turned a corner when after a few months they started to agree with some of my postings...

If you want a crash course in getting better it begins with the harsh realization that you've got to 100% forget all the things you think you know and rebuild from the ground up. You must accept that there is nothing special about your magical gut and that you need to become a die hard 2+2er reading threads in this forum as well as poker theory and even small stakes online forum. Once you learn how to think in ranges and equity as relates to the correct play then you will have differentiated yourself from the normal donk and rec fish and be on the path to +ev play...

But all this begins with the realization that you are a donk and that a lot of work is required to unlearn all the bad poker that donks and rec fish swear by.

It's a tough blow to the ego and most of us can't take it. nor do most of us have it in us to put in the work being a winner requires.

GL

key to this is passive table

if the table is not passive or weak you have to tighten up and gain an advantage with your starting hands

at a weak passive you can limp, but at many tables with good villains dont play a wide range

Limping a questionable hand is only going to be profitable if you have a significant post flop advantage, which you don't. In fact, I never open limp, though I limp behind with a lot of trashy hands in late position (I would not suggest doing this though).

If you are playing too many hands out of position, probably the biggest improvement to your game would be to:
-never open limp (except maybe pairs, but I don't suggest it).
-play super tight in early positions (fold suited connectors, suited aces, and AJ on down)
-don't open your hand range up much until late position (cutoff or the button)
-don't call out of the blinds except with really good starting hands (like hands you would raise from early position), even if it's a big lot and there's not much to call
-don't complete with trash from the small blind because you are "getting to good of a price"
-don't call early position raises with marginal hands
-don't call re-raises without a really, really good hand (like JJ+ unless you are getting odds to set mine with small pairs)
-when deciding whether to call bets or raises with small pairs to try and make a set, don't call if the shorter of the two stacks between you and your opponent are less than 10x the amount you have to call, and require even larger stacks if you are out of position.

Not a comprehensive guide to beating the game, but this stuff is easy enough to implement and will drastically improve your game if you aren't doing it already.

Guilty on all counts. It's as if I've almost convinced myself the God has granted me "poker intuition" for the shear purpose Hold'em glory. It's like I think in terms of "I feel like I've got him beat" rather than "There's no way this villian called $50 on the turn to catch this flush on the river."

What I do know is that this style has made me very susceptible to getting bluffed. I play scared a lot do to a lack of information and am unlikly to call when there is any possibility of the villian hitting his draw. Also, when they do make their hands I can lay down top pair and bottom or mid two pair, but top two, and trips get me killed.

I don't know how much I can pick up in a couple of weeks of reading on here but I'm going to make an honost effort to sit at my first table and watch every hand that I'm in and out of and pay close attention to any villian hand that hits the board face up. I'll tighten up my starting hands in e and mp and see what happens. I'll be happy to post an honost trip report on this thread or perhaps somewhere more appropriate if anyone's interested. In the mean time I'll be in town starting on the 12th if any of you pros want a shot at God's gift to poker

You can pick up a lot of theory if you put the time in, but it ultimately takes practice and experience. Which is to say, read as much as you can because you'll need to, but know its going to take work once you are at the table.

FWIW, I would pick up Professional No No Limit Hold Em vol 1 if you get the chance. I think it's very helpful for getting in the proper mindset to play NLHE (mostly just to think about a hand as a whole rather than a series of unrelated decisions).

I suggest buying a copy of Ed Miller's new book, "Playing the Player." This book is designed for the intermediate, low-stakes NL player who wants to improve. The book is broken down into sections about different player types: TAGs, LAGs, and Bad Players. In each section, Miller analyzes the different traits of these players and how those traits translate into their approach to playing different hands. Miller then suggests specific strategies for exploiting the mistakes that each type of player is prone to make in particular circumstances.

If you can't seem to improve your winrate, I think this book will, and a week of poker in Las Vegas seems like the perfect time and place to hone the techniques outlined in the book.

It's a really good book, but I think OP may need a primer in some more basic stuff first, which is why I suggested PNLHE. PtP assumes you already have solid fundamentals, understand position and bet sizing, etc.

Thanks guys! I'll check those out (In order). Who knows maybe by the time I get back I'll have a leg up on some of the other players at my local room. It could be interesting to rack up at the end of my session and actually know how it happened.

And with that, TTHRIC.