book is certainly a few notches down from having earphones in/on and being enthralled by a movie/show on a tablet anyways, pretty easy to switch from reading to playing

imo it’s more that it reduces the light hearted and gambly vibe that you want at the table. I think the same about phones tbh but definitely iPads and books

yeah if the game is playing like that vibe, with a bunch of straddles, lots of action, alcohol, and talking, it would be foolish to have a book out. but i think Sabr deserves the benefit of doubt that he would deem it necessary to read in that sort of game.

re: to book or not too book

like anything else in life, i'm sure it involves a fair amount of moderation and not being a ****ing moron about it. i expect SABR knows when reading a book is not appropriate and when it's ok to do so.

as for myself, i tried it a bunch of years back, i have no clue how you do it SABR. i just could never concentrate on the book enough. maybe something a little lighter than GOT:AFFK would have been easier

Starting to get frustrated about this downswing. Yes, Im occasionally playing bad, but mostly I'm just card dead. I'm a rec player and I track my hours/results.

Looks like I'm on a 40+ hour span of catching nothing. Few starting hands, missing every flop and the occasional bad beat have cost me over the last month. 40 hours is about 10% of my annual hours . Is this a normal downswing or do I just suck at poker ?

I congratulate you since your 1/3 winrate is probably in the top 95% of players.

With that said, I think your approach to the game is full on PARASITE and bad for the game.

Because your starting hand selection is so tight and you are limping in with every hand you decide to play, even your premiums, you are literally NEVER GIVING ACTION to any of the fun players.


The only way someone even as a remote chance of getting a penny out of you is if you call a raise preflop to setmine. But that's only getting like $15 bucks max, and they wont get another cent unless you flop a set and they cooler you or suck out.


They cant crack you with a garbage hand because you just limp in. If someone raises, then you will make a gigantic limp/reraise that gives them horrendous odds to continue. I understand they just call anyway with total trash because they are degens, but it just makes you that much worse for the game.


This, combined with seat changing and table changing when YOU are deep in a small player pool, Im surprised that everyone in your room doesn't hate you. You are honestly very lucky that you play with guys that are happily straight up donating money to you because they compulsively cant stop themselves from folding a hand that they like. If anyone in your room even remotely gave a sh*t about money they would snap fold the second you touched your chips.


I used to play in a strip mall card club full of degens and the degens there would give me a lot of sh*t for being a nit. Maybe because you live in Canada where everyone is nice, or because you only play 1 day a week and people give you a pass because you are old.


Whatever it is, I know for a fact that if more people starting taking on your strategy, the games would dry up FAST. The degens expect to lose, but they dont want to play with a bunch of limp folders and always be put in spots post flop where they are always a massive dog to anyone who is putting money in the pot past the flop.

Your strategy is easy, basic, and could be followed by a senile old lady. Hell, other than serious TAG players, I would say that old ladies probably come in second in terms of win rate at 1/3.


I know this sounds harsh. But Im not the only one that cringes everytime you post advice. You could easily start raising hands that you limp/fold with in late postion like AT-AQo or suited broadways and not even take a hit to your winrate, just for the APPEARANCE of giving SOME action, but you choose not to just to avoid any variance.


I wouldn't care what a random 1/3 player does, but this is the entry level for a lot of fish. I gurantee a lot of potential whales got turned off from poker because they sat in horrific games where everyone was limp/folding pre and only giving action with their nutmining hands. He's calling raises pre only to see that the person's raise he called was QQ or better. Meanwhile he's thinking "how the f*ck are people so patient. Do they just sit here all day and wait for the top 5% of hands?"


If you want to be a nit with a very mediocre win rate in terms of dollar/per hour, that will continue to decerease due to inflation, then nobody can stop you. But do you have to post the same easy-to-digest cookie cutter strategy week in and week out that will only encourage more miminum wage bum hunters that will kill poker?


Sorry for the rant.

Starting to get frustrated about this downswing. Yes, Im occasionally playing bad, but mostly I'm just card dead. I'm a rec player and I track my hours/results.

Looks like I'm on a 40+ hour span of catching nothing. Few starting hands, missing every flop and the occasional bad beat have cost me over the last month. 40 hours is about 10% of my annual hours . Is this a normal downswing or do I just suck at poker ?

This is literally nothing. This can go on much much longer.

40 hours is nothing. A crusher can easily go on 100 hour breakeven stretches. If the player pool is high variance and action, then that breakeven stretch can easily hit 300 hours. And that's assuming you play tight and straightforward. If you play LAG against other loose fish, you might go on 500 hour+ breakeven stretches.

Sounds totally standard. Welcome to the reality and huge variance of livepoker.

30-40 hours of running carddead and missing every flop is 100 percent standard, happens all the time. Also dont be surprised if you find yourself going on a 200-300 hour breakeven stretch. Happens to everybody sooner or later, no matter how good you are.

Also nice rant Bodybuilder,+1.

ya as the guys before me have said this is nothing and totally standard. I've won @ 10bb/hr over 2500 hours combined of 1/2 - 5/10 and am currently breaking-even over my past 540 hours.

it's hard to play your A-game all the time and never punt, can't avoid run-bad and coolers etc so it happens even to good players.

just gotta accept it and play the best you can each session. it can definitely be frustrating as a serious rec player where you aren't able to get in as many hours per year which means the break-even stretches can last very long in real time not just poker hours.

Derail but huge +1 to feelwrath wrt books

+1

don't be sorry.

I think the effect of carrying a book at the table is at worst a slight negative, and it 100% helps me play more hours in an otherwise dull and miserable game, which makes it a net positive for me.

A book is not the same as ipad/headphones. When you are wearing headphones or watching a movie you are projecting that you want to be left alone. A book doesn't have the same effect and many people ask me what I'm reading and it can be a conversation starter in that way.

^ It was long, so for that I apologize. I also notice that gobbledygeek has a thread in the "must-read" stickies so it seems like he has a lot of respect. Atleast from the mods. His thread was created in like 2011 when the poker boom was a lot bigger so I think a lot of his nit mentality, that was acceptable during those times when a nit was a rarity and the player pools were massive, needs to be examined a little closer as being good/bad for the game.

Mods I dont mean to get off-topic. I actually think a lot of this stuff like reading a book at the table or style of play is relevant to winrates since we are talking about how your behavior affects the longevity of the game.

reading a book / watching on iPad are equally bad imo and both make you look like a nit grinder and are bad for the game.

headphones slightly less bad bc at least you can still give action / pay attention (though extremely annoying when people can't hear and have to ask questions to the dealer constantly)

I listen to music almost every session bc it helps me focus / stay entertained but always only use one earbud and take it out if there is a lot of conversation at the table.

my opinion.

Headphones user thinks headphones are less bad? Shocker!

over ear headphones / two earbuds are bad. I only use one earbud and am usually one of the most engaging in conversation at the table and use no earbud when it is a talkative table.

never miss action or slow the game down, play fast and give action so don't see the problem.

Also can someone please explain to me what "give action" means?

If it means that you are intentionally playing what you consider to be -EV hands for image purposes, then I maintain that it's a terrible idea.

That being said, my 3-bet frequency and BB-defend frequency are probably both quite a bit higher than most regs. But I don't consider those to be -EV hands.

not intentionally -ev no but willing to take ~0ev spots with recs to keep the game fun whenever possible.

The vast majority of poker players lose money trying to "give action" is how I see it.

I certainly try to play the max number of hands I can get away with, both pre and postflop, but almost everyone over-estimates what those ranges are, or they aren't taking all the factors into consideration.

Give action means put $ in the pot.

It can be +EV or highly -EV depending on the spots you choose to put your $ in.

Raising 88, even from EP, is an example of +EV "giving action". You could easily just limp in with it and it wouldn't be much different in terms of your long term EV. But it benefits the overall game a lot more if you open with it. I mean, if your a newbie, I can see why you would play it passively, but for anyone on this forum, you should be good enough to open this hand.


I see a lot of nit regs in the casino that have TONS of experience playing NL, yet they are taking these weak/tight lines that make the game less fun.


Pots are smaller, which creates no incentive for players to bluff, fight for pots, or go on tilt.


It just becomes a cooler fest of who can fold the best and who can be the most patient. If you're a solid TAG, you can still beat these games, but they become less and less appealing for the fun players.


It's why you see some very deep stacked 1/2 games in sh*tty parts of the country. Fun players stay longer because they are in a very high action/ high variance game that doesn't make them feel like they are the only ones putting $ in the pot with the non nuts.


If you go to Vegas, the 2/5 is infested with tight regs that will make many loose tourists drop down in stakes or just do something else.
The only reason these nit regs make money is because the tourists just dont care about the $ as much and donate. But the torusists are donating less and less, as seen in the decline of higher games running.

"Giving action" is just a stupid term that I hate with a passion, because I believe that my goal as a professional is to make the best decisions I can, and I don't owe anyone any "loose action."

That being said, I believe that in most cases the highest EV lines involve being selective but agressive pre-flop, and using overbets post-flop in certain situations. No one generally thinks I'm a nit unless I go card-dead for 4 hours (which does happen).

I now BI (and continually top up to after each hand) to $200 in my 1/3 NL game (which as of a couple of months ago increased it's maximum BI from $300 to $400 although very few people actually BI for the maximum).

While I believe I likely have a slight advantage over most of my opponents deep (hence why all my posts previous to my Super Nit posts started with "I'd likely top up my stack to the maximum if I believe I have an advantage over my opponents"), I now believe it isn't as large as the advantage I have over them when playing shorter. A $200 stack is a trivially easy stack to play at a loose 1/3 NL table (where my loose opponents play them *horribly* and likely worse than they play their deeperstacks).

But this is just my wishy washy opinion (I do go back and forth on this a bit, and once and while I'll see an incredibly poorly played deepstack hand that makes we think otherwise) and others can certainly disagree.

GcluelessstacksizenoobG


All 1/3 NL (majority of hours put in with a $300 maximum BI although it has recently changed to a $400 maximum BI).

I'm no different than anyone else and do consider / wonder about alternative methods of playing. There are certainly players in my pool who have a rather opposite style to mine and yet seem to do alright whom I'd love to know what their winrate / sample size is, cuz it's *possible* I'm missing out on something. But I think that's just a natural thing to do. I've convinced myself that my method is the best one to use in my conditions, but without knowing everyone else's results I could be wrong. So long as my results are decent (whatever that means?) I'm not too overly concerned about it.

GcluelessstylenoobG


PokerJournal has my SD over my total 4271 hours at 1/3 NL as 53.6 bb/hr (with ~7 bb/hr winrate overall).

My Super Nit method has my SD at 45.7 bb/hr over 963 hours (with a ~6 bb/hr winrate), with my 2018 having a SD of 46.3 bb/hr over 526 hours (with a ~7 bb/hr winrate).

I don't really understand SD at all and so long as my winrate seems reasonable (which I believe it is in my conditions) then I couldn't really care less what it is.

GcluelessSDnoobG


Regarding bodybuilder's rant, just to keep it on on a ~winrate-ish bent so we're all not banned, I feel I'm a very pleasant person to play with and everything I do at the table is well within the accepted culture of our room, and that should be pretty much all that matters. I'll play my style (which I should be welcome to do) and everyone else can play their style (which they should be welcome to do). My style produces a decent winrate. Maybe other styles produce better ones (I'm unconvinced, but I could be wrong).

FWIW, I've never had a book or earphones or tablet or buried myself in an iPhone video at the table. In my opinion these are much bigger vibe/game/etc. killers than playing with a pleasant Super Nit.

GcluelesswinratesnoobG