gotcha. that is helpful ty

It depends on whether you could afford to lose the money in your account. If losing the money would be devastating then it would make sense to protect it. Or maybe even if it would really suck to lose it but not be devastating, I'd still protect it. If losing the money is no biggie then you prob don't need the protection.

how much math aspect of the game do you guys practice....are people looking at pot odds for every decision?? examples?
What about implied odds?? examples?
anything else???
basically what is being calculated...

or is your play more geared toward reads, flow, gut etc......

Just curious....for those who use math what are some good articles online?

I play HU 50NL.
What is reasonable 3betting range and calling range if villain is raising 80% preflop and what are the ranges if he raises 100%?

Thanks in advance.

While I don't claim to be a math genious, math is important- no doubt. In no-limit though, the psychological aspect comes in heavy. In general, it's a combination of both. Knowing the math just helps make your decisions a lot easier. Yet, knowing or learning something new to use for poker doesn't mean you can just sit down and start using it to reap huge rewards. It's a developed thing- you have to learn when to put more weight in what in certain individual circumstances. While you should always be gauging the pot odds and implied odds, those are things that aren't always finite (because the opponents could have or do exactly the opposite to what you thought), and the use of math should just be another variable to help you make a decision. There's just too much to even get into detail about it. Math helps. Also, the top players exhibit or use the mathematics of poker in extremely different ways to their benefit.

I'm not sure of any online articles, but would recommend these books:
Any Dan Harrington books- he uses a heavy math foundation for his game
David Sklansky's No limit book and his Theory of Poker (his books on limit will give you a lot of good information in regards to the use of math as well)
The Mathematics of Poker by david chen and some other guy I believe. This is a far more advanced book in the dealings of math and how it relates to poker. I often got lost in the many equations presented,- yet the principles in this book are extremely in depth. I would wait and get a good foundation for the basic principles of math in poker before tackling this book.

I've been a longtime 6-max cash grinder, but have always wanted to become more proficient with HU. After watching some HU training videos from DC, I've jumped into playing $5 HU SNGs. A continuing problem I face is not being able to handread my opponents very well. I get surprised very often when my opponents' hand is no where near the range of hands I put them on. It seems that at the $5 stakes many of the players don't have a method to their madness--their play is seemingly illogical. It seems to be much easier to handread a logical thinking player than a somewhat random one.

At these stakes, would you guys recommend I make decisions based on hand strength moreso than handreading? Or do you think that a good player should be able to put these players on a range of hands with a high degree of accuracy and I just need more practice with it?

I should note that there have been a few training videos I've seen with pros dropping down to the microstakes and playing cash games. In almost every one of these videos the pro had a tendency to either greatly overvalue or undervalue other players' hand ranges in many situations--they were genuinely surprised. I guess they are not used to atrocious play and it threw their handreading off.

Extremely common.

I would focus your efforts towards value betting (bet sizing too), pot control and adjusting to extreme tendencies such as hyper aggro or very weak players.

As you move up you generally make more subtle adjustments so it makes sense that good players sometimes over or under value hand ranges in the low to mid stakes games, the players are just way too unbalanced in their tendencies and frequencies.

You can still hand read, but assign a bigger "wtf" percentage and make sure you're adjusting as you see them do crazy stuff.

Generally speaking, use bigger bet sizes for value vs a lot of these players because they are super loose. There's nothing wrong with small balling, but a lot of these guys are going to call huge raises with a wide range, so don't short change yourself.

is there any way to get statistics on your games if you only play Heads Up SNGs on stars (and aside from shark scope and the stats that they have available). I don't have any 3rd party software or anything. But is it possible for me to see a graph of my all in EV? or my non-showdown winnings? I even have a strange feeling that i might be negative EV with AA (i think i might be overplaying them post flop) ... and if i could see some stats, maybe i'll just start shoving aces all in pre if it turns out that i actually lose money on that hand. I just want to look at all the stats that are available to me, just in case i can find some weaknesses in my game. sharkscope lets me see a few cool stats like how much i've won on different days of the weak, and time of day and stuff... but i want more stuff like that

you will need somehing like HEM or PT for wht you are after.

sites like SS only track the result of a sng they dont actually track the hands.

You are a remarkable human being.

anybody know any good threads or have any good advice about turning pokerstars FPP into cash? currently I am multi-tabling the 70-fpp sats to the 1/4 million, but it takes a fair bit of time... anybody know any more efficient way, monetarily or timewise?

thanks

if i were to get software like pokertracker... will it only start tracking my results from when i install the program? i assume there's nothing really out there that can give me stats on the games i've already played eh?

limit holdem >< nl holdem?

i donno... it's something i've actually seriously contemplated. i alway seem to lose with AA one way or another. i think it's because i have a tough time folding on the flop, and i think i'll play them like they're the nuts. so rather than learn how to play them well and be more disaplined, a quicker and easier fix might just be to always shove all-in pre with them... because then i know it will be impossible to be negative EV playing aces like that. I would hope that i'm not actually negative EV with aces, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me if i was.

if you saved you HH then yes you can get HEM pr PT to just import all the hand histories .. and you will have all the stats and hands from all your previous games.

even if you havent saved the hh to your computer you can just email FTP or stars asking for all your handhistories and they will retrieve it and send it to you ...

long answer short.. yes if you get either of those programs then you will be able to see all your stats from previous games.



EDIT: no i dont think you can go wrong shoving AA pre-flop lol..

^^^

cool, thanks.

so i guess they e-mail me a big file with a huge excel spread sheet or something like that? cause i've played over 13,000 games, so there's gotta be a lot of hands. i would guess that the file would have to be pretty big too.

other question: if i get all my hand histories from stars, can i just send the file to someone who has already paid for poker tracker, then they can send me my results so that i don't have to pay for it?

i remember emailing stars once.. they hosted my HHs in some server and sent me a dload link.

i would suggest just forking out the monies to get hem or PT.. you can get a lot of uses out of those programs. in the long run i would think its far more worth it to buy the software.

btw poker tracker has a 60 day free trial.. so you can just get the trial version and use it. i think HEM has a 2 week trial aswell.

Any regs at the $50ish turbo level know how the stars comp. varies from cake? I am doing fine on stars right now but curious if the deposit bonus on cake would be worth making at least a temporary switch...

Whats the comparison between fullring and HUSNGs in terms of skill-level?

Would $10.25 HUSNG be like 5nl? It seems like HUSNG people are v. bad compared to full ring or 6max.

very different games imo.

my main game is 6max.. and i found it difficult to adjust hu.... if you are talking 5nl though...lol.... they be awful...im sure there are tonne of mid/hi stakes FR players who would get smoked in husng against a competent players and vice versa.

can't really compare the two games but lol at HUSNG players being worse than full ring or 6max autobots.

can someone help me get an idea of when/why you 3 bet preflop and then check flop.. right now i pretty much always follow a 3 bet with leading the flop... and im not sure thats always the best play.... im not sure my question makes sense... but yeah.

depends a lot on gameflow and villain
a fairly easy example is a board like 986ss where you have AKo

ty spamz

i gotta think about this a while .. currently am slightly confused as to what follow up questions i want to be asking.

Another fairly common scenario is if you have a hand like TT and get a Q72r flop against a villain that likes to check/raise you on dry boards. If you cbet and get raised then you will likely get pushed off of your hand at some point. You can check the flop to try to pot control it a bit.