Hello, and welcome to my thread. I'm a Duke '14 grad in Math/Physics who's been reading 2+2 for a little under a year. Here I'll share my poker-related anecdotes, research and general strategy.

Introduction (Jun 2013 - Dec 2013)

I got into the game when I was a summer intern at a prop trading firm that obsesses over poker. During our lunch and education break from work on the desk, the firm's education department - two absolutely brilliant former traders - would show us how to play poker as a means of improving our overall ability to make decisions. It started with limit hold'em, then moved to seven-card stud, seven-card razz, stud hi lo, and finally limit Omaha hi and hi lo eight or better. By the end of the internship, I had clocked in about 75 hours on these various limit games against equally inexperienced interns for play money. Along the way, my fellow interns and I made a few trips to nearby casinos and one to a college student-ran home game to play no-limit hold'em. There, our limit hold'em brain convinced us that we were playing with a massive edge against the seemingly wild play in these no-limit games. Of course, there was no such massive edge. Looking back on it, I wasn't the worst player at the table, but I was making the same mistakes that I see new players make today.

After the summer, I shipped down to Duke for my senior year. Within the first two weeks, I heard about an unraked 1/1NL game that was run by a sophomore who everyone called "Z", because his first name was too Chinese to pronounce correctly. I began playing in this game every time it ran while simultaneously reading any book I could find on the topic. After each session, Z and I would grab late night food and digest the night's action. Over time we became great friends, mainly bonding over how fishy everyone else at the table was. However, I quickly realized that he was a far better poker player than I was, and knew I had a lot to learn from him.

As the on-campus poker scene expanded, the game bumped up to 1/2 with $2 max drop. Z and I even took a trip to Best Bet in Jacksonville, FL where I donked off around $600 playing their 1/2 over a long weekend. As the fall semester ended, I finally felt pretty good about my game: I noticed leaks in my opponent's strategies and began to exploit them in logical ways. This came at a price, though, and I was down two large by the end of November. Still, I felt I finally had an edge and it was time to monetize it. Besides, after taking a job at the firm I worked at last summer, I might as well develop my poker brain before starting.

The first AC trip of the Winter (December 2013)

When I got home from the fall, I found out about the poker theorist Ed Miller. I quickly tore through Professional No-Limit Hold 'em, Small Stakes No-Limit Hold'em, How to Read Hands at No-Limit Hold 'em, and Playing the Player. These really changed the way I think about the game, especially SSNLHE and Playing the Player. Ready to put these new concepts to work, I was eager to hit up the Borgata, which is close enough to where I live.

Flashback to last August, when I made a small trip to Atlantic City with an old friend who was eager to learn poker. There, we met up with one of his friends, named Josh, who started playing online since he was about 15 and now regularly grinds 1/2 cash once or twice a week. Those two made a bunch of money that night, and I went home 20 bucks richer. Still, it was better than losing.

Fast forward to December. I remembered that August trip - specifically, that Josh was far more of a degenerate that I was (at the time, at least), and asked if he'd like to come along. Sure enough, he was in and we made our first trip to AC on a Sunday. Josh told me that daytime action at the Borgata on a Sunday was great, since fish love to watch football and play poker at the same time. He also said Harrah's had a very big 1/2 game on Sunday nights, so I was looking forward to binging on poker all day. We had a great conversation about poker on the drive down. Like with Z, I quickly realized that Josh really knew what he was talking about, and that I should internalize everything he says.

I get seated at a table and come in for the max, $300. I run card dead for the first hour or so, until I pick up K J on the button after an EP and MP limp. Both had my $290 covered. I raise to $15, and both limpers call and the blinds fold. I flop the nuts: Q T 9 and the first limper leads for $30 and the second calls. I knew I had to raise, but I wasn't sure how much, so I opted for $100 total. The first limper shoved, and I announce "call" out of turn since I couldn't keep it in my pants. The second limper folds, I call and show him the bad news. He has J 8 and misses his K to chop. Hooray.

I move to the 1 seat after a whale sits down in the 9, and pick up Q J in the SB. MP raises to $10 and the guy who doubled me up earlier calls on the BTN. I don't quite understand that I shouldn't put in money OOP in a spot like this, but call anyway. Again, I flop the nuts, this time with a redraw to the other nuts: A K T . I think that there's no way a board like this checks around, so I check with the intention of check-raising. However, both players check. Turn comes the J and I lead $40, desperately trying to build a big pot. MP folds and BTN makes it $150. I shove for his remaining $400 and he calls showing QQ. I whiff my flush freeroll and we chop it up.

After booking a solid $235 profit on the day session, albeit from a cooler, Josh and I moved over to Harrah's and checked out their $500 max 1/2 games. We sat at the same table, and it was a live one. Unfortunately, I ran into some tough spots early on. My first real hand, I pick up A K on the BTN. After 4 limpers, I make it $20. Only one player calls, who has $250 and I have him covered. I flop a really sweet A A 8 . My opponent checks and I fire $40. He calls and we see a T turn, which definitely worries me. He leads $75. At this point, I'm pretty sure he has the flush because most 1/2 players don't lead there without it. I do a quick calculation and don't quite have the pot odds to call and spike a boat. However, if I hit my king, he's paying me off, and there's always a chance he has the last ace. The river bricks, a 5 and he checks. I check back and he shows the lovely 3 4 . I love 1-2.

A somewhat thinking laggy player who has my $450 covered raises to $10 from MP, it folds to me and I see A 5 on the BTN. I call hoping to hit a flop hard. It comes T T 5 , giving me bottom pair. Still not what I was looking for. He checks and I check, since he's not calling with worse. The turn comes a lovely 5 boating me up. He bets $25 and I raise to $75. He calls. The river is an offsuit Jack, and he checks. I still think I have the best hand, and bet $100. He raises all in, and without much thinking I call the extra $265. He shows me the bad news, T 9 for a better boat.

After the hand, Josh takes me around the casino for a little pep talk. He said, "You know, at these stakes, when anyone jams the river like that, 99% of the time he has a ten. I was a little surprised you called so quickly. I know it looks like you have a strong hand with the 5 but you're almost never good there." I went back to our hotel room and gathered more cash, knowing the game was good. I came in for $350 and changed seats to get on the left of the player who just stacked me. Slowly began to work my stack back up. In the seat I just moved from, a man sat down with a full $500 and began raising about half of his hands. He was being way too aggressive, to the point where Josh and I were dying to play a pot with him and bluff catch with a hand like top pair. My time came, when I sat on a stack of about $250 and I picked up KK UTG. I made it $12, MP made it $30, the whale made it $100 from the SB. I shoved for $150 more, MP folded and the whale called. The board ran out with a bunch of low cards and he mucked when I showed kings. Sadly, I didn't get any more hands in against the guy, but did manage to win a series of small-medium pots and build my stack up to $780 before we left at 9am.

Overall, it was a decent trip, as I made $165 in 16.5 hours of play. The most important thing I learned came from the TT55 hand: it's not only important to understand relative hand values based on different board textures, but also to think about how each player thinks about relative hand values. In live 1-2, people don't make big bets without nutty hands, so part of an exploitive strategy is to fold almost anything when their range is so narrow and strong.

Another piece of wisdom I learned from Josh is the importance of being aggressive. He started out playing online, where the climate is far tougher than live. While chatting on the phone once, Josh said to me, "Most people have no idea how to react to a lot of aggression, so when you play that way you make most people play their hands face up against you post-flop. Then you can either maximize value, fold out their weak hands and get away from monsters." This is definitely true, and six months later I'm usually the most aggressive player at any table I'm at.

On the flop you checked because you didn't expect him to call with worse. You should have applied that logic to the turn. A raise with bottom boat is terrible in this spot because you force everything worse to fold.

You're absolutely right. I was thinking about absolute hand strengths instead of thinking about the way my opponent was thinking about relative hand strengths

Second AC trip of the Winter (December 2013)

I headed to AC the following weekend, hoping to put in a solid night session. I sat down at the normal 1/2 table in the 2 seat and quickly made friends with the man sitting to my right in the 1, mainly talking about sports, his wife and other miscellaneous poker bull****.

My first hand, I get dealt K K from the big blind. 4 limpers to me and I make it 18 from the BB. Only my friend in the small blind. The flop comes Q 9 4. He checks and I bet 30 into about 45. He calls. The turn is a Q, he leads 50 into 105 and I call. At this point his most likely holding is some Qx hand, maybe AQ but more like a QT hand he couldn't fold before the flop, or on the flop, and now hit a miracle turn. Usually I would fold here, but I have the K which gives me some extra outs. The river bricks, he shoves and I fold. He must have at least a Q, maybe diamonds or a boat. Easy fold, right? Right. I fold, and he tells me he had JJ. I'm such a fish.

I reload to the max and run card dead for about an hour. During this hour, I find out that my friend in the 1 seat is quite the A-fish, i.e. Loose, Aggressive Fish. He plays too many hands before the flop and doesn't give up enough after the flop. If I had known this, I'd have called his river shove. Oh well.

My next hand, I get ATo in the BB. 4 limps to me, and I make it 20. I usually make this raise with high value yet high ROI type hands because they're tough to play OOP otherwise, and I think that folding them against 1/2 players is a leak. Only he calls. We see a dry flop of K74r, he checks and I cbet 1/2 pot. He x/r's all in for 100 more into a pot of about 60. I think for a little and decide that even though his random Kx hands get value, he would generally just flat with these hands, based on his play style. So I decide that except against his better aces and random spazzes with Kx, I can call for value against his super wide bluffing range. And so I call, and he has QTo. The board bricks and my A high holds. He was pretty furious at getting called with A high, but the table kept a good vibe, a vibe optimal for stacking fish.

Then came a very interesting hand. I get Q T in the HJ after 3 limpers, and I make it 18. The loose-passive BB calls and so does my buddy in the 1 seat. Flop comes K Q 5 and the BB checks as usual. Our friend leads for 10, a very fishy size, but what do I expect. I min-raise to 20 to see how he reacts. BB folds and he shoves for about 280 more. At this point, I'm a little alarmed but don't see how he could do this with a value hand. So, I call, and he has AKo. But yay, I suck out with runner-runner diamonds and stack him. Oops, I'm a fish. But at least I'm a fish who sucks out.

The rest of the night was largely uneventful, and it didn't feel too good to see my buddy in the 1 seat leave down a cool $1k. Oh well, it's poker. I left that night with a solid 130bb win, plus getting the 1 seat's business card, after running so-so after those few hands with him.

The world of poker is a pretty high variance world, I thought, after walking away with a winning session, even though I didn't deserve it. Good for me. Off to Vegas in less than 2 weeks

Don't like the raise with AT. Don't like 9x'ing it with QT. QT hand is complete disaster. Raising flop in general with this hand is bad. Especially terrible vs this villain. Even worse to do so with a small minraise into a large pot. Villain is terrible and is giving you a great odds to draw so call flop and maybe you will pick up outs on turn, if you need them at all which is unclear based on $10 bet. All you have is middle pair bad kicker so why allow the pot to get bloated?!?