Hi,

Its 8:30 in vegas right now, everyone is drunk/asleep and I am unfortunately sober/awake so I decided to do something productive.

I stumbled on to 2p2 playing 18 months ago playing .1/.25 FR on bodog. Today I play 5/10-25/50 on ftp and stars. So you know whats possible, now lets talk about whats required. If I knew what I knew now I could have expedited that process into easily under a year. The key is using your time efficently and becoming consumed with the game.

I am going to number these so they are easy to follow.

(I should preface by saying I'm expecting you can come up with like $200 or smth for a bankroll for .05/.1, if you can't grind very small stakes SNGs or something until you can, just play ultra tight and you'll do fine).

1. If you are just starting out play 2 tables. After you become adept at ANALYZING hands move up to three. If you cannot analyze hands at 2 tables go to one table. After you master three tables move to four. DO NOT MOVE BEYOND 4.

DO NOT MOVE BEYOND 4 TABLES

if you can follow this piece of advice you will be in good shape, the biggest leak/cruch of unl-SSNL players is their penchant to multitable. You will never learn anything playing that many tables, learning the game has a FAR greater value than any RB/bonus/hourly of grinding SSNL ever could.


2. Review your sessions! You need to know your game AND your opponents game. Get used to analyzing your play with an opponent and the dynamic you guys create (obviously this requires pokertracker of some sort). This isn't as important until like 100-200NL but knowing how to do it is crucial because this is what actually makes you think deeply about how to play hands and your overall gameplan.

3. Play SOLID. Do not run any type of big bluffs until 400NL. Just that simple, do not make moves. You will be extremely tempted constantly to run the bluff, the more in control of this urge you are the faster you are going to moveup, plain and simple, these guys are waiting to give away their money, you just need to be patient and understand how to play solid.

Playing solid is what poker is all about, you need to know how to play every situation without reads in a somewhat nitty/conservative manner so that you avoid spewing and making horrible players (bluffing a station, checking vs a weak tight)

Think of poker like a road, while you are going striaght you are playing your solid ABC game, later down the road you will turn left/right to adjust to your opponents game, but for the beginning of sessions/early levels play solid and aggressive and you will do just fine.

4. *** numbers. Do not use a HUD, this will cause far more problems than it will create and slow you down. I wish I could go back in time and just avoid using a HUD and play 4 tables and focusing with decisive reads, but alas I cannot, don't use a HUD, focus on your opponents line and what hand (s) he is representing and how he plays certain hands, where he is weak and where he is strong, this is far more valuable than knowing a regular is 20/17 or a fish is 40/2.

Also EV graphs, won $ at showdown, showdown winnings, all that is bullsht just ignor it.

5. Tilting. This is the hardest thing to handle, basically if you can play solid and not tilt you'll play 5/10 in like 8 months tops if you work almost every day. For everyone its different how results effect you and how you deal with it. One thing I can tell you is that one day you will, no matter what run worse than you ever thought was reasonable, logical, mathematically possible. I have expierenced so many 10+BI downswings I couldn't beging to count how many times its happened 2 me. I can say that it has slowed my progression as a player down and again its something I wish I could do a better job of handling, just be constantly aware that poker is going to kick the **** out of you and you can take it kicking and screaming or take it like a man and rough it out.


Thanks all for now,

GL!

Great post. Thanks.

having just started taking poker seriously and trawling 2p2 i think this is good advice.

basically ur saying play ABC poker on a maximum of 4 tables using poker tracker to review hands and avoiding HUD's to increase your hand reading skills without getting tilted through variance or otherwise.

it took me a while to work some of these things out but i did it myself. You've now added the whole HUD/stats thing to my understanding. I keep hearing people quote stats and stuff BUT in your 6 max book you make the reference to stats frequently???

Is this because you're primarily aiming it at sort of 100nl + or what?

A question Fees: How many hands a day would you reccomend to play for a solid dose of poker from which you can see a real ood improvement. I've been trying to bang out 1k hands a day 2 tabling. Is this a good number do you think?

This seems to go against most of the other suggestions on this forum. Could you go into more detail about this one? For instance, you say that we should "focus on your opponents line and what hand(s) he is representing." However, we should obviously be playing the 20/17 different than the 40/2. Are you saying that we should be observing their play and making lots of notes?

I can also understand that relying on the numbers can be a crutch. However, it seems like with the constantly revolving pool of players at the lower levels that you need them.

Fees is the man, after downloading his 6-max guide I'm reading people etc. much better than before, the guy is a 1 man training site! I wouldn't consider myself a beginner anymore but this is a great post as usual.

Fees you just mentioned to not run big bluffs basically til 400nl, which is great advice, but in your 6max guide u talk about not cbetting 3bet pots unless you'll be shoving the turn regardless (if i remember correctly). Is that advice not relevant until 400nl as well?

As someone who has played mostly HUDless for one reason or another (either because I'm playing on a Mac or a site that doesn't support it) I can see what he means when he says to shy away from it starting out. It forces you to be more perceptive (if you need a HUD to tell the difference between a 40/2 and a 20/17 while four tabling you're not paying enough attention) and it forces you to make reads based on tendencies, rather than stats. I see so much in uNL people posting hands with no reads other than the guy you're playing is a 22/17/2 or whatever, where as game flow considerations, post flop play history, your own image and everything else are also incredibly important when making a read.

I'm not going to deny the usefulness of HUDS; certainly they can help out a ton in marginal spots, especially with the myriad of stats they offer today, but beating micro/small stakes without them is hardly impossible.

I don't want to speak for you, fees, you play a lot higher than I do, but this is just my opinion on HUDs and what I see a lot of in the strat forums.

Now can you explain to me why I can crush 2NL, but get crushed by 5NL? I have tried moving up to 5NL 3 times now, as soon as my BR reached 100, but each time I try I seem to lose, and it gets more frustrating each time.

Bad luck or a low comfort level probably Tbird.

pokey's answer

I've been grinding .05/.1 using the hud to get reads and hopefully move up faster, but i'd honestly rather move up slower and be prepared for the upper limits, than to move up and get destroyed.

i guess i can say i am happy than i ve been playing without hud... because i feel i get a lot of good reads without stats... just my noticing patterns of my opponents... and the funny thing is that they keep doing the same thing over and over again... tho i am still playing NL25 with very slim results (taking about BB/100)... havent found whats the key thing to have like 5-10 BB/100 results playing these limtis... or atleast 3-5... perhaps its ABC game... but its tough to play ABC against these bad players... anyway thx for your post man... its a good inspiration since i know it very doable...

I like this. Everyone seems obsessed with using those numbers when discussing hands. It's refreshing to see another perspective.

I've resisted using a HUD. I can't escape the thought that using one interferes with learning how to read hands/players better. I can see the advantage of using a HUD, but I think I still have so much to learn that it would slow down my progress.

Thanks for the great post!

I think the main reason playing without a hud would improve some players play is simply because it forces you to pay attention to the game. I've found myself getting frustrated with my low BB/100 when I later realize I was watching the movie on the TV more than playing poker, leaning on my PT numbers to make the play. No one can deny the useful potential huds have, but I completely agree that it shouldnt be used as the only way you study the table.

fee's if you want i'll have your babies. The hud bit resonates with me more than anything else. In theory it is great to have the information on screen but I allow hud to make my decisions. Going against my read and stacking off light because of a guys statistics has cost me a lot.

There are loads of people who can utilise the stats of a hud and remain impartial to it but after a lot of experience I still can't manage it.

+1

I too am from the school that you don't need a HUD to be successful - at any stakes, IMO. I've never once used a HUD and only use PT for record keeping purposes and to archive hand histories so I can post trouble hands in the uNL forum.

My winrate is comparable to those guys that use HUD's.

I've read enough posts and studied my results enough to know what the numbers, etc. all mean, but you'll never catch me using one.

I like to needle regulars that I stack now and again by asking them in the chat "did your HUD tell you to make that call?" or some similar wisecrack.

So you're saying we should remember every single hand that was played at the table, with all the relevant information including position, stack sizes, the players' image at the time, the actual betting obviously, any hands that got shown down, history between the players, possibly the timing of bets etc.? I'm playing 4 tables at the moment but I'd need some practice to do all this on a single table. Then we should be able to recall all this while in a hand and use it to build a more general picture of our opponents? Do you have use some tricks to remember all this stuff, like replaying the action in your head after the hand ends?

fees rocks

for those of you that don't anything about fee's... he wrote a great 6max strat. guide...

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...d.php?t=122212

Wow awesome stat guide fees.

These spots are semibluffs with tons of equity so its fine, try and figure out how your opponents play, lot of guys peel 1 street then fold to turn ships.

as far as the numbers go, its better to follow your opponents play and understand what 40% of hands actually looks like from a play perspective, same with 20/17s, most TAGs play the same stats but their overall games are completely different, understand each individual and his tendencies are far more valuable than any numbers

I think this is why HUD's are nice at micro and low stakes and why Fees advocates not using them so much at high small stakes and middle stakes and high stakes.

Cause at the lower stakes there'll be a very wide variety of statstics from people who are somewhat easy to exploit and at middle and high stakes it's a lot more TAGgy players against whom you have to get more into it and exploit closer tendencies.


Not that I'm at Fees' level or playing the same levels he plays.....But that's kinda what I'm gleaning from that and I think that's right.



Correct?

I do bring up stats because they were a part of my game and i thought it would be the best way to convey how to play better to 2p2 community that is so used to them. The truth is to avoid stats and work on hand reading (as well as, this is very important

playing your hand, which means if your opponent has a range of X, playing your hand in such a way is BEST, you need to figure out what is best)

as far as hands, try and play infrequently when tilting/losing (very tough to do but try and keep control) and far more important KEEP PLAYING WHILE WINNING. My biggest problem by far, i get up 5 BI and quit, a lot of your 5bi days become 15+BI days if you stay with it (sometimes you'll lose money that day, this happens less often but it sucks and ****** with ur head, don't let it you made a good decision to continue playing)

its harder to indentify players at the lower stakes because your player pool is thousands of people whereas mine may be a few hundred at most, but don't let this discourage you, if you start using the HUD as a cruch you're screwed moving up, just don't use it.