I have always been fascinated about NL Texas Hold Em but was never good at it (but never put in the effort either). After depositing $80 dollars at Full Tilt playing $50 NL (go ahead and laugh) and $6.50 SNGs, I lost all of my money. I had no idea about poker strategy past basic odds, position, hand strength, and tight aggressive play (and I deviated from it quite often, getting impatient and playing weaker hands aka gambling).

After realizing I was doing it all wrong, I'm now attempting to play correctly and have high ambitions. After reading up more about Position, Odds, Bankroll, Variance, etc, I realized that I have the potential to be a good poker player. Bankroll management really turned my outlook on NL Holdem upside down, that poker can be profitable through grind rather than gamble (I knew it was a skill game but put too much emphasis on bluffing/reads rather than disciplined play at beginner levels), I'm ready to actually start playing good poker.

My plan is to turn my initial $100 deposit into $1000 using beginner tight aggressive strategy and then relearn the game once I hit $1000.

I'm going to start this weekend, with this goal in mind:

$5 NL until my bankroll turns $200.
$10 NL until my bankroll turns to $500
$25 NL until my bankroll turns to $600
$50 NL until my bankroll turns to $1000

For the first $1000 dollars, I will be playing a mix of traditional tight aggressive and the "Set or Above/No Mistakes" strategy found here: http://www.poker-strategy.org/default.aspx?tabid=187. I'm going to follow it pretty religiously until I start developing a higher understanding of poker and can start playing at a more advanced level. Gotta start somewhere right?

My main questions are:

If it okay to play predictably at low stakes NL poker?

I figure it'd be more beneficial for me to be predictable and win at a slow steady rate by only playing strong hands, than it is for me to mix it up. I'm guessing that people playing at that limit won't be able to come up with accurate reads anyways right?

When will I know if I'm ready to play two tables at once?

I'm willing to grind it out with one table at first but I know my profit will be extremely slow until I get into the higher NL tables. I figure at such a low level, I could pretty comfortably play two tables at once (especially if I'm playing tight aggressive and only go in on certain hands). How will I know if I'm good enough to play two tables at once?

I now know about PokerTracker and am going to use it to help me improve my game, but how do I do so? How can I see where my leaks are, how can I see where my strengths are? Basically, what's the best beginners approach to taking advantage of PokerTracker?

What exactly is EV?

What is range, how do I calculate it and how do I use it to my advantage?

What should I start out playing? 6 max or Full Ring? What about HU?

Also: any basic tips or stories similar to mine that could encourage/help me out would be greatly appreciated. I'll be keeping records and blogging about my progress on a private site until I hit $1000 and will post the results here.

Is this full ring, 6 max or HU. I play Hu and started at HU sngs with small $50 Bankroll heres what i used.

BI
$5 = 15 Bi's ($75 roll
$10 = 20 Bi's ($200 roll
$20 = 25 Bi's ($500 roll
$30 = 30 Bi's ($900 roll
$50 = 35 Bi's ($1750 roll
$100 = 50 Bi's ($5000 roll

Easy Game

I also wanted to ask about that...what type of game should I play? Full ring or 6-max?

I'd do HU but I feel like it's not as newbie friendly (although I would consider myself an advanced beginner and a very fast learner). What type of style did you play building your bankroll on HU?

How is the competition at Low Stakes NL HU? Is it easy pickings or are there sharks like you preying on fish like me lol

$2,$5,and 10 husngs are easy. When playing at these low limits it takes no brains everyones betting at these are normally pretty strait forward. Dont try to outthink or outplay you opponet just play ABC poker. When i started all i did was NIt it up and wait for hands and then i would get payed off almost every time. Now im LAG but i have been playing long enough to figure out what works and what doesnt. ALways continue to learn and DONT let your Ego get in the way. MAke a stop loss for the day and stick to it. Invest in a online learning site you will learn quickly its not rocket science!!!

STICK TO BANKROLL MANAGEMENT OR YOU WILL GO BUST

DONT play HU CASH till you roll is about $2000 or $40 Buy-ins the lowest full Buyin is $50 on a .25/.50 table On FTP and Stars

Thanks for your help, you pretty much answered the first question completely. And yeah, I'm aiming to be rock/NIT until $1000, and then learn to be a better player from that point forward.

Just found pokertrikz.com and it has tons of great information including range, so I'll take that question out. I'm already set on staying with my bankroll management, I'll keep my progress updated.

For stop loss, I'm guessing thats a certain point where you lose money and you force yourself to stop playing for the day? Is there a good formula for it or is it just up to personal preference?

Lots of questions to go through here...

1) As far as playing "predictably", you will be value betting the crap out of your made hands. In other words, just play very straight forward. uNL opponents are mostly all level 1 thinkers. They think "I have AA, I shove." or "I have a flush draw, I call." There won't be much "reading" going on. You can usually take down some pots with well sized continuation bets in late position though.

2) Pokertracker is a godsend because you really get to see JUST how bad your opponents really are. Theres nothing funnier to me than seeing a guy at NL10 with 40 bucks he has "grinded" up to and then his PT stats show him as a 72/8/x. He immediately becomes my little ATM. The cool thing is that at those stakes, you dont even need a huge sample of hands to be able to determine your opponent's preflop styles. They dont really change or adjust much.

3) Play 2 tables when you are comfortable. Don't rush anything. At the low stakes its about learning, and its far more about how well you play your hands. Think about it. If you're making beginners mistakes, you want to minimize them. How can you do that by INCREASING the number of hands you play?

4) EV is expected value. Its a concept that merits (and has merited many times) entire threads on it alone. It is essentially how much money or chips or whatever you can be expected to win given a specific scenario over time. Think of it like this:
We flip a coin - I bet 1 dollar on heads, you bet 1 dollar on tails. We flip 10 times. The EV is even because we're betting the same amount on a 50/50 chance, and given enough coinflips, everything will end up evening out mathematically. Now take that scenario and say I bet 2 dollars, you bet 1. You are now +Ev because you are investing less, and getting more. After 10 flips, if we go 5 and 5, I lose 5 bucks, even though I won just as many flips as you did! I hope that clears it up a bit. In poker, you just use expectation to determine your mathematically correct decisions.

5) Range is another very complex subject, and its essentially the spectrum of hands you put your opponent on. If someone 4 bets at you preflop, you GENERALLY can narrow his range down quite a bit... Most low stakes players only 4 bet with AA, KK, and MAYBE QQ, and most of the time by that points its just a shove. So his range at that point would be AA, KK, QQ.

6) NO HU. NONONONO. You have to be uber rolled to be profitable at HU, its extremely high variance, and you need a lot of skill. I think 6 max may be better because you get to make more decisions, just don't multi-table 6 max yet. The games are generally a lot looser than 9 max because there are only 12 unseen cards as opposed to 18, so hands become stronger.

Anything else?

Stop loss is totally up to you. How much can you handle losing mentally before you tilt? It takes a lot to tilt me, but when I do tilt, its pretty heavy so I just have to stop. Usually I stop after I lose 3 BIs, take a break, and come back later or the next day.

I'm going to take a swing at this... TLDR obv.

Your advice is just what I wanted to read and was perfect.

This is exactly what I was hoping it would do for me although I haven't actually used it yet so that term 72/8/x is confusing to me. Could you elaborate on how to read a strong/weak player using this program?

Your description of range was really clear cut. I'm going to read this guide before I start this weekend: http://www.pokertrikz.com/articles/3...erging-Basics/

I also figured HU would be a bad idea. I'll probably end up playing 6-max because it'll feel like less of a grind. Possibly do first half full table and last half 6-max of a bankroll interval.

Next question: At Low Stakes NL Hold em, what's the best way to take advantage of position?

I've read many articles about position but the basic gist of it is that I play BEST hands at early position, STRONG HANDS middle position, and GOOD hands late position (good meaning still very decent). Most of these articles don't go into depth such as bet amount and deeper strategy. What's the best way to take advantage of each position (especially late)?

This is good info except for #6 my Variance have been simular from 6max and HU. If your playing good but running bad just play threw it. OP Just try and figure out what works for you, everybody is different. Dont Multi-Table HU when you start.

I'm interested in HU but will probably start it at my 3rd stage of poker (when I have around $5000 dollars).

Current questions: I've read many articles about position but the basic gist of it is that I play BEST hands at early position, STRONG HANDS middle position, and GOOD hands late position (good meaning still very decent). Most of these articles don't go into depth such as bet amount and deeper strategy. What's the best way to take advantage of each position (especially late)?

and:

At what point in your poker career did you steer away from rock/Nit/mouse and start developing more aggressive play. I'd prefer an answer from someone who started out similar to how I am starting.

Well 72/8/x are just Pokertracker stats. In this case it means that the given player plays 72% of hands, Raises with 8%, and the 3rd number is how aggressive he is post flop.

Its VPIP(Voluntarily put in pot)/PR (Pots raised)/ and AF (aggression factor) Since we were only deal with a preflop scenario, the 3rd number was irrelevant. What this tells you about this player is that he calls a LOT preflop, but doesnt raise much, so when he does raise, you can pretty much guarantee that he has a good hand. Its free information, and it helps you make decisions later in the hand.

Position is probably the most important element of poker. EVERY hand gets better with later position. The reasons are near infinite. You are the last to act after the flop, so you get to see everyone else's decisions before you make yours. You also play a huge role in the size of the pot. Think about it logically. If you act last after the flop, and everyone checks to you, that means that theres a DECENT likelihood that no one hit that flop, so a bet would be in order to try and either win the pot immediately, or at least isolate the hand down to you and one other person.

Bet sizing is not set in stone. Its dependent on several variables, such as size of the pot, your hands strength, the style of your opponent, how likely your opponents are to fold if you bet, the likelihood that you are beaten in a hand... Its far too broad of a subject to fully describe here.

And yes, your variance will be higher at 6 max. It wont be as bad as HU I dont think (at least from my experience), but it will be worse than 9 max.

At what point in your poker career did you steer away from rock/Nit/mouse and start developing more aggressive play. I'd prefer an answer from someone who started out similar to how I am starting.

Everybodys different depends how much you play and how much you learn. I got out of the Nit stage when i was better at putting people on ranges, learned betting patterns Had a fat roll for the stakes i was playing and didnt tilt from droping off a buyin or two.

Well I've never really been a total nit. Playing strictly nitty isnt the best idea, in my opinion, because you shut yourself out from many other potentially profitable opportunities. This is why your DECISION MAKING ability is far more important than your play style. I think your style will come naturally as long as you are making good decisions, which is what you should be focusing on.

Nitty decisions are easier decisions than you experience playing looser, but you learn more by playing more hands.

That makes sense, but this type of scenario was pretty common for me during my 1 week spree of bad poker play:

I'll be either position before button or button, have a strong hand such as a mid pair or A-10s/A-Qo and I'll raise 2-5 bets. Then the small blind/big blind will reraise with something worse than me due to bad poker play and I'll call and miss the flop and end up having to do a continuation bet (which I now know is stupid at low-stakes because I could have just folded) or fold.

I guess now with PokerTracker I can tell whether or not the blinds are just playing aggressive with a subpar hand or if they actually have a good hand. In these situations where I get re-raised/called with a strong hand late position and miss the flop, my best bet is just to check/fold?

And yeah, I don't want to be a complete NIT either, which is why I'm going to mix up NIT and that Set or Above/No Mistakes strategy. I figure if I have the advantage of playing really tight and also play mid pairs, high suited connectors, high flush draws then I'll get the best profits of both worlds?

Also, shoot me a PM if you helped me and want a link to my eventual blog, to see if your advice was put to good use

Well continuation bets are generally a good thing in that scenario you gave me. But you have to understand that a c-bet is only a c-bet if its been checked around to you. If someone bets before you, its not a c-bet, its a raise. C-bets are best on dry flops with a single high card, like Ah 7c 2d. You can usually get away with c-betting to take down the pot on those kinds of boards, however, c-betting at a board like Jd Td 9d is not likely to be as effective because of the fact that theres a REALLY good chance someone picked up some kind of draw that makes staying in the hand potentially profitable, and like I said before, at uNL stakes, villains arent thinking about what you have, they are thinking about their "SICK DRAW OMG"... So you cant expect your c-bets to be as effective.

Also - c-bets arent as effective in earlier positions. They are most effective on the button/cut off.

Here's a hand. I'm on button:

I have QJs and I'm up against 2 other people at the flop.
Flop: Qd 5s 9h

Everyone checks to me, I make a c-bet. 1 person folds, 1 person calls.

Turn: 2c

He checks, I make a decent c-bet. He calls.

River: As

He makes a large bet on me. I'm guessing he started off with AK. Or he might be bluffing. Putting in C-bets has screwed me over. What do I do? Call, re-raise? Should I have made bigger c-bets?

im surprised he hasn't chimed in here yet, but some of the best advice i ever got was from kurtsf. micro stakes can get discrouageing and down right piss you off, and make you think u can beat the stakes, when in all realty you may not be. stick to it and brush off bad beats, its the fish you'll thrive on.

Well I need more information than that. What happened preflop? What are the bet sizes?

I cant PM you by the way.

The one thing I've taken to heart is that if you are getting bad beat, it means that you are playing good poker (for the most part). I mean, yeah, getting bad beat sucks and if its happening frequently then you are playing bad, but I figure the occasional bad beat actually encourages me knowing that I played it right and the guy won due to plain old luck.

Why can't you PM me Systolic?

Systloic, assume he bet a small 3-4bet, and I called.