Background: Im a Live 1/2 player who plays anywhere from 15 to 40 bours a week. I have played for 10 years with a mix of live and online play. I have been a part of learning communities such as deucescracked and 2+2 for a few years. I am starting to take poker as a hobby more seriously and am in love with the game.

My current goal is to build my bankroll at 1/2 from 2k (small bankroll but I feed into it often so RoR isnt accurate) to 5k so I can take a shot playing 2/5 and continuing my poker development.

My question is wether or not I should deposit a portion of my BR (say 200) on a site like Bovada (I am a US player) and play NL10 in order to help develop my game. Again, the focus is Live play but I am not turned away by the idea of doing some grinding online either. I am really looking for it to kickstart my winrate at 1/2 by getting more hands in and more practice with some of the complex poker theorys I am well versed in.

Any thoughts, suggestions or feedback from personal experience would be greatly appreciated!

You can play more hands online in a month, without even playing a ton of tables, than you can in a year playing live. So yeah, if you are looking to improve your game at the highest rate you can, playing online seems almost a necessity. Especially if you wish to keep pace with your toughest opponents which inevitable will have a ton of online experience putting in a lot of volume against superior competition.

Good luck.

Application of complex poker theories may not work too well at NL10 against top pair.

lol'd

I'd start at the lowest stakes they offer online because it's a very different game (not sure how your live games or Bovada specifically plays though).

This

Also Op hello from a fellow Mainer. If you are serious about crushing live 1/2 the volume you can put in online will defenitely improve your game. Speaking from experience the play at Hollywood Bangor is such garbage that If you were to play 20K hands at NL10 online you would be able to rob those guys blind. There are a few sharks up there but for the most part I think if you can be cautious around them you could probably make a killing just stealing limped pots (maybe an exaggeration)

Op check out my PGnC thread! http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...m-all-1444312/

Though I understand what you mean I disagree. Im not talking about higher level thinking in regards to my opponents but poker math, ranges, EV calculation, combinitorics etc... These are all things I need more practice with.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using 2+2 Forums

Nice thread! Sent you a PM and good luck!

So looks like Im going to do it. No HUD but you can get HH on Bovada correct?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using 2+2 Forums

I would highly recommend you do what you are planning on.

Start at NL25 however with something like a 300 bankroll instead of 200 at NL10. The main reason is because the rake at NL25 and below caps out at $2, so its a much better deal rake wise to play at the limit that is 2.5x larger with the rake being the exact same. To put it very simply, if you win an all in with 100bbs at NL10 you will have a $20 pot and that will get raked $1 on that pot and take $19 back. If you get all in with 100bb stacks at NL25 the pot size will be $50 and you will take $48 back, meaning you pay less than 5% rake overall 4.17% if you want to be exact.

Also the difficulty of those two limits is non existent.

I have played online poker for the past year on Merge/Bovada for the with no HUD, this is after playing with a HUD for the past 6 years. So its not the easiest thing in the world to break old habits, but gathering reads without a HUD is easy and a prerequisite to becoming a great poker player. Furthermore, why is someone who is primarily concerned about his live play even interested in using a HUD? It is a crutch that you wont be able to transfer to the live felt, therefore acquiring this skill that you dont even really want to have will not help you in the way you think.

If I were to go back in time and tell myself when I turned 18 what to do and what not to do, I would have 3 key pieces of advice that I will share with you. The number one thing I would say is to play less tables(master one table before you try to master two tabling before you try to master 3 tabling ect...). The number two thing is to never use HUD, overall makes you think way too inside the box and not outside, its literally as useful as a hand chart, it may be useful to look at for a few minutes when first starting out to get a framework about poker, but then dismiss it immediately. The third thing is to always consider playing stakes higher than you are currently. This advice was already presented when I say play NL25 instead of NL10, you always want to compare skill/rake of these levels. If you are playing NL100 and you have a winrate of 5bb/100 and you could afford to play NL200 and you think you could beat it for even only 2.5bb/100 you should move up to take advantage of the lower rake, and just try to improve your game while you have your lower winrate.

Good luck, if you have any other questions dont hesitate to ask.

You gotta note your ass off on Bovada. I play online for the same reason, and if you can become a winner at that site it's going to really improve your live game.

But the challenge is reads, and documenting player habits.

Like when I see that the old man in the farmer's shirt 4 bets on the button 80 percent of the time or that the dude in the hoodie will always bet when he's on a flush draw, it's pretty easy to remember.

When I see the same pattern with number 3 or 4 on Bovada, it's harder to mentally store that info.

Sound like a great plan. Beside the fact that you can rapidly develop your game, it will have some other benefits. If you can play for a few days you'll be able to stay fresh by playing a little online. I play more online than live but generally if I know I'm gonna play live later that night I'll get a few hands in earlier in the day kind of as a warm up.

This is exactly why I feel it is so important to use a HUD on Bovada. If you are playing 4 tables it makes it much easier to spot the fish and remember who they are.

Just to add to the discussion of anonymous play on Bovada, when playing these types of games getting any advanced reads becomes nearly impossible. If working on your reads is your main objective then Id suggest playing on a different site.

What does happen on anonymous tables is it really turns the game into more of a theory based game. So it becomes a great place to work on that part of your game and your fundamentals which as I stated become more essential to maximizing your success.

I defenitely agree with the second part of your post, 110%. But advanced reads are very possible on Bovada. I never jump right into a table anymore. I always watch the table for 20-30 hands first. Not that this will tell you super specifics about your opponents, but it sure as hell gives you a good idea who the weak players are.

20-30 hands is nowhere near enough to get 'advanced reads'.