Hello everyone! I am a 23 year old guy from Mauritius and I play under the screen name 'KingAkdo123' on Pokerstars. Till now I've been playing with play money only and I plan to play with real money in the near future. At the moment I've been playing rather decently but my game has got many leaks I guess. My focus is no limit hold'em and my objective is to become a very good player at poker.
My bankroll is small so I won't be able to pay for coaching from professional players.

Can I have suggestions from you players how can I improve my game and what kind of games should I play to build my bankroll? Let's put my bankroll at around 50$.

What do you want to play? There's cash games, tournaments, sit and go, heads up cash, heads up sng, spin and go, you name it.

Given you come from play money games you are almost guaranteed to lose at any game you start out with. With that in mind, you should play the games that are going to give you the longest time to learn for the cheapest amount.

Now at micro stakes tourneys and SNGs are very much beatable, the problem is that you can lose the entire $50 playing $1 games purely because of the massive variance, especially if you are on the bottom of the learning curve and expect to lose money in the beginning. If you play $0,01/$0,02 cash games you start out with 25 buy ins which are going to last a pretty long time, especially if you are playing tight.

There's also a difference between 9-handed and 6-handed. 6-handed is with less people so you need to play more hands per round to make up for the blinds and you need to do this with hands that aren't always that good. This makes it tough for beginners. If you start out full ring (9 players) you are going to be playing very little hands the first 4 or 5 positions so when you do enter a pot you are going to have the cards in your favor.

It depends so much on what you prefer to play but objectively starting out with 9handed 1c/2c cash games is probably one of the best ways. Buy in for $2 and you have 25 buy ins. Look up "starting hands" (there must be a ton of sticky topics in here) and go from there. Play 1 or 2 tables (depending on how actively people are playing and require attention) and if you don't do anything crazy you have a good chance of turning into a winner at those stakes before you run out of your bankroll.

Do use the sticky topics in this forum, they answer 90% of all the questions and if you follow the general strategies they describe, even without fully understanding why, you have an edge on your opponents.

Edit: oh and don't call when you enter a pot. Always raise if you are the first one in. Just accept that for now, it'll make things a lot easier.

1c/2c cash (aka 2NL) or tourneys/SnGs at the 10c or 25c level.

Read as many of the FAQs, stickies and links in the forum as possible. Join Pokerschoolonline if you haven't already, as that offers additional bonuses and freerolls to Pokerstars beginners, and it has some basic tutorials and quizzes.

Good luck!

Welcome to the forums.

It really depends on your motivations for playing. I suggest that you write down these motivations and rank them on a scale of 1-10. Then as you gain experience and improve at the games, you can reformulate these motivations as you see fit.

For example, a couple years ago I found myself stressing over winning money and it was affecting my game. So you know what I did? I put fun at the top of my list of motivations. Every time I was faced with what I thought was a close decision, I took the route that lead to more fun, which in my case meant raising in spots where I should've called, calling in spots where I should've folded, and only folding when I was sure that it was the right decision. I actually won some money that year, though perhaps not as much as I could have if I had taken the game more seriously. However, I had more fun playing cards that year than ever in my whole life. Since then, I've once again reformulated my motivations for playing by putting winning cash first, but having fun remains a close second for me. Any time I find myself at a hostile table that isn't fun, I quit even though the table is often times quite profitable.

That's just me. You'll have to figure out what you want out of this game. Then once you've figured that out, you'll be free to chase that goal.

Good luck.

Thanks

Start learning a default strategy 1st. I like gripsed cash game ebook and crushing the micros. For 2nl and 5nl, it is all about being consistant with the strategy. Play a bunch and review hands.

Imo the best way to learn poker is start as shortstacker,so go to euro room and start with 20-30bb to learn the basics then go to 100bb stack and move to ps obv.

I'm sorry this is off topic KingAkdo. I'm currently in Mauritius for a week staying in flic en flac. Is there any place that I can play live cash games in? I tried to search online but got nothing helpful. Once again, I do apologise for straying off topic.

Don't play live cash/LLSNL until you beat the micros period. It will save you money and you'll learn far more playing online then live if you put in the work/study time.

OP I designed my 4-year-anniversary post with the goal that it would be the go-to post when anyone says "I want to play poker, how do I get started?"

I'd love to hear your feedback:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...poker-1571532/