So I've been browsing the free software forum trying to find something that could keep track of my stats. I don't play hardcore poker but I would love to improve my gaming without having to invest $99 for hm or pt. Tried setting up FPDB, but that got a bit to advanced for me, gave that up, as I couldnt make it work. Is there any other alternatives? (Figure there wont be, as I couldnt find any at the free software forum, but just had to ask)

None that work nearly as well that I know of.

Keep in mind that pt4 and hm2 both have free trials and both have a discounted microstakes version - I believe they both work up to .25/.50 and you can pay the difference later if you decide to play higher.

It seems like a lot of money relative to the stakes you may play but the biggest value comes from using it as a diagnostic tool to improve your game and move up. It's worth the investment.

Awesome now it makes a lot more sense! Thank you!

whats a marginal spot?

Basically spot what is neither especially 'good' nor especially 'bad'.

thanx

How do I post a pic from my iphone to the forum?

What is a capped range ?

Probably best to download an app such as photo bucket

Question for Dutch residents or people that know about withdrawals and taxes for this country:
Are there gambling-type taxes on withdrawals of high amounts or if at all?
If so, what would be the max amount that would go under the radar and would be "clean" money without a tax deduction?

When a player should never have a hand stronger than X due to the line he has taken.

This concept doesn't really apply at nano stakes as people will slowplay everything to a ridiculous degree.

Suppose I raise preflop on the button, three players call. The flop comes QT7. It checks to me and I check back. Turn comes 2. If a player knew me well enough to realize that I would always bet a flopped flush, set, 2p, and knows that I would not raise 22 preflop, then he could deduce that my range is capped at 1 pair.

Now suppose it's a limped pot preflop, I'm in the BB and I check my option, and then check on the flop. My range is not capped, I could have absolutely anything.

Thanks a lot. Yeah, does not apply much to nano stakes but I feel a lot of stuff can be used to crush regs at this level.

In a vacuum, if a random pro with some heads up experience were to play a deep stack heads up match against a random, decent to good, online player who won some sort of qualifier for the opportunity, what sort of ballpark expectation would the random player have to win against the pro?

35% too low and 45% too high?

Lets try to quantify this better. Lets say we have a pro that specializes in full ring play and heads up play for big money. He played in the thunderdome at Full Tilt for $50k+ all the time and he also plays heads up cash live for $50K+ all the time and has even played heads up for $1M.

On the flip side, we have a winning $20 Heads-Up player who won a satellite tournament to play against said pro for $100k heads up in a live game.

I would say that the online player would win around 20% of the time.
Nerves would completely unravel him a big portion of the time, so he's playing at a disadvantage from the start not to mention the pro has an edge over him.

Take the above but instead of a live heads up match its online. Then I would up the online player's winning % to 30% - 35%.

just my "out of my ass" opinion

Those are exactly the sort of assumptions I had in mind about the quality of the two players. Thanks for your response.

If 20% is a reasonable win expectation on a big stage, couldn't he improve it by open shoving some range of hands? Would he effectively hurt his chances by playing back at the pro?

is 4NL suppose to be very swingy at 6max? im going +/- 3BI each session. never steady up.

is it 4nl or me?

its all loose passive weak tight guys on 4nl though.

3 buy-ins is the opposite of swingy.

Wow..this is a really good thread. Highly recommended for beginners who are taking poker seriouslly...like me
Would also recommend creating a poker goal list/thread cos everyone here is really helpful and helps keep people motivated.

Keep going ) Learn and conquer

Now I could be wrong here, but I doubt those percentages are realistic assuming that both players play their best.

You're saying that a top HU player would be winning 70% of the games. So if he is wagering $1 a game, where winner takes $2 he'd averaging $1.40. 40% ROI in a heads up game against someone who has an idea how to play isn't happening.

20% is even more laughable, I doubt a win rate of 80% is possible against someone who can't even play poker.

Is there a big variance in multi-table SNGs? Are there pros who play only SNGs, eg 9-man all the way up to 180-man?

There's variance in everything.

There are pros who play everything.

With semester break coming, I want to get started with poker. I will be starting out with online small stakes MTT and skip cash games completely for now.

I've been browsing alot through the forums the past days and I've some questions left.

I've been reading and analyzing HoH I & II, also raiser's edge and playing the player should be in the mail tomorrow. When I've some more cash, I may look up some of sklanskys work.

Any other literature somebody would recommend as a must read?

At least a HUD seems to be required for solid online play. I downloaded
freepokerDB, but can't get it to work (windows 8) yet.

Are there any other options, preferably free?

What's is everybodys take on coaching sites/-videos? They are broadly mentioned here and there. I like the free content on cardrunners, but i'm not too fond of paying for more (student income ftl). And I don't feel that the content will be game breaking or much different from the stuff I'll get out of the literature, I mentioned above.

Some input is much appreciated.

Bother PokerTracker and Hold'em Manager have free trials. If after you've exhausted those you still can't afford to pay for a tracker and/or don't see why you should do so, you might want to reconsider poker...

When looking at my stats should I be looking at bb/100 or all-in adj bb/100 to try to get an idea of my win rate? I only have about 9.5k hands played, looking at my actual win rate tilts me pretty bad, but looking at the all-in adjusted makes me feel fairly confident in my game.

Which number will give me a better idea of how I'm performing?

both

AIEV only accounts for one kind of variance. Yes, going all in as a favorite and losing is bad luck, but so is running into the tops of ranges when you bluff, or betting big on the flop and turn and folding when an obvious draw comes on the river...

The way to know how you are really doing is either to play hundreds of thousands of hands, or evaluate your play win or lose and determine what you can do better.