I made this flowchart while teaching my girlfriend to play to help illustrate some of the things that she should be thinking about in a hand. Every time she had an action, I made her decide (any street) whether her hand was likely currently best or not based on the information she had available, and then use that answer to proceed through the flow chart. I allowed no "maybe" answers.

With all the recent posts on basic concepts like bet sizing and flop texture, I thought it might help to put this out there:






Hope this helps.

Very neat, heh. I am sure it will help some of the newer poker players.

It's amazing how many decisions go into playing a proper poker hand, and more amazing how quickly those used to make those decisions.

gorgeous start. I like the big fold button.

There's lots more to bet sizing than the danger of the board, but I think you know that. Maybe another flowchart

It's always tough to balance simplicity with detail in this sort of thing. For the absolute beginner, I'd just drop the "how much to bet" level, so the bottom becomes raise/fold/bet/check. Extra credit if you could merge the raise/bet branches, possibly by merging at the fold-equity decision. Fewer boxes might make this more digestible.

Excellent tool. You should add a table of hand strengths in the margins and maybe an outs/odds table or an odds to complete to a hand table.

You don't have a float/bluff/semi-bluff section... but I guess it would be when she is a better player.

Neither do we have checking for pot control when way ahead or way behind, nor a lot of other factors.

I recognize the lingo from Little Green Book. An excellent discussion of when to bet is contained in Chris Ferguson's chapter of the Full Tilt strategy guide.

Suggestion: submit this to 2+2 as a T-shirt design. I'll buy one.

print it on the cuff!

Bluffing/ semi-bluffing is kind of encompassed in the "Do I have fold equity?: Raise" and "Will a bet take the pot?:Bet" segments of the chart.

As for floating, pot control, deception etc. etc. yada yada, I intentionally didn't include them. I wanted the chart as clean as possible and didn't want to overburden her with secondary concepts before she had the basic basics down. I believe the chart itself (along with an understanding of the concepts mentioned) is way more than sufficient to beat the micros.

Everything extra is icing.

I struggled a lot while making this, fighting between simplicity and adequate content. Any simpler, and I think that many of the fundamentals get glossed over. Any more content, and the beginner's eyes gloss over.

It was a compromise...

Not to bogart your topic (which I think is brilliant in its simplicity), but what is "floating" anyway?

"Floating" is a fairly advanced play where you call a flop bet IN POSITION with no pair, no draw, expressly for the opportunity to take the pot away with a bet/raise on a later street (almost always the turn).

NOT a beginner play.

This is actually very good. This is the kind of things you should consider when playing a hand.

I agree. Let's make a t-shirt :-)

I like this chart a lot.

Sure, there are things you could add, but the whole point is, it's for beginners, and as such it does a great job.

I'd be interested to know how your girlfriend fared when she used it.

Also like the t-shirt idea.

You should leave some space for calling when you think you hand is the likely the best and you are being bet into (as the pre-flop raiser - often it is a bluff or a marginal hand turned into a bluff. Sometimes it is a monster.

Lucky

Overall great job and good idea for beginning players.

Very good point. I strongly thought about incorporating that line of thinking, but discarded it for a few reasons:

1) I wanted to impress that raising or folding was usually better than calling.
2) I actually believe that calling in this situation is a more advanced play.
3) I couldn't figure out where in the thought process this might belong for a beginner.
4) I got the chart to this point and decided it was all that she, as an absolute novice, could digest.

I suppose you could mark the section "Do I have odds to call? (outs)" with an asterisk, and have a footnote explaining that "if you have a marginal hand that is likely to only beat a bluff/cont bet, are the odds villain is bluffing greater than the pot odds being offered?".



As soon as she had the concepts in the chart more or less understood (took a week or so of coaching) she was instantly a winning uNL player, and has only redeposited once on her initial Pokerstars deposit of $50. This was about a year ago and she still is a consistently winning ssnl player.

It's interesting to note that about 3 months into playing, she changed her style (without my knowledge) to a more passive one as the large bets/raises "scared" her. This also sparked a several month losing stretch. Luckily, her pokertracker graphs clearly allowed her to see that the moment she started playing with passive tendencies was also the same moment she started playing losing poker, so it was easy to get her turned back around.

I think you should be calling most of the time you are bet into (in position) and think you have the best hand. If you always raise you will be building huge pots with marginal hands and blowing people off second best hands they they might bet or bluff with on a subsequent street. There are clearly exceptions, but raising most of the time is wrong.

Example (assume 100bb stacks): you raise (4bb) in late position with KJo. The bb calls (9bb pot). The flop comes J86 rainbow. The bb bets 7bb into you. You should probably call. If you raised the pot (23bb) you would need to raise his bet to 30bb which, assuming he called would leave you with 64bb remaining in a 68bb pot. This is a good situation to be in if you want to get it all in on the turn (as he is better than 2-1 and it will be hard to fold), but not a good situation when you have a hand like TPGK and your opponent called a pot sized raise on the flop (unless he is a total station or you are a total maniac - giving him justification to call with something that KJ beats).

Lucky

huh.

now the turn comes a blank, and he bets 15-20BB at me?

turn completes some sort of draw, and he bets 15-20BB? If I call again, we've got much the same pot, with very little clue where we stand.

OTOH, his range is much wider now, so maybe we're ok going to showdown with TPGK?

My standard is to raise flop, and smile if he folds a 2nd best hand (I get 23bb for my top pair, fair enough). If he calls, I'm shutting down, maybe even folding to a big turn bet.

All of a sudden I feel like I don't know how to play postflop. Have I just forgotten basic pot control? Should I not be hijacking this thread?

I think the chart is absolutely outstanding. People who write books on poker should include such things--instead they give you all these different decisions spread out 100-200 pages and you have to essentially make your own chart.

I'd agree if this wasn't geared towards micros, with the beginner in mind. Even in the example you provide I'd advocate a raise. When players are first starting out I think that keeping decisions as easy as possible is paramount until they have enough experience to start making better decisions.

In your example, if we raise, many worse hands will still call 77, 9Q, TJ, etc. (this is the micros) and nearly all hands better than ours will shut down, call, and check to us on the turn (giving us our opportunity to check behind, kind of a delayed pot control). If we get reraised, or he donk-bets us again on the turn we can quite confidently fold, micro players are not known for their unbridled aggression.

You may want to add to the 'Raise' section - All In. If the students are playing SSNL, you will get a lot of callers on OESD's and FD'ss.(We have all seen it) Good way to stack villian w/top set, etc.

Wonder if adding the thought process of placing the villian on a hand would help? (Side chart?)

Did villian make TPTK on the flop?
Did villian make 2 pair on flop?
Is villian betting an overpair?
Is villian value betting a monster?
Is he C-betting a wiffed AK?
Is he betting a OESD/FD?
Is this a block bet?
Did he hit a set? (Limp and CC's a PSB w/55 and a 5 hits the board)
Hit a str8?
Trips?
ect........

Also, what type player is the villian? Is he LAG/TAG/sLAG/ROCK?

Could you please print the chart upside down on the T-Shirt. It would be easier for me to read when wearing it.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Great chart for beginners but I don't understand 1 thing. You said this was for your girlfriend. Where is the section on whether to apply pink or red nail-varnish.

Bump because Rek is still a pig and one of my students needs to find this.