this.

Hi, I'm a beginner myself with just around 25k hands behind me.

One of the things I have come to realize is, that beginners really need som solid methods and guidelines of how to play decent poker. Playing decent or even semi-decent will take you a long way at the micros.

I have had some sessions with a friend, who's been playing for 5-6 yrs and is doing really well, and he watched me play and gave me som tools.
In realizing, that there are probably a lot of lacks in strategies that are very simple and very fixed, they work well for uNL and give beginners a set of tools to work from until they (myself included) develop their own sense of the game.

Strategies/tools could be things like:

• Either play the hand or don't. If you play the hand, raise or at least call a raise.
• If the hand is not good enough to raise, fold it
• Raising moves you out of your comfort zone, but it pays back when ppl either get scared and fold, or raise you enough to give you an easy fold
• If in doubt how much to bet, bet 3/4 of the pot
• If ppl play against you, e.g. raise or re-raise you, they almost always have a good hand. Consider if you really have the best hand
• Use pot buttons to make your bets and bet according to the pot rather than according to the amount of $ you think is reasonable to bet

You could even get more specific than this and make rules for the bet size in early/late position etc.

The above things are all examples on how things could be done in real life, which most forum writers talk about as "Avoid marginal situations", "uNL players have what they represent", "Never over bet the pot", "Raise to gain information"

After my last session with my friend, I have a long list of things which I try to do very consistently. Having a set of rules to play from really really helps me remove the uncertainty of how I should play in different situations, and how much I should bet.
When playing "by the rules", I have turned from being a nervous and massive loosing player to being a confident, even player in 4NL. Now I have to learn not to fall in love with my good hands, which is definately what is stopping me from being a winning player (I can see from me graphs...). If removing the few AA / QQ which have cost me a LOT, I am on the winning side, so I truely believe this is the way ahead for beginners like myself.

I'll get back to you in 20k hands time and let you know if the concept works in the long run

Ok, just re-read my own post and found that even my own list was pretty vague...
Being a beginner, I have a hard time formulating my own rules clearly in writing right now, so hope that all you seasoned players can help putting up some clear rules.

Maybe need to be really specific and maybe make some steps, beginning with the really basic stuff like bet sizes, starting hand ranges etc.

-Why should I raise with AK, if it usually doesn't make a pair on the flop? Especially when many players see the flop, in a limit game, AK is a very speculative hand.

-What's wrong with ATo? Preflop? How can KQs be better? If both hands were all-in preflop against each other, ATo would be the favorite... so why is the underdog hand more recommended to play?

-How can I beat a game where players call too much?

-When should I slowplay?

-Should I bet/raise when I think my hand's best, but check/fold when I think my hand's worst?

-Why do people raise with drawing hands? Shouldn't the made hand be the one to put in the last bet/raise?

-If it's 2 to 1 against making my draw with two cards to come, but 5 to 1 against making it in one card, then what should I do on the flop? I don't know whether I'll get to see the river. Should I call getting 2 to 1 on the flop, then fold if the turn misses me?

-Why is a suited hand so much better than an unsuited hand? Is it better? Most of my suited hands don't make a flush, so I don't see why it helps much.

-Can big stacks really bully short stacks in No-Limit?

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P.S. I'm not actually asking these questions. You can still answer them if you like, though.

Answers please zadignose

What is rake?
What is rakeback?
What is the best site to play on with my bankroll?
Which avatar best suits my personality?

I've only been playing for a few months so no one read this looking for guru advice but I'll take a stab at a few of these.. Please expand or correct me if anyone has comments

You are just as likely as any other player to hit the board (30%). Aside from raising for value since you probably hold the best hand, driving players out of the hand preflop by raising decreases the chance that you'll be facing an opponent who has paired the board. Also, a raise lets you typically rule out some hands that your opponents will be holding. For example, if you get to the river and you determine some random hand like Q-9 is the only hand that can beat you, then you can probably rule it out as a possibility since this hand would normally be folded to a preflop raise.


ATo is the favorite, but ATo is a dangerous hand to play.. If your opponent also holds an ace, you will have no idea where you stand in the hand when facing a sizeable raise and it can be tempting to hold onto top pair. KQ does well when you flop top pair and are more certain that you hold the best hand.. You are only dominated by AK or AQ, in which case you should have heard from your opponent preflop. Also, any high connector cards are good drawing hands.. first is obviously because of their straight potential but also because on boards where they make their straights usually the villains also have made a solid, but lesser hand. (ex: A10 vs KQ on an A10J board)


Wait until you get a monster.. Bet big and allow them to do what they do best.


Almost never. The more wet or coordinated a flop (wet = 789clubs, dry = 48Qrainbow), the less you should be inclined to slowplay. Default for me is to never slowplay. Most often you're losing value and giving too many free potentially dangerous cards to your opponents. Exceptions might be when you flop a set on a dry board, or the nut straight or flush.

By far the worst place I see people slowplay: with huge overpairs like aces or kings. People are out there setmining against these hands and your lucky as it is to not have one of them flop a set or two pair against you. Don't let them see a fourth card without paying for it.


I'm not sure why I feel like this is a trick question, but from my understanding this is a resounding YES. Always raise when you think your hand is best, check/fold when you think you are beat. This is a huge leak in many new players games (mine included). When you just KNOW that you have the second best hand, you need to fold.


Raising gives you the chance to make your opponent fold, and it also allows you to control the betting. You can give yourself decent odds at seeing the next card without making too big of a mistake (mistake = paying too much to see the next card). If you check a drawing hand to your opponent, they may bet too much to make it correct for you to call.


I'm still a noob so I'm not clear about this one. I think this depends highly on implied odds and the stack sizes. If you are playing very deep (with lots of BB's), then calling the flop bet seems ok to me if you think there's a decent chance you could stack off if you hit your flush. If the flop bet represents a sizeable portion of your stack then its an easy fold. I've been curious about this myself so I'd love to hear an answer from a more experienced player.


You will be raising and taking down pots with flushes as well as flush draws, so its not just the made hands but also the hands that you are drawing to the nuts. For example AJ of clubs on a board like 5c9c10h.. in sit and goes you'll often see people reraising all in here because they are drawing to the nuts. They have 9 outs to the nut flush and 6 for the overpairs.. 15 outs puts them at like 55% even if they get a call plus they're getting their opponent to fold some percentage of the time.

There's something to be said about new players overvaluing suited cards though. Way too often do you see people playing J-8 of hearts "because their suited." This is NOT a good hand. Fold it. Big, preferably connected suited cards are good hands.


My experience here is limited since I play SNG's. In SNG's, big stacks most effectively pick on medium sized stacks since they are waiting for the smaller stacks to bust out. In fact its actually helpful to keep the small stack in the game to continue bullying the medium stacks and gain a bigger chip lead.


Those are my best answers. Again, I'm relatively new to this game so please don't take this as holy scripture or anything. PLEASE expand and correct as you all see fit. I mostly did this to see if my thinking is progressing, for people to help identify my potential leaks, and of course to help the poor fellow noob who is trying to progress his own game. Best of luck all.

That's an excellent question It's hard to program yourself that way at the beginning though, but definitely needed.

More helpful questions... I hope..

What is ICM?

How should my playing strategy change in the early, middle, late game?

are we asking random questions in this thread????

or are we learning how to become rakemonkeys?

in the latter case, I play 50k hands per month!

Someone might have already said it (only read opening page)

"Should I ever fold KK preflop?"!!!!

"so to win the bad beat jack pot, lets go to a heads up table and keep checking down all flops until we get quads over quads or straight flush over straight flush"

What is a good/attainable winrate etc, what is a good amount to win in a day etc

@Roy: I think your answers are well considered, and mostly good. I might take a slightly different angle on some of the questions, or expand or modify a few points, but mostly I like your responses. I'll just look at a couple of specific points in more detail:

Maybe it was sort of a trick question, I'm not sure, but the answer I was aiming at was "no," or "not always." The point was that the question ignores odds/pot odds, opponents' tendencies, and deception. It's the first place a logical beginner starts, and it seems quite sensible, to bet when you think you're best and get out of the way otherwise. But doing this consistently can lead you to fold a hand that rates a reasonable chance of being best or improving to the best when the pot odds are favorable... a problem of many players who start out as risk averse and prefer only to bet with something close to the nuts... or, it can lead to a person clinging too tenaciously to a hand they think is probably "best," though it's very mediocre, vulnerable, and has little to chance to improve, while the pot is smallish on an early betting round.

Bluffs are about betting with the worse hand, of course, and wouldn't be possible if you never bet the worse hand. More significantly, the straight-forward approach of betting with the best "made" hand but going passive otherwise, will rule out the very powerful weapon the *semi-bluff*, which can win when it's not called, and win when it completes its draw.

Also, in limit games in particular, once a player gets deeply involved in a hand, he/she is almost obligated to pay off one last bet on the end with a hand that has some chance of being a winner, because there are so many chances to catch a guy overplaying a weaker hand or naked bluffing, the pot is big, and the bet to call is relatively small.

As further suggested above, we can't play the same hands consistently the same way once we meet sophisticated opponents. Deception becomes important, and that means going against the actual strength of our hand.

One final elaboration, in No-Limit, a hand which is marginally favorite to be the "best" hand on the flop, but you're not sure and it *could* be crushed* often does better with pot-control, which means checking behind on one or more of the betting rounds to avoid pot-commitment with a weakish holding.

Still, playing it straight *is* often correct.

Your answers are good, and I'd just add a few things.

-High card hands *frequently* make *medium strength* hands. Suited cards and connectors *less frequently* make *very strong* hands. The medium strength hands often win small to medium pots. The very strong hands sometimes win very big pots. But of course high card suited connectors combine all possibilites.

-Especially in pots that are played multi-way (several players see the flop), just a few percentage points in increased winning chances become very meaningful. For example, if a J9o might win a particular 4-way pot 22% of the time (not a real number, just a random approximation for example), but suited it could win 28%, that's the difference between underdog and favorite... and as suggested above, the player gets away from the hand when it's no good post flop, but continues when it stands to win a potentially very big pot.

-The actual value of suitedness is very variable, and depends on playing conditions, including how many players see the flop, whether there is large and frequent preflop raising, and how well opponents play postflop. Expert opponents can seriously diminish the value of your suited hands, because they know how to punish draws, or price you out of a draw. They can also get away from paying you when you hit. So suitedness is always worth *something*, but it's worth more against bad postflop players, and worth significantly less against experts.

-As you noted, suitedness alone, with no other value to back it up, is worth very little and is practically a trash hand.

Without getting into every detail on this one, I'd just highlight that beginners take a while to realize that "made hand" and "drawing hand" is an artificial distinction. Until all the cards are out, each hand is just a "potential to win." How good a hand is depends on how likely it is to win when all the cards are out, not on whether it would *currently* win in a showdown.

But additional considerations for this question include the ideas of semi-bluffing, implied odds, and how much the value of the hand will change after one more card is dealt out (strong draws immediately drop in value when they miss the turn, while they also regret a missed bet when the turn hits them but the opponent declines to pay off in a small pot).

Thanks Zadignose.. I appreciate the comments. I think you made me realize I might be a bit too predictable. I like playing fairly ABC most of the time, but I really need to start mixing it up a bit when I'm facing a more experienced player.

Really looking forward to the responses to a lot of the questions posted here..

1. Is it easier to win at large tables than small tables?
2. Isn't it great, that some poker software show me my hand strength?
3. What should I do when someone starts telling me in the chat what cards he/she has?
4. If someone is being offensive in the chat and calling me an idiot, should I leave the table?
5. Should I chat while playing?

My answers:

1. The more players, the more blinds you can steal. However, your good hands fall in value with many players, so I prefer playing 6-man over 9-man tables
2. For very very rooky players it can be helpful to be reminded of the hand you have. However, disabling it helps you train your awareness of the cards on the table, identifying draws, not only your own but also your opponents. So turn it off asap, which at the latest should be when you hit 10k hands !!
3. Usually ppl do this to try to confuse you. If it gets you confused, turn off the chat for that person
4. Calling someone names is usually a sign of frustration. Frustration = tilt. So put on a smile and be sure that you have this person in the best spot for beating him.
5. As a rule of thumb, don't chat. It gives info away and info given can hurt you.
   One exception is in the previous example, where talking back smartly might make the offender even more tilted: "Oh, I love it when you talk dirty, honey...". I did this ones and the person freaked at me. a few hands later he went all in on me with napkins, all furious in the chat. I took it. I won. He left. Who's an idiot now

wp

I once got the "your mom was good last night" line in chat. I responded with, "You like 80-year-olds? That's pretty kinky." I didn't hear from him again.

My mother didn't like that when I told her about it. She informed me that she was only 78.

If I give you $20 can you turn it in to $100 for me?

What do you mean by 3bet?

What limit can you play at for a living?


What is a HUD?


Should I buy HEM or PT3?

Q: Is it clever to go in to a table with minimum buy-in, so that my loses are minimized in an all-in situation?


A: No, always go in with max buy-in and enable "auto top-up".
You want to have the best possible stack when you get a good hand.
If you're afraid to go in with max, you're probably at the wrong level, or if you're at the lowest level, you should probably use your money on something else...

Should I change my settings to 100 posts per page seems like a good question.