Apologies if post is too long/disjointed. 1st live game last night! Equal parts excitement and frustration. I have a sincere desire to learn and become the best player I can be. I'm not delicate, brutally honest is the feedback I'm looking for.

1/2NL $200 max buy in. There's a wait list so no choosing a table with five-handed showdowns. I get seat 2, $200 buy in & go through initial read: Seat 1 $600 stack, Seat 6 $700, Seat 9 $600 stack. My thinking: SOB! For my 1st game really? As a novice I am trying to identify the dangerous players 1st and the weaker players 2nd. I guess itcould be worse by having them in Seat 3-5.

My plan: not to play a hand (except AA, KK) for 20-30 minutes and get the best reads on the players that I can. My first surprise was the pace of the game. I've been playing online with a 10 second turn clock. 9 out of 10 times I get through all of the questions I ask myself. After being told by several ppl that the pace in a live game was much slower, I felt that this was 1 of the things I had going for me. Boy was I wrong! The pace at this table made online a snail's pace. Anyway I feel like I get a good read on Seats 3,4,5,6,9 & 1. Seats 7,8? They were just weak around but here is my first leak. Keeping 8 mental files going, constantly updated hand to hand is beyond me. Ask me about the 2 guys in position on me or the 2 guys I have position on and I can get pretty detailed. The guy 5 seats away? He's a LAG. And? He called bad pot odds on a flush draw. And? I shrug my shoulders. Advice?

20 minutes in on the Button with Big Slick. 4 limpers, I raise to 10. Seats 5(LAG, calling station) & 9(LAG-Strong has only acted on turn & river with the nuts) call, pot is $37. Flop - 9 5 2 r. Checked to me, I bet $26, table folds & it's my pot! Next hand 9c8c. 4 limpers, I call. BB raises to 6, 3 callers, I call, button folds. Pot - $33. Flop 6 5 2 r, checks to me. I bet $18. Why? I can't hide the fact that I'm new to the game and I just spent 20 minutes folding hand after hand, there's a chance I have been pegged as a Nit (to my detriment I didn't know how accurate this assessment was) or at least tight . I haven't seen a single check raise yet. The table folds, my pot! Now I'm thinking holy *#@ 1/2 really is as soft as I've been lead to believe. Another hour and I'll have enough $ to move over to the 2/5 table (lol). What followed was 45 minutes of the worst run of cards I have had in the 4 months that I've been playing poker!

UTG Q Q, raise to $10. A higher preflop raise than the norm for this table but I'm trying to chase Ax, Kx off. Folds to Seat 8 (weak) who calls pot - $23. Flop K 8d 5d. Checked to me, I bet $18. Seat 8 is loose trying to put him on a range seems to be an exercise in futility. He has folded repeatedly to flop bets 1/2 pot or larger. My novice thinking is he could have K low kicker not that he would recognize bad odds on a draw. Fold, my pot.

2 Orbits later UTG +1 KK. The hand is a repeat of the previous paragraph which leads to another leak: what am I supposed to do when faced with a long run of trash hands? When I finally get a hand to play, my raise is meant with folds. I would have happily limped in with K Ts in late position. I play tight through the hijack but try not to waste my positional advantage in the CO and B.

Best hand of the night: on the button 10 10. 3 limpers. I raise to 10. Seat 5 calls! Yes! Seat 5 - Mr. Cool, Air Pods on, complained a couple times losing a hand when the other player dcalled even though he was representing blah, blah. He's on his 3rd $100 buy in Seats 9 and 6 have been taking turns isolating him, his famous last words on the River: "well I gotta call you". Seat 9 (stack ~$650) calls, oh o. Seat 9 black dude late 50s "old school". Pot - $39. Flop 5h 5d 2c. Checked to me. I bet $30, both call pot - $129. Turn 8s, checked to me. I bet $60, Seat 5 calls, good. Seat 9 calls and I know im behind, pot - $309 River As, Seat 5 checks, Seat 9 bets $200, I fold. Seat 5 true to form says "well I got to call you". Seat 5- 9 9. Seat 9- J J. Why best hand? Because I could have been a total donkey and refused to make the laydown.

You fold your trash hands, plain and simple. I have had stretches where I didn't play a hand for an hour or two, then open for 6-7x BB, and get 3 or 4 callers. It's 1/2. Most people aren't that observant or just plain don't care.

Sounds like you had a good time. Good luck and keep us posted.

you said you wanted to raise bigger with QQ to get weak aces and kings to fold pre, actually you want them to call cuz ur a huge favorite.

Not to mention that 5x is not a larger than average open raise at 1/2 live.

I'm pretty impressed if this was your first live game and if , like you say, only four months of poker overall.
Good approach to game and good attitude.
I'm sure you'll become a good player pretty fast.
Don't try to read each player at table at first.
Making out weak spots and avoiding more competent villains at first is fine.
It's sort of like internet poker. You slowly start multi tabling, until you get more used to it.
Make sure you maintain healthy bankroll as not to get too discouraged if you have a few bad sessions, which will eventually happen.
Good luck.

Worst run of cards ???? Not sure what you mean here ... Missed value, maybe?

One of the keys to low stakes live poker is range. You should want to 'act' the same whether you have AA or 89s (or whatever your weakest holding might be for that spot/position). If you are only playing AA-TT/AKs your opponents will ultimately pick up on that and be able to set you up for large losses by slow playing their monsters. You will be left with picking up a bunch of small pots along the way that may not be as satisfying. But as indicated above, you want the calls Pre-Flop but you need to be aware of how your opponents react to your actions from hand to hand. It appears in your TT hand that you did pay attention and saved yourself some cash along the way .. Nice.

Also remember that in a live game you have the 'live tells' that folks pick up on. How you bet, fold and timing tells are magnified since opponents can see them.

Sounds like you have a good handle on it so far. Just remember that the more you play with the same opponents the more likely they will figure out your methods and be able to try and counteract them. Nothing wrong with a few limp-folds to make it look like you are looser than reality. Win the war, not each battle .. it's OK to sacrifice a few troops to set up a winning strategy. GL

I think his worst run of cards meant he had to wait 30 minutes while folding trash.

Standard for live play.

Thanks for all the feedback. I will be taking another swing this Friday.

Hey innercity, I have an idea for a thread on, maybe the bankroll challenge section.
Continue to post your weekly sessions. I'd love to follow along on how you're comming along.
Mind you, keeping track of each session to report on the forum might be too taxing. Don't do it if you think it will negatively impact your game.
But, again, I'd find it very interesting to follow your development.
Again, gl and have fun.

OP, you might have been pegged as only playing strong hands. I would take Answer20's suggestion of limping in with the first few crap hands you get to avoid that initial first impression, and if you have to fold to preflop raises or to flop bets, it only cost you a few big blinds for those few initial hands. Many 1/2 players might not be very observant overall, but a new player not having played in a while since first sitting down may stand out to them.

Welcome to live $1/$2

You’ll find out with time and experience that 1/2 plays vastly differently based on the players at that table that day. I’ve had rounds where I can fold for 45 minutes then open up UTG for $18 because I know I’m going to get 3-4 callers. Then there are other days where you limp every hand because you can outplay post flop. And then there are the days where no matter how correct you play, you lose because someone at the table is playing cards you would never think of playing in their position.

Sometimes $2/5 is no better

Mostly $1/2 is about knowing your opponents. Your thinking is at a higher level than theirs most of the time. Go with your gut. Fold when you think you should. You don’t have to win every pot

So you have no idea what you are doing, but you have the 4 players near you pegged and a little ambiguous about the "LAG" across the table. I'd say that puts you in the top 5% of players right there. Yes, the players near you are exactly the ones you need to peg, because you will be involved in the most pots with them.

You have good reads on the players in front of you, indicating what they have when they act. You need to work on anticipation reads on the players behind you, so you can guess what they are GOING to do. That will be more useful. Also, regular reads on them are also more useful than those in front, since when someone on your right bets a weak hand its tough to take advantage since you are squeezed. When someone on your right bets a weak hand, you get to see what everybody else does and you have more opportunities to pounce.

Nit image: Don't worry, you'll have plenty of periods where your last 12 raises were followed by folding no-pair on the flop, and for a while you will be promoted to looking like a "nit wit". Nothing much you can do about it since you really cannot bet overcards into a flat board against 4 people. Also please note that almost all no-pair raising hands have maximum EV when everybody folds; too bad your timing was bad with QQ and KK.

But you can take advantage, by being aggressive on the turn when it sure looks like nobody has anything: 4 calls you check in the BB. Flop is AT4, everybody checks. Turn is 7, check around to CU who bets. You can fill in the rest.

So you have 45 minutes with no playable hands and you are shocked? I've got some bad news for you.... Really bad news. You can expect to have a couple 3 hours periods a year when you have no playable hands. The good news is you weren't tempted to break ranks and play one. Hold that thought. One trick for me is to know that I'm being tested: am I a professional or a wannabe? Another trick is to think how much money a lesser disciplined player would lose when THEY break ranks. Another trick is to eye-ball a different beautiful lady each time you fold. Some folks don't need such tricks, bless their hearts. Some of us do. Had a long session years ago. Didn't win a single contested hand for 8 hours and was only stuck $200 in a 5-10 limit game (I did win a few checked-down hands). Then the deck slapped me in the face for 2 hours; cha ching! I figured everybody else at the table would have been stuck closer to $1000.

Having said that, you may want to raise it up in good position with some reasonable suited hand, even if you normally wouldn't. If you get to show it, they'll remember that and get schizophrenic: the "nit" plays one hand in 14 but raises with 76s. WTF?

You don't have to explain betting a two-over-card gut shot when everybody checks to you. However, you may need to explain NOT betting it. There are plenty of reasons not to bet it, but I think you should bet unless you have one.

You earned your "nit" status. Since you recognized it, you should be betting or even raising with your draws; until you get caught.

I think you are out to lunch, though, on your "best hand". Seat 5 nit; JJ is the only hand he could have that has you beat. He's unlikely not to raise with QQ in late position pre-flop. While he MAY slow play a trips or deuces-full on the flop, he has no reason to do so on the turn; nor 8sFull. He bet the Ace because he figured you'd lay down KK or QQ; nit that you appear to be. Think about it; which hand with an A can he possibly have and get to the river? There's no flush draw on the flop so he isn't in there with ATs. There's no flush draw on the turn so he didn't hit one with A3s gut shot. Why cannot he have 99? The loose player is FAR more likely to be calling down with A-Paint than the grouchy nit. Had it come another small card, you should bet out for value since the loose player is very likely to call.

-Louie

You seem to me to be off to a great start. I hope you won't get ahead of yourself though. Your comment referring to moving up to 2-5 is likely very premature.

You need to build up TWO bankrolls. One in cash. The other in the confidence that comes with experience.

Good luck you are off to a good start. imho