Hi All,
Great forum here, and thanks in advance to anyone who is willing to give up some of their time to help. It's a long post with a lot of help needed, if you can even help with just 1 of the sections below, that will be great.
Background: I am a beginner and currently a small loser. I am churning on 1c/2c cash and zoom, sticking to 6 player rather than full ring. Account not really going anywhere. Days and 1000s of hands played. Play well/disicplined, account goes up a bit, play well, but have a bad run, account goes down. Lose some discipline still thinking about some all-in I lost on the river, and start playing looser or more keen to get all-in. Lose some more money doing this (duh!). Realise I am playing poorly, remind myself that and tighten up, and get back to a bit below breakeven. Add in some rake bonus, and I'm almost back to square one. The losing tends to happen fast, but to get back those losses takes a long ... long ... time.
I read on these forums how easy it is to crush these games, but that's not what I experience. As always in life, I suppose everything is very hard until you know how to do it, and then it's easy. I'm studying everything I can, and trying to apply it and learn. I will read a thread about being aggressive and try it out live, and typically get slammed because I only had surface knowledge of the concept. Every 3-bet and I win small or my opponent shoves and I lose big against running into AA/KK. I try bluffing, and I must be doing it the absolute worst, because it hardly ever works for me. I try c-betting, double barrelling, it works sometimes, other times it's an expensive loss. I often win a lot of small pots with aggression, but at times it feels like picking up Nickels in front of a steam roller. This is the lowest stakes, so lowest level players, and many of them are playing only good hands, VPIP ~20%, PFR ~15-18. These are not the easy fish I was hoping to catch. Zoom is not easy for me either.
So some questions, apologies if these are basic.
1) Bet Sizing and pot odds
I've read about bet sizing, Raise 2.5BB or 3BB (+ 1*limpers). Then post-flop, typically raising 3/4 pot (or 2/3 pot). The idea was that by raising that amount, to call that bet they need to win ~43% (3/7) of the time, so it can push them off playing for draws. Fine, this makes a lot of sense, but why are we only considering them and not our own probability of winning when deciding the bet size? Say in the same scenario, after my 3/4 pot bet, Villain bets 9/4 pot, now his % chance of a draw is irrelevant by the logic above, because now Hero has to look at whether he is getting good pot odds. So the idea seems one-sided and incomplete. What is the solution to this? Also, when should we raise small and why? Taking pot-odds a step further, any time we are on for a draw and can see the next card for free, we are getting the best possible pot-odds, so we should check shouldn't we? By betting we can force others out of the pot, increase equity and so on, but by checking, we are betting 0 with a chance to win x amount. That's always a good bet! But then betting can lead to folding, so ... I am confused.
Also, it seems to me it isn't as simple as that anyway, because we are not just betting 3/4 pot. There are other streets to come if we want to stay alive. And there may be multiple opponents. So 3/4 pot bet makes one opponent (villain 1) think pot odds are not favourable for his draw. Except that maybe there's a good chance someone else (villain 2) comes in after him, so he bets anyway, and the pot rises from 4, to 7 (Hero), then 10 (Villain 1), then 13 (Villain 2), and so now Villain 2 bet 3 to win 10 so he is quite happy with his pot odds and although it is retrospective, villain 2 has also bet 3 and could win 10. So despite our logical intentions, our 3/4 bet didn't really achieve what we wanted it to, did it? Typically I am then left looking at a much larger pot, that I don't necessarily want against 2 opponents who maybe weren't even looking for a draw and already have strong hands. Also the disturbing thing is ... at the next street, you now have to play this sort of game again, except that 3/4 pot bet you made with all the great intentions...well it's not yours any more, you lost it to the pot.
I read in Sklansky's book that every time our opponent makes a -ve EV bet, then we are making money. But this seems to use pot odds ideas like the above, e.g. bet 3/4 pot and if our opponent calls on a ~30% draw then he is making a mistake. But even in my limited experience I have already seen a number of times where you are offered great pot odds for your draw. Except that your draw for a flush or a straight won't win, because Villain has a full house from the flop! So again, it just doesn't seem as simple as the way it is first taught, Mr Full House could offer you any odds and it is still not +ve EV for you.
What is the best guide on bet-sizing?
2) Aggressive play , pre-flop raising, c-betting etc.
I like to play aggressively, but it gets me into a lot of trouble at times, so some advice on how to avoid it please. It seems the standard raises can quickly lead to your whole stack. Let's say Hero has a premium hand. Villain 1 raises to 3BB, Hero 3-bet raises to 10BB. Villain 2 calls, villain 1 calls. 31.5BB blinds in the pot now (if BB and SB folded).
Flop comes, Hero tries a c-bet with 3/4 pot (24BB, so from 100BB stack we're already a third of our stack in) and is called by both villains. Double barrel they say! Well ok, but the pot is now just over 100BB, so Hero doesn't have enough to even bet 3/4 pot, it's basically a smaller size or all in. Wow, that got out of hand quickly, we haven't even got to the river! Our 100BB stack is gone before even one hand is finished. Does that not seem a bit excessive to others, or is it just me?
So what is the solution? We could avoid c-betting if against more than one opponent. But although that lowers the pot size at each stage, you'll still end up with a large % of your stack going in, which you may well lose. We could not c-bet at all, but then we might look weak and have to call villains raises while appearing weak. We could call rather than 3-bet, but sooner or later we will be on the other end of the 3-bet and have to make a decision.
3) Post-flop
This is a big one. I see so much written about pre-flop strategy and hands you should play from each position, and it is all quite clear, but post-flop seems to be hard to find good guides. And there are so many possibilities that to even write a strategy down to follow is daunting. You pick up some gut instinct knowledge just by playing a lot of hands and making some bad mistakes, but I am hoping there are good guides that offer general principles that you can apply to different hand categories/flop categories. So far the closest I have to this is Brunson's book, but there is still so much more that I need to learn.
The second difficulty I have is that there are so many posts and articles from people with too many 'it depends...', or 'if the player is xyz type of player then...' or 'if you have a good read on the player...'. While all of these sort of things might be correct, and very valid in live games and high stakes, when it comes to online and especially when you don't know your opponents or are playing something like zoom or a tournament, it is all too vague and therefore useless. I want to know what is the correct thing to do (generally) assuming no knowledge of the player's tendencies. Then after I can add to that with good reads, but first thing first. I know it is a game with chance, so nothing is certain to always work, but there must be betting decisions that are technically right in the majority of cases. I watch some poker experts on youtube, like Doug Polk, SplitSuit etc. and they analyse hands and the betting, and say 'so far this is all standard'. Where is this standard written?
4) Position, strategy, stealing or defending blinds
Why do people talk about stealing the blinds? Is this a real strategy? Shouldn't you just be playing the game based on a strategy that is position dependent? i.e. you are tight UTG, looser on the button. If everyone has folded to you on the button and you have a hand worth playing, then I assume you play it as usual, and maybe you get the blinds as a consequence. But when I read threads on stealing the blinds, it sounds like they are suggesting throwing away the strategy and concentrate on getting those blinds. Also why do some talk about defending the blinds, when the money is already gone? It's not yours anymore. I don't see many talking about defending their ante. To me it just seems 'defending' the blinds is sometimes worth it because you have to pay 1 less BB to see the flop. Am I missing something?
Often I read that position is king. I have some appreciation of the value of position, but I don't think I am able to utilise it as I should. What are the tips for maximising this benefit? Other than playing looser, and being able to somewhat control the pot, is there anything else I should learn?
5) Tools to help decision making
There's a lot to remember even for just pre-flop, thinking about all the ranges for all the different seat postions. Are people just memorising these, looking at a printout handchart or using some sort of formula (like Chen's formula for rating hands)?
In terms of equity calculation, I play around with PokerStove a bit, but how much do the pros really remember about the equity and the odds post-flop in a live game? Is it just a rough idea? Any techniques to help with this?
6) Are they different levels or different games?
Are the different stakes just higher and higher levels of ability, or are they more like different games? Ideally I would hope to learn how to beat 1c/2c, then improve more and beat 2c/5c and improve more and so on. But it's possible that 1c/2c is just a very different game, with people doing crazy things and that at the higher levels, a lot of what you learn to do at the low stakes doesn't apply.
Last edited by SmallBallCall; 07-14-2019 at 01:25 AM.
