Hi All,

Not sure if I'll do a good job explaining exactly what I mean but here goes.

I'm new to poker, only started playing at the beginning of 2017, and mostly micro-stakes on PokerStars and 888. I recently started playing at a local house game as I find live poker more fun.

Poker is definitely a hobby for me but obviously I like to win and I do want to become a better poker player (hence why I'm on 2+2).

I've been playing at this local home game once or twice a week for the past 2 months, while I'm doing well in these games I'm finding that my session win or loss comes down to one thing - whether or not I win the monster vs. monster hand in an all in pot.

As an example, I played last last week in the $1-$2 home game. I went in with $200 and after 5 hours ended up with $1200. However I only won the $1K in the last hour and 1/2 of the session, based on 2 very big pots going my way. During the first 3.5 hours my stack would fluctuate between $130 - $250. I'm finding that this is how most of my sessions are going (and these monster pots don't always go my way).

While I'm not complaining about winning, I don't like the fact that I'm either winning or losing a session based on these monster all in pots (where we most likely get it in pre-flop or after the flop) vs. being able to build my stack over the 5 hour session.

Are there are books or strategies on how to consistently win in a session or is this just what poker is?

Thanks

You take your winnings where you find them, if that's big pots, that's what you get. Trying to get a smoother winrate is probably not the goal to aspire to. FWIW counterintuitively a decent LAG probably gets that steadier rate because they are picking up more small to medium pots.

There's no simple answer to your question. A lot of what its gunna come down to is who wins when both you and your opponent both have low/medium strength hands. Information is key in poker so whoever has more information/can predict their opponents play most accurately will usually come out ahead. Overall it depends. Good advice in general:

-Exploit your opponents tendencys/Attack weakness
-Play more in position
-Raise more, call less
-Play with a hand range that dominates your opponents (although this isn't to say there aren't value in medium strength hands)

It's actually very standard for sessions (and indeed monthly graphs) to be punctuated by "spikes". Most hands have very low EV, and most pots are quite small (your single most common action should be folding). Few hands even reach the river, let alone feature stack offs. Depending on game dynamics, you might only get all in and called once every 150-250 hands. (More often if you're playing short-handed, short-stacked, or in a tournament, less often when deep or playing full ring).
While playing the small pots keeps your winrate ticking over (and in the long run makes the difference between you being a winning or losing player) it's a curious truism that the biggest pots tend to be coolers. In fact, there's a fairly strong correlation between how often you get aces and your overall winrate. Indeed, well over half of your profit comes from that single hand, and many players would be losers if they never got aces. If your stack consistently increases during a session (or a tournament), it's usually due to card distribution; in other words it's just rungood.

you can do that but you change your stye to one that only plays small pots and keeps the pots under control and you need bad players as well.

a few times i tried to see if i could actually win in a game if i never looked at my hands.
i did but only a small amount. it actually wasnt that hard. of course couldnt do that all the time.

to simplify the answer: no, it is not possible to increase your stack consistently through the sessions. There will always be big swings, and short periods of time when you win or lose multiple buyins.

In fact, if you find yourself having too little variance (ie, "increasing you stack consistently"), it likely means that you are playing wrong - sacrificing ev of hands to decrease variance.

I don't disagree with anything already posted but I do believe winning online poker (esp fast poker) in 2018 is more about the red line than the blue line and I think Janda's last book reflects that trend.

@ op...red line = non-s/down winnings, blue line = s/down winnings.

PS not the case for live poker tho, and never will be.

What you basically need to do is be the more aggro player and bet flop a lot, especially HU, a lot of villains will miss so you picking up the small pots will add up, your hourly will go up but try to know player tendencies before hand. Hope this helps


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Juicy question ... I'll take a different line for you.

Good to great winning 1/2 players have a win rate of $12-25/hour .. just 6bb per hour! How do you go about obtaining said chips?

1) Play super nit aggressive and constantly take pots down pre-Flop with 3&4-bets.
1A) Take advantage of weak play by using late position to steal pots that check through both Flop and Turn.

2) Play TAG and try to c-bet your way to winning hands on the Flop
3) Play looser and use double/triple barrels to apply pressure

4) Play passive and try to limp/c-c your way with value hands, allowing your opponents to do the betting for you.
5) Play passive and use donk/blocker bets for pot control on the River

The 'answer' of course is ... all of the above. Live play adds the true human element to the game. Tells and reads are very important to pecking your way to that increasing stack. The more you can accumulate these 'extra' chips the less the big hands will hurt if you end up on the wrong side.

You accumulate chips in poker by ..
1) Having the best hand
2) Taking advantage of weak play
3) Recognizing high variance spots and perhaps limiting variance with pot control
4) Taking advantage of opponents mistakes

#1 of course is 'card' playing whereas the next two are 'poker' playing. The last I post all the time here .. "You want to win the war, not every battle." when is comes to poker. Always consider the action you are facing but also consider what other action you will face with the action you are considering. Use every hand to poke and prod your opponents with control .. and then spring the assault when you are 80% ahead.

To get to your answer .. No, it's not a reasonable expectation to constantly increase your stack in 'comfortable' increments. Some of the best poker play is surviving the dead periods without forcing the action ... sometimes losing/folding 'is' winning. Sometimes your opponent makes a good play, own it, learn from it and move on. Unfortunately if you read posts from the 'real' Pros on this site you will find that poker is 'boring', being a plod along at break even or slightly better and then taking down the mistakes as your opponents make them ... sometimes more mistakes per night than others. GL

Bigger pots have a bigger impact than smaller pots. It's just the nature of the game.

As above posters have alluded- in a game of imperfect information, marginal percentage decisions, human participants and inherent randomness, don't expect anything to be "consistent". (Unless you fold every hand, in which case you could predict your exact loss rate!)

Play LHE?