Hey everyone, hopefully I found my way into the right place. I just started playing online with real money (living outside DE/NJ/NV, I didn't expect it would be so easy to deposit with my CC, as silly as that sounds -- figured I'd have to make a wire transfer, meet a gentleman in a trench coat in an alleyway and give him a confirmation number, wait 3 days for someone to call me and give me a password to put in the site, etc.) But enough with the comedy routine!

My goals right now are simply 1) to read and absorb everything I can that is appropriate to my level, and 2) to scrape up a few pots, turn my meager deposit into a modest 'bankroll', and build my fundamentals on these 02/05 tables.

To that end, this old thread has been INCREDIBLY helpful:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/7...micros-430637/

And my question is about how applicable that thread's guidelines are to my specific situation. Ignition _does_ seem as soft as everyone says, but is that thread's advice still applicable in 2017? But more specifically my main question is, how would those guidelines play out if I employed them playing 02/05 tables on Ignition's Zone feature (which essentially shuffles players around to different tables each time they fold, so they can always be in a hand). If that thread's advice still holds then my bankroll would theoretically grow a lot faster than just sticking to 2 tables (I know Ignition allows 4, but I'm still not entirely comfortable with more than 2 just yet).

Can anyone confirm if the fish (other than this one, of course ) are just as soft in the Zone at 02/05 as they are on the standard tables? And/or is there some factor I'm overlooking that would make dipping my toe in the Zone a bad idea? i.e., I do know the rake is quite steep w/ Zone. I know I could just try for myself and see, but I wouldn't really get enough data to infer anything from since I wouldn't play enough to jeopardize my entire (minimum) deposit - wouldn't trust the variance.

(As a side note, I do know starting even at the 2/5 micros with a 25 deposit is sorta playing with fire re: bankroll management - 20 buyins would be 100 bucks. But I'm patient and willing to grind and I'd rather use this as an opportunity to develop and try to grind up to more cushy buy-in levels, rather than risking more than a minimum deposit as a total noob. If I bust, I bust, and can reassess everything then.)

So if anyone has any thoughts/responses to my question, or other advice in general, I'd be super grateful. Until then I'll keep soaking up as much knowledge as I can. This place is a fantastic resource for folks in my position so I'm excited to be here. Sorry for the longish post, & thanks in advance!

the linked thread is extremely old and, unfortunately, advice from it is very dated and pretty much useless in todays games. If you want to learn the game, you need subscription from an active training site, for example Run It Once, where the cheapest sub is only 10$/month and all the materials are new and applicable. I hear that Upswing is also good for beginners, but I havent checked it out myself, as its mostly aimed at recreational players.

In general, be very careful with any poker learning materials that are either old (more than 2-3 years old) or free, as they will often be very bad and can actually make you play worse. If you dont want to invest any money into learning, resaerch twitch streamers, as they often provide decent value for free, just make sure that they are proven winners before you start watching.

Hmm, that's interesting - I was expecting that it'd be outdated in some regards, but such a strong response is dismaying. Thanks for your response.

If paying subscription fees to develop your skills is the optimal way to go these days, despite the glut of material freely available, then that's definitely disappointing to hear, but the feedback is still appreciated. Can you elaborate on what specific elements of the thread's suggested style are outdated? I figured there wouldn't be nearly as many fish as he describes, given that it was written pre-BF, but I figured it'd be a good start even if the lack of complete fish meant I'd just have to grind a little harder and a little longer.

to be honest, essentially every point made in that article is simply wrong, but if I had to do a write-up on why it would be longer than the original post. Style of play advocated there would make you a losing player even at the lowest stakes possible these days. You are asking about fish - there is still plenty of them, they are just less bad, for example some of them might be playing exactly as described in the article (which is extremely easy to exploit).

RIO raised its price so its not longer $10, ($25?) but well worth.

Hmm, interesting. For whatever it's worth I haven't played quite as ABC-TAG as the thread suggests, while I probably project a pretty tight table image (which I'm inferring is something even 02/05 players watch for these days) I've been able to use that to my gain and steal a few blinds, and make a few decent reads to bluff a villain or two out of the pot. But that kind of play is still on the edge of my comfort zone. My range is very slightly wider than the thread suggests and I've had some luck calling minraises to see a flop with stuff like SCs.

The interesting thing about the Zone feature though is that your opponents will never be able to tell you're playing ABC TAG, even as hardline as the thread suggests, since all players are anonymous and you get tossed over to a new table when you fold. So I think there may be _some_ potential there at least, given that I've had some luck playing the 02/05s the way I have. Might at least buy in once and see what happens.

Thanks again for the input!

FWIW, I don't think SirCuddles' old thread is quite as useless as Tute makes it sound, but most of the old/basic ideas won't be very useful beyond the very lowest stakes. On any site, the cheapest buy-in level is always a circus, but the skill level is often significantly higher on the next level up. I have no experience of Bovada/Ignition, and can't comment on any difference between regular tables and Zone (On Pokerstars, Zoom players have lower winrates than regular tables) but I hear the network is very soft in general. If you plan to beat stakes higher than 5NL, however, you'll need to do more than just read a thread from 2009 and play like a nitbox, though.