Hello everyone!

I have tried improving in poker for quite some time now, but never really gotten anywhere. The only thing I beat is the 18 man SnGs on stars, pretty much nothing else.
I have always wanted to learn cash games, but my bankroll have been going the wrong way every time I've attempted, and I've returned to SnG to build it back up.

Anyway, few weeks ago I started playing cash again. It's kinda hard to know where to start when you're in between skill levels and don't know where you stand. So this time I'm doing a little experiment.

I normally play on stars, but I deposited $50 to 888 yesterday in hopes that it's softer, cleaned all my hand history and simply starting fresh.

My plan is the set up my "training" into levels. Each level adding a new strategy/concept. That way I will be able to concentrate on just one new concept at any given time, plus I can see the different bb/100 at each level as well, which would be awesome.
Another great thing I hope this can achieve is a good guide for new players. If everything goes well I'll re'write the whole thing into a simple to follow guide.

For instance, at level/step 1:

The first few thousand hands I play, will be as basic as possible. In hands without action before me, raise any pairs and premium hands, range slightly different in different positions. Playing weak-tight postflop. Basically fit or fold. Simple. I have HUD stats on, but trying to ignore them as best as I can, so my bb/100 can be pretty much expected for a new player as well.

I have put in 1000 hands in this level today, and will put in another 1000 before I go to bed, but I will be tweaking my ranges a bit for these hands.

Level 2

I was thinking either blind stealing, c-bets or both. I have kinda ruled out both, as I want to see the bb/100 change with either one. Could also be in level 1, but I wanna keep it very simple, especially in the start.


Any suggestions for future level, and reading/video material for those suggestions?
I will be posting graphs/stats from HM every 5k hands or so.

Seeing your bb/100 change 'per level' is not going to happen unless you want to play 100s of thousands of hands at each 'training level'. Variance has too big of an impact on smaller samples. But even if you decided, to your detriment, that you were going to not learn a new concept until you had a huge sample on the current concept you'd have accrued so much experience that your expected bb/100 wouldn't be the same at the start of the sample as at the end anyway. The idea is flawed in a big way I'm afraid.

As has been said I think you'd need to play a tonne of hands to get a significant bb/100... but I don't quite agree that this is a useless thing to do. You'd want to talk about your experience and where your money was coming from. Be honest about whether you had AA and ran into KK a lot and just made a tonne from that, equally, if you thought you were winning but had KK and ran into AA (or flush over flush or whatever other kind of run bad) you could take that into consideration.

Basically, I think with the first level it'd be interesting to see if you 'think' (as opposed to your results 'saying') you're a winning player based on the amount of donations you get from the spews at 2NL / 5NL.

Regarding other levels, and also the first one, I think it'd be interesting for you to talk about what you thought your biggest leaks were in your hands played. As a guess I imagine you're going to struggle getting 'coolered' when you have overpairs/TPTK and decide to stack off - assuming you're doing that on autopilot. Otherwise it may be that you think your robotic play is causing you to miss spots you would otherwise be able to exploit.

Anyway I think it'll be interesting so good luck with it! My only suggestion for concepts would be semi-bluffing post-flop, pot control if you're not already doing that from the get go, 3-bet bluffing (this would probably be too advanced at the micros though - at least in <10NL).

I don't think in poker it makes much practical sense to focus on one concept at a time.

You can't focus on just stealing when you'll play half the game not in a steal position. Ignoring villain stats doesn't make much sense to me either.

I kind of get trying to simplify your game a little but you should play in the manner you think is best in all spots, and then analyse your game from there.

I think you misunderstood my post. Say level 2 is blind stealing, then you add that to your current "playstyle". Which basically means playing like in level 1, except opening up your range for steals in CU/BTN/SB when the situation calls for it.

Yes I got a bit ahead of myself about the whole bb/100 stats.
I wouldn't necessarily agree that the winrate would change too much during the first levels though, as they are pretty much supposed to have specific rules about your decision in every situation.

I do realize that "every situation" sounds very optimistic, but at least the first two levels will be based around preflop play, and weak-tight from there.
I may be way over my head on this though.

Yes I totally agree. I don't plan on playing more than 10k hands in my first level, and of course the winrate is gonna be heavily influenced by premiums vs premiums with such a small sample. I for instance during my so far 4500 hands I managed to miss click which cost me around 60BBs. :P

Plugging leaks is basically what the next level is all about. I give my opponent the benefit of the doubt every single time now unless the board is something like 2-5-9 rainbow and he gives me WAY too good odds to call his silly min-bet. Of course a huge leak, among many many others. But I don't intend to do anything about that until I get to further down the road and the level "tells" me to change my play style in a certain way.

Thank you. I don't think I will add any fancy postflop plays until I move up to 5NL, and I'm pretty sure you're right 3-bet bluffing is kinda worthless <10NL, at least on sites != pokerstars.

Yeah, I don't understand.

Start blind stealing now.

But then this whole process makes no sense. My plan is to add small bits of strategies every so often. Sure I can add blind stealing now.
I can also add c-betting, pot odds, fold equity, implied odds and squeezes as well. But then all of a sudden I'm in over my head again.

I want to add each one separately, read a lot about it and then add it to my strategy. When I add a strategy, the previous strategy should be well implemented and not something I have to think about for too long anymore.

This doesn't sound like a good approach. When you play, you should just try and make decisions to the best of your ability taking in all of the available information.

It's your study time that should be broken down into different topics. For example if you were looking at preflop you would think about:

a) developing a solid preflop strategy including opening ranges, 3bet ranges etc
b) identifying what factors should make you deviate from this strategy and why?

Now having done this when carry out a session review you can see how well your play matches up with the above. If you are unsure you can always post hands or ask someone better than you for advice

Exactly.

Play the cards as they're dealt and incorporate the principles you know to the situation at the time.

Then review your sessions and look for leaks. CCM explains it quite well.

You simply can't apply concepts in isolation as they, at the very least, affect your winrate. How are you going to know that you're applying level 1 well if you're losing a bunch of money because you're not doing other things that are necessary?

This might be a better way to improve, but I have not had any success with it so far. Plus, it slowly grinds away my bankroll.

The study time will be broken into topics though, just as you mentioned. It's just that I wont try any fancy plays at the tables until I have read about them.

What if I was playing poker for the first time. I wouldn't know about any strategies at all. Wouldn't it be a good approach to learn about one thing and implement it? Rinse and repeat

No. You'd need to learn a bunch of things. I wouldn't say "Just think about the blinds and ignore your hole cards for now". You'd learn the basic order of play, what calling/betting/raising is and when it occurs, what the flop is, the order of hand ranks (high card, pair, up to the royal), and so on.

You've played SNGs and cash before. You know how to play poker. What you must not have done is started identifying what your common errors are. And that requires you to do some analysis of hands you've played.

@Genius -- These are very good players giving you very good advice. It's just not possible to do certain things in hold 'em in isolation and expect to get useful results from that. What you want to do just won't work for a myriad of reasons and could actually hurt your learning process instead, imo.

Well ****. Hoped I had a good plan for moving forward here, really wanted to start from scratch with the cash games. I subscribed to runitonce a few days ago, but realized I have no idea where I should start.

Would playing a bunch of hands and have someone take a look at the stats in HM do anything at all? I've been thinking about hiring a coach for an hour or something, but I don't know if that will achieve.

The main thing standing out is that you've been playing poker for a while and haven't yet said what areas you think you're having troubles with. Usually people have some areas they're unsure about, or they realise they're calling too much or play too tight, but aren't sure how to adjust.

I'd say play some hands, watch some videos, post some hands on here, talk to people, maybe post in the sweat sessions thread and see what other people think about your game.

Your plan makes sense in terms of study, I just think it's totally impractical to expect to play a game whilst not utilising a bunch of concepts or strategies that are in some sense unavoidable.

A poster named ArtySmokes over at PokerSchoolOnline wrote a 21-part e-series on 2nl a while ago - maybe that's the kind of structure you were hoping to find?

https://www.pokerschoolonline.com/bl...okesPS?page=1&




Don't have much to add of my own - stumbled upon this secret bit of wisdom a while ago, and ... it hasn't hurt



Am currently in the middle of trying to learn how to better play MTTs, after playing cash for several years. The switch is a work in progress for me as well

GL!

I think a sweat session would be a good starting point. As you mention I do have a decent amount of experience playing the game in general, and a sweat session, maybe even with a coach(?), would hopefully take the biggest leaks off my game right of the bat.
Would be great to be able to play at least breakeven while learning and adjusting my game so I wont have to switch to SnGs again every so often. :P

Yes. Stuff like this is what I love, looks promising and like a fun read! Thank you.