Hello, I'm new to poker and this is my first post here.

I've been playing poker for like 3 weeks now, made some progress from total noob but still have a lot of trouble, and generally loosing. I play cash tables, NL Hold'em micro full ring (after trying a lot of sit & go's and losing them).

So here we go with my questions/dilemmas:

1. First of all, after playing like a noob for a while and losing a lot, I got to tighten up my game a bit and it helped. Also I learned to play considering my position at the table and that also improved my game a bit, I was able to steal blinds and so on. The problem is I feel I play too tight. Basically I often found myself in situations where I see 25 hands and I never see the flop with more than 1-2, and win once or not at all. I'm feeling like I'm playing too tight, too few hands. Any advice on this? (which leads me tot he next...)

2. Playing too tight was my undoing in sit & go games. I usually get tot he middle/late stages by playing tight with an average stack, then the blinds grind into my stack a lot and I don't know when or how to get more loose, and then I am force to play bad hands as my stack is almost gone and I am out of the game.

3. This thing from point 2 also happens to me during cash table games. When I feel I play too tight, and there is a table where I can loosen up a bit (since the other players are very tight themselves), when I try to do it I usually get in big trouble.

4. Another thing that I usually experience is that at micro stakes people play chaotically. I mean often I expect a certain kind of play when I bet a certain amount (a play similar to the books I've read on the subject) and I get answers that make me say wtf.

5. There are some traps that I often fall in, and usually that happen when I have an average hand, and I have no idea how to avoid them. For example last night I had AQo, I bet 3xBB, another person calls, the rest fold, then flop came Q94 and I say to myself I have top pair with top kicker, let's bet, and I got re-raised, and then I said wtf and I re-raised again and on showdown the guy had 99 and he won. How can I avoid such mistakes?

6. I often found myself taking a lot of bad beats (having the winning hand on showdown and lost on the last card of the river). Actually half of the sit & go games I tried I lost them this way. Is there any way to dodge these?

Thanks

Read some PDF's

Verneer's uNL grind.
Fee's 6max
2+2 Sticky collaboration PDF.

Enjoy.

I was just wondering what site do you play out of curiosity. As for these points.

1. It is standard to not play any hands in 25 in a row. Sometimes cards are just unfavourable to play. It is a bad idea just to play a hand because you haven't played one in a while unless if you are sure you can get away with a bluff because of your tight image. For example squeeze playing on the button.

2. You are not supposed to play SnG and cash games in the same way. Preferably you should 'specialise' in one game. Cash games have the greatest rewards so I've heard. I don't have the source so other users may need to back me up or refute this. However you should only play the games that you feel like you are good at if you want to succeed.

3. You should never play "against the table" but rather "against the players". On a table there are likely to be a mixture of tight and loose players. You should not have the same strategy for all of theme, but play tight against hte loose players and loose against the tight players. If you play loose against loose you are in a world full of pain. Again HEM helps you identify these players within a small sample of ~50-100 hands quite accurately.

4. Players in microstakes are rubbish. That is why they are at microstakes. You should never really try to bluff these players, but adopt an ABC strategy and play really standard against them. You can bluff the regs occassionally since they are thinking players. Again with a HUD and experience with the players you should be able to identify the fish from the regs.

5. Poker tracking software. Reviewing hand histories, viewing 3bet frequencies etc etc.

6. You can never avoid bad beats. If the other player even has a 1% chance of winning the hand at showdown, they will hit it 1 in 100 times. As playing online poker you are likely to play tens of thousands of hands a month (if you multitable) then you will find this happening a few times. Remember that the more hands you play the more bad beats you will face. It is just a nature of the game, and you should only be working against minimising damage caused by bad beats. Some tips are to realise you played the hand perfectly and that there was nothing you could do. And another is that you can always win back the money if you are a winning player, and that bad beats are just there to slow you down a bit.


Also since you are a new player, have you heard of rakeback? Rakeback allows you to get a certain percentage of your rake back (hence the name) depending on the site you are on and is a good way to boost your profits. It is free, but sometimes when you have signed up to a site already without using that link then you may not be elligable. Always worth giving it a shot.

Hey, thank you both for replying, your advices were really useful. I guess I should try to get a poker tracking software after all, (i had HEM on trial, is it the best on the market or there are maybe others for NL HM?), and I shouldn't get discouraged by bad beats . I am not multi-tabling atm as I am still trying to improve on one table.

I am playing on Titan Poker, and I only played there, so no idea about the other websites. About the rake, well, I didn't have that rake link, but for all players, as you play you get what they call 'titan points', which you can then spend either to buy-in to some tournament events, or to get money for it, which is basically rake. As you turn more of them in, you get more money per point (you can check that here).

That will do I guess, but if you want to move to a new site make sure to check out rakeback and promotion offers for the best deal.

There are other poker tracker softwares, the only other popular one I know is Poker tracker. From my experience everyone prefers Hold em Manager. I have never tried PT, but I can vouche for HEM being good at its job.

It is a good idea to start with only single tabling. Just remember to build up multitabling slowly. Such as 1-2-4-6-8 etc. When multitabling you will reach a sort of limit where you are producing the most money as you can. After this point adding extra tables would have bad consequences to your win rate. Generally as a beginner I would stick to 4-6 tables max. When moving up the limits make sure to reduce the number of tables until you are used to playing at that limit and move up again. This will help you to adapt, and avoid you losing much when moving up.

One final tip that I will leave you, unless if you have any more questions, is to stick to Bank Roll Management. It is probably best that you research this yourself, and it'll be in most guides and somewhere in the links in this thread:

Microstrategy threads

Hey meeshoo

I suggest u choose poker tracker for ur software analysis as HEM can be confusing to any new players.

On the AQ hand U explained ur right u should be betting into that flop but when u get re raised u shud have a think about what type of player he is and the board texture i suggest in future for similar spots just calling his re raise IN POSTION depending on board texture and re evaluate on the turn as amedor said these players arent usually trying these sick bluffs on u so dont go crazy with marginal hands.

I really suggest u read up about board texture and about Postion once u learn these things properly u will find urself in less akward spots

Move up where they respect your raises imo

You're close to drawing dead trying to become accomplished in NL holem at this point. Go learn to play heads up PLO instead.

Well, I think I will stick around for a while, as I'm not the kind of guy who lets everything down so easily.

Following the bankroll management advice that states I should have at least 20-30 buy-ins for upper levels, I'm not there yet, and I don't want to invest too much in it yet, until I learn more. But I considered that too from time to time, i'll see how things go. Ty for the advice.

@MakingMoves88

Thanks for the tip I will try the trial of Poker Tracker, hopefully it works with Titan client.

@Amedor

Thanks again for the tips. I already tried two tables and 3 at some point, but I quickly realized I am not prepared for it yet, so I fold back to one. I read about the bankroll management and I think I got it's principles and I intend to stick with it.

After going a bit last night through the 2+2 Articles document from the link Viva La Crayon posted, I stumbled across a section about reading hands and making notes. While reading it, I a lot of unexplained things already fall into place. The most important thing (I guess) I learned from it is that I was playing my cards only, mostly on what is called the 1st level of thinking (or yomi, as it is called on http://www.sirlin.net articles), not taking into account readings and such. I do notice a bit how other players play their hands, but it looks I payed too few attention to it, only to now understand it might be the most important skill in poker.

In those articles I found a lot of stuff how to read opponents, so I won't ask you about those, but I will ask for any tips regarding the process of learning how to read them. For example, is it useful to just watch a table without playing and exercise taking notes and trying to guess what people have? Or there are other better learning techniques?

Thanks again for your kindly adivces.

Mmm I am not the best person to answer this question being that this is the area which I am currently learning.

Basically when you hand read, you are assigning a range of hands that the villain would have in a certain situation. For example if you raise pre and he 3bets you, he will mostly have a certain range. Again trackers can help you guess this range - for example if he only 3bets with 2-3% of hands then its most likely always going to be AA, AK, KK, QQ. This of course goes onto later streets - for example what do you think he is calling your cbet with?

You can try that method if you want, but the methods I use is just to watch videos of other people playing the same limits with commentaries and actually playing the games. Reading guides such as Fee's 6max and The Poker Blueprint are also useful to some extent. But in the end playing the game will always take the priority. Just make sure you are constantly thinking whilst playing and you will learn over time.

Reviewing hand histories may also help your reading skills. You can look back on how villains play certain hands which may help you in the future.

Def try and get rakeback on one of the bigger sites, ie full tilt

Ty for the tips.

So which % of rakeback should I aim for? I see various ones, for example here on this forum side I see that full tilt has 27%, party poker 40% and the rest in between? I guess this means that i should switch sites just to get the rakeback, and pull my money off titan poker? Or is there any other way to get the rakeback on an already existing account?

yes meeshoo ur on the ipoker network and they have tons of skins i recommend celebpoker which u should join through (raketherake.com) and they offer first deposit bonus plus $7500 rake race each month plus a cash prize depending where u finish in the rakerace.

Anymore questions about how to do this just ask.

Also FTP do offer 27% dealt rakeback which means you dont even have to be involved in anyhand and your making money horaay for rakeback nits hope they change that soon

Hey uv only ben playin for 3 weeks so best thing is just to read and play and after awhile it will come together.gl

Be sure to go here BEFORE creating an account on FullTilt. They are the "preferred affiliate" and have instructions that will help you get rackback set up properly on FullTilt.



...its a nightmare trying to get it setup after you've already created an account.

Ok, I have withdrew all I had at Titan Poker (actually had to deposit first and then withdraw, they make it hard to do get your money back ). Now while waiting for a few business days I've already made an account on Full Tilt, although I understand that the level of players there is above the other sites, but it looks like pokerstars doesn't offer rakeback, so I went with full tilt for the 27% rakeback. Now I'll hit some playmoney tables first.

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