Poker: How you can get started, succeed, and many myths and facts

Very cool thread. I've played a tad on a very obscure site called Duplicate Poker, they give you $3US and you don't even have to enter a credit card #. Sadly I have less than $3 now though lol.

EDIT: Sorry if this sounded like spam, delete if necessary.

I signed up for PokerStars, and have been playing for a day on 0.01/0.02 tables. I won a good amount from my 0.40 buy-in up to a dollar, but then my winnings have dwindled, and I lost 0.06.

With that, would it be wise to set a profit goal, or to play for a certain amount of time? I'm very disciplined but am confused as to what goals I should set for the day. Basically I'm running like a chicken with its head cut off, but I figure action is better than no action.

Set a goal to build your bankroll to about $25 by playing .01/.02. Your goal should be to consistently win or get your money in when you are ahead. I'm not positive at .01/.02 but I think that winning .20 to. 40 per 100 hands is a decent goal.

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I vote legendary ... great stuff here.

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Great thread Bill!

Sorry I'm a little dense - is there anywhere we can read on the basic's of solid poker game? As in if I went to play right now, what hands do I keep/what do I bet/ etc. - Is this going to be covered as well or should I read the Green Book? Just trying to get a fastlane to poker mini guide Thanks!

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It's not doing a 9-5, eating at Applebees w/the wife and kids after work, and going home to watch TV until bedtime.-Russ H

I just lost $36 tonight. I didn't play many hands, but I lost a few big hands that I had the edge on.

This was real face-to-face, though -- not online.

Kinda but not really. Your opponent probably altered his play based on a play you made that wasn't textbook and didn't call a bet that he would have won. However, poker is a game of deception and the only way you make money is when somebody else loses. If he was that good he would have known you were new to the game and adjusted his play accordingly.

When you play online you are going to be berated all the time. Cloaked behind the anonymity of the internet, players run their mouths constantly. Some are angry but most are just looking to tilt you or make you become passive as you are afraid to be yelled at again. Ironically, it is usually the bad players who do the most talking. I do this for a living and I get berated and told how horrible I am every single day. If I play a session where somebody didn't call me a donk I probably didn't do my job well.

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Always improving...

I am sure snowbank will cover the basics in his article. I will post an email I sent my poker students when I coached. A couple warnings:

1) These concepts were for players who had been playing for a while and were looking to take the next step in their game. If you a true beginner you may want to come back to this later. I am not sure this will help anybody here but I know it's not helping anybody sitting in my computer
2) This was written 2 years ago and was aimed at low-middle stakes players. The games have changed since then (they are tougher now) so these concepts don't go far enough in today's low-middle stakes games. However, I do still think they are helpful for players at the micro stakes.
3) This was written quickly upon request as an email so grammar/ spelling may be shaky.

NLHE= no limit hold em
UTG= under the gun
MP= middle position
LP= late position
SB= small blind
BB= big blind
PT= poker tracker
LAG= loose aggressive
TAG= tight aggressive


NLHE is an ever changing game and every table you sit at is going to be different. I have been very hesitant to put anything in writing because I want to stress that your style has to be fluid. If you are looking at a hand chart or thinking about what the book says to do in a particular situation you are limiting your game. A book will never tell you to reraise an UTG raise and a MP caller with 79s but sometimes that is the right play. Sometimes folding AQo in that exact situation is also the right play.

Even though NLHE requires a fluid style, there are some general concepts to follow.

1) Position. Every professional NL player stresses position and I think it is critical to being successful. Look at your PT position stats if you don’t believe me. There are two major position points to consider.

- Position against opponents. If there is a tricky LAG on your left, leave the table. You are playing at a disadvantage and there is a better table available.
- Position in the hand. Being last to act in a hand is a huge advantage. You can watch all the action develop in front of you and can control it. You can make big pots or keep them small. 78s is easy to play from the button, not so easy out of the SB.

How do you relate this to actual play? Tighten up your raising from UTG and UTG+1. Don’t call out of the blinds with marginal hands. A10o is a good example for both situations. Do you want action in either spot? What types of hands are you going to be up against? A10o is garbage unless you are in position and controlling the action.

2) Avoid marginal situations. Thinking about A10o leads right into avoiding marginal situations. If you are being put to the test frequently in NL cash games you are doing something wrong. Either you are practicing bad table selection, or more likely, you have some leaks in your game. Your opponent should be the one who feels pressured. There are several causes for marginal situations. Bad position, marginal cards, and/ or passive play all lead to marginal situations.

For example:

Non-marginal situation: You are on the button with A10o. You have been running the table. It’s folded to you and you raise pot. Only the SB calls. SB is a solid but imaginative player. Flop is A72 rainbow. SB checks and you bet 75% of pot and he calls. What could he have? You don’t run well against his range. Turn is a 3 and SB checks. This couldn’t have helped his hand but you check behind for pot control. The river pairs the 2 and your opponent makes a 50% pot bet. You quickly call and he tables A9s and you scoop the pot.

By controlling the pot in position you were able to avoid a marginal situation.

Marginal situation: same hands and same type of opponent except now you are in the SB and opponent is on the button. Button raises and you call with your marginal hand out of position. Flop is A72, you check and button pots it. You call thinking your hand might be good. Turn 3, you check and your opponent bets ¾ of the pot. Now you are in a big pot and if you call you could face another big bet on the river. This is a solid unimaginative player, he has to have AK or AQ. You fold.

There is an excellent article on pocketfives.com by Green Plastic called “What is your edge?” If you haven’t read it you should as it goes more in depth on this point. Basically Taylor says you need to have an advantage to play a hand. It can either be positional, better cards or being a better player, but you have to have at least one advantage.

A couple of concepts to help avoid marginal situations.
- Don’t play weak Aces and weak broadway hands. You know where you are with 44 but you won’t know where you are at with K10o. This changes if you are on the button or cutoff with no action in front of you but play slowly after the flop and don’t call a reraise with these types of hands.
- Be the aggressor, especially in position. If there is a weak-tight limper UTG and you have J9s that you are going to play, raise it. You give yourself the chance to win the pot right there or to win it with a continuation bet on the flop if called. If you just limp in you will have no idea where you are at.
- Don’t zealously defend your blinds. This is not a MTT where blind defense is important. Don’t call with any 2 because you have odds. If you have a hand that can flop a monster and you are getting priced in, then play it, otherwise just fold.

3) Be the intimidating, tricky player at the table. Be the one opponents fear and hate.

There are three main levels of players. The first level is the low limit player who plays their own cards. “I have top pair and that’s a big hand.”

The second level of player is the one who is playing their own cards but playing them in relationship to their opponent’s hand. “I will call with second pair because I think my opponent just has AK.”

The third level is the player who is just playing their opponent. “That’s a scared feeler bet, I am going to blast him off the hand.” They do not need good cards to win a hand. They frustrate their opponent and when they finally play a big pot to showdown they have the nuts. This is the intimidating tricky player you want to be.

How do you get there? Concentrate on your game and don’t be mechanical. How often do you sit down at a table and just play level one and two? When you do your game is not improving. By playing on level three and thinking through every hand your game will improve exponentially. Are you going to make mistakes? YES. That is OK. That is how you get better. Early on in your level 3 play, move down a limit or two so the money doesn’t matter if you stack off trying to bluff a calling station. Learn your lesson and don’t do it again.

Every time you are to act, think things through on level 3. If you flopped a set, how are you going to get your opponents stack? Maybe a small bet will induce a big bet out of him if he’s aggressive. Maybe an overbet will induce a calling station to call with any piece of the flop. If you missed your hand, how can you get your opponent to lay down his hand? Think every action through and remember you always have two or three options every time you have cards in front of you.

Critique your game after every session, both the good and the bad. Replay the hands you got stacked on. Did you get all your money in with top set v. a flush draw? Well played then. Did you overplay top pair, top kicker against a nit’s set? Where should you have gotten away from it? Use PT for this type of analysis.

As I mentioned at the beginning, you have to have a fluid style to adapt to different playing conditions. Generally at the lower limits, you have more calling stations. This means being a real LAG is not always optimal. TAG play is closer to optimal. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of opportunities to be tricky. However, you need to be more selective on where you run plays. If you are focusing on level 3 play, you will find these opportunities.

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Always improving...

Started with $0.40 for a game, lot of ups and downs but came out ahead at a buck and some change! $1.07 to be exact. One thing I've learned is to read the opponents, how they play, and play your cards less then what I was doing before. Gonna keep at it.

I've been having my hand stats and plays emailed to me, are there any ways to analyze what I've done correctly, and what I've done wrong?

If I'm threadjacking, lemme know and I can create a new post. Thanks for all the help/inspiration!

what method do you use to track how many hands you have played and whether or not you have had 'a winning session"? Is there some kind of software or do you just use a spreadsheet?

Pokertracker.

pokertracker.com is the most common tracking method.

However, holdemmanager.net (HEM) is a rapidly growing competitor that is probably more popular for new purchases than PT. I actually just switched from PT to HEM this month as the new PT has proved very unstable and was not capable of handling the 24 tables I play at a time. For a recreational player, I don't think you can go wrong either way but I do believe HEM has a cheaper option for small stakes players.

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Always improving...

Ya, that graph is a good example of if you know how to play, you can build money up quick. Once he finally got $100+ bankroll, he was able to turn it into $10k pretty quickly.

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Don't sweat the session to session swings. They don't mean anything. Focus on playing correctly. If you lose a hand, really try to understand why you lost, and if there was something you could have done differently to avoid losing. To go along with that, don't be results oriented on things like 'opponent flush hitting' or things like that. Focus on learning the game, and don't focus on the money at all. You should have at least 25-30 buy ins for the stakes you're playing. As far as time, people pick things up at different paces. After I get a chance to make the part 2. post, it should give you a lot of guidance on how to play and how to build a roll, etc... For now, just try to get a feel for the game a bit and try to learn player tendencies and things like that. This is an important thing to pick up when you're starting out, and something you can only get from table experience.

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Ya, I'll definitely be going over that for everyone. Wouldn't hurt picking up that book. Like I said some parts I disagree with, but overall it's a decent beginner book.

After part 2(and 3 if there's a 3rd part) this will hopefully serve as a good 'fastlane to poker guide.'

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Everyone is always complaining after hands. That's one of the negative parts of poker that I don't like very much. Don't worry about that at all. It's pretty common for players to berate players when they lose a hand and think the person who won it played poorly. Chances are the player who said something to you was not very good, as it's kind of an 'unspoken code' among the good players to not berate players who may make mistakes, as we want to keep someone who's making mistakes at the table. Although some hands can be frustrating to a good player as well, they understand that the short term results in poker mean almost nothing, so to get all angry at one hand for a winning player would be kind of silly.

For blackjack, unless you are a card counter, it's all random, so again, another thing people do at the casino when they don't understand the odds won't change for them whatever card someone pulls out before them. So if someone should have hit and they stayed and the guy after him has to hit and busts, and gets mad because it should have been the other guys card, it's just kind of funny since it's all random. Even for a card counter, the effect on someone doing something wrong(non-basic strategy blackjack) has little to no effect on even them.

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Ya, I don't really use the software, but this is pretty spot on with what most of the poker guys I talk with say. I think HEM has some new advanced features a lot of pros like in comparison to PT which doesn't have some of the things. For recreational use both would be fine.

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