[pablo222]

When are you not on vacation?

[ChuckyTheGoat]

Baller:

You know I'm a fan of the thread. In particular, I look at Poker as a Game u can Live + Learn.

Poker is very frustrating to me. I say that on at least two fronts:

1) How do u overcome the Rake?
2) In Hold-em, each player gets 2 cards. So, how does one extract an edge vs opponents?

These are very basic questions, but I think the Winning Player needs to answer them. Start w/ Q1. Let's assume full-ring, 10 players w/ $200 buy-in each for $2000 on the table. Hourly rake in 1/2 game is going to be somewhere around $60 per hour.

That means the $2000 pool has been reduced to $1940 BEFORE we consider any gain/loss from the hands. That $60 hourly dwindling is CONSTANT. Every hour, the rake is being scraped off. And that's b4 any consideration of tipping.

Let's move on to Q2. This is a BROAD question. In poker, there are so many SPOTS to consider.

I really struggle w/ incorrect decisions. And I'm not talking about being results-oriented. I'm talking about making the best play on that hand (vs opponent range of likely holdings).

To be a WINNING PLAYER, you need to be BETTER THAN AVERAGE in most of these spots. Think about it. Are u good at:
*Stealing Blinds?
*Defending Blinds?
*3-betting?
*Folding what is likely 2nd-best hand?
*Hero-calling + bluff-catching?

There are many ways to skin a sheep. Good Luck, baller!

[ChuckyTheGoat]

Baller, I don't mean to dominate your thread. But I do like the Poker Chat.

Q: How often do u do self-assessment? If you think about Poker hands breaking down to different areas, have u identified any Weaknesses?

For me, I can say I've learned How to play Draws differently. I am very aware of whether I'm getting the right price to call. If I feel like I'm getting the incorrect price or if I feel like I have a hand that is likely dominated...I simply Fold.

If u flip it around, I've gotten comfortable w/ a strategy to CHARGE draws. If u think your opponent likely has a CALLING hand, why not charge them to the hilt? If the Turn card is super-wet creating a bunch of draws, Pot-size bet on turn may be appropriate.

Just some ideas. Good luck, baller.

[Gaze73]

Lol playing MTTs for a living will eat your soul. The difference between profit and loss after 100 MTTs is whether you finished 8th or 1st at the final table. Do you know what it's like to shove Aces preflop and lose on the river which costs you thousands of dollars? The all-ins on the FT will make your heart race for sure but you need to be a robot to deal with it long term. I always used to smash the table after losing those huge hands, usually as the favorite.

[Ballerholic]

When are you not on vacation?

Haha yea I have taken quite a bit this year

Baller:

You know I'm a fan of the thread. In particular, I look at Poker as a Game u can Live + Learn.

Poker is very frustrating to me. I say that on at least two fronts:

1) How do u overcome the Rake?
2) In Hold-em, each player gets 2 cards. So, how does one extract an edge vs opponents?

These are very basic questions, but I think the Winning Player needs to answer them. Start w/ Q1. Let's assume full-ring, 10 players w/ $200 buy-in each for $2000 on the table. Hourly rake in 1/2 game is going to be somewhere around $60 per hour.

That means the $2000 pool has been reduced to $1940 BEFORE we consider any gain/loss from the hands. That $60 hourly dwindling is CONSTANT. Every hour, the rake is being scraped off. And that's b4 any consideration of tipping.

Let's move on to Q2. This is a BROAD question. In poker, there are so many SPOTS to consider.

I really struggle w/ incorrect decisions. And I'm not talking about being results-oriented. I'm talking about making the best play on that hand (vs opponent range of likely holdings).

To be a WINNING PLAYER, you need to be BETTER THAN AVERAGE in most of these spots. Think about it. Are u good at:
*Stealing Blinds?
*Defending Blinds?
*3-betting?
*Folding what is likely 2nd-best hand?
*Hero-calling + bluff-catching?

There are many ways to skin a sheep. Good Luck, baller!

1) Yea rake is insane in poker. In the micros especially rake is bad. On most sites for let's say 50NL, rake is probably at best around 8bb/100. On US sites this can go up to 10 or more depending on playstyle. Problem here is let's say you crush you opponent who is a -7bb/100 loser. Well that doesn't matter because you are still losing at -1bb/100. So for this reason the number one true aspect to overcoming rake is to play with fish. You can always get better, but the idea of getting better is so that the current regs you battle begin to become fish after you make that technical leap. It is difficult and a lot of the top pros I know will say even 500NL is a rake trap. So in their minds only high stakes is really not too bad when dealing with rake, but then they all change up their style of play due to the different rake strutures between stakes.

My advice to beat the rake is first and foremost just play against fish. Every pro will tell you fish is where you make your money, it is not battling regs. Secondly, players are still making a ton of mistakes. So play a solid game and make sure you can take advantage. If somebody folds way too much to cbets, then we need to cbet more. If somebody doesn't ever checkraise the flop, then we can cbet an criminally high amount. If we are in CO with K7s, and BU is a huge nit, then we can steal with this hand essentially getting 2 BU per orbit. Look for the thin edges and they will pile up overtime. The two easiest that will add up to winrate imo is to value bet thin and to make the tough folds. If you can do that you will make/save so much money.

*Just saw you meant for live poker. Rake is way higher in live poker, but wow are the players 10x worse. In live poker literally just play like a huge nit and you will dominate. Also value bet very thin and make the tough folds. If you get checkraised on the turn or river, fold your hand if it is only top pair. He is not bluffing.

2) Just like in question one, due to rake we need to be a lot better than our opponent. The way we have an edge starts off with preflop. Do you have solid ranges preflop? If not that is the number 1 reason that will lead to bad play. Fish will open hands like A8s from UTG which we can dominate against a solid range. They will also call us when we 3bet with hands like A9o. So an example is we 3bet AK, fish calls ATo. Flop is A52. He made a huge mistake calling with A9o here, but what is he going to do? He's not going to fold. So we take all his money. This example works for regs too. Whoever has a more solid gameplan and can adjust will have the edge. You could also be playing against a guy who plays perfect poker in almost all aspects of the game, but he has a tendency to always call the river. Right there is an edge. Know your opponent, learn his weaknesses, and then attack them. If he only bets value, then we can fold way more. We win money by folding here.

Baller, I don't mean to dominate your thread. But I do like the Poker Chat.

Q: How often do u do self-assessment? If you think about Poker hands breaking down to different areas, have u identified any Weaknesses?

For me, I can say I've learned How to play Draws differently. I am very aware of whether I'm getting the right price to call. If I feel like I'm getting the incorrect price or if I feel like I have a hand that is likely dominated...I simply Fold.

If u flip it around, I've gotten comfortable w/ a strategy to CHARGE draws. If u think your opponent likely has a CALLING hand, why not charge them to the hilt? If the Turn card is super-wet creating a bunch of draws, Pot-size bet on turn may be appropriate.

Just some ideas. Good luck, baller.

Yea I'm always self-reflecting. At the moment I'm not doing too much because the stakes I'm playing I have no problem beating. But once I move up (just waiting to build bankroll) then I'll probably be going through every hand I have and begin using GTO software.

Lol playing MTTs for a living will eat your soul. The difference between profit and loss after 100 MTTs is whether you finished 8th or 1st at the final table. Do you know what it's like to shove Aces preflop and lose on the river which costs you thousands of dollars? The all-ins on the FT will make your heart race for sure but you need to be a robot to deal with it long term. I always used to smash the table after losing those huge hands, usually as the favorite.

So I had your exact mentality for a long time, and I definitely still do but I've come to see that MTTs can have a lot less variance than we think and cash can have a lot more than we think. I think the reason for this is that MTTs and extremely soft and if we select MTTs with small fields than variance won't be too bad. We also can let's say average a 10bb/100 winrate in Mtts. Whereas in cash, playing in really tough games and say having a 2bb/100 winrate can lead to insane downswings as well. In a 100,000 sample it's possible to run -40 buyins as a 2bb/100 winning player. I still think MTTs have more variance, but I don't think the difference is as big as I had previously thought.

Also, MTTs were the reason I got into poker. But I haven't played them in years and I'm looking for that excitement again. Also, if I do move over to Europe in the summer it would be nice to be playing some chill MTTs while watching the NBA/NFL/NCAAF games going on at 1am and sportsbetting.

But yea some of the MTT guys I know are losing over the course of a year lol. Hopefully I can stomach these.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Watch about 1 video yesterday on MTTs. Will aim to complete another 1 today. I didn't realise how much work it is to learn MTTs. It is 100 times more confusing than cash that's for sure. Also played some cash yesterday for about 3.5 hours and made a little bit. Going for 4 hours today.

GL!

[ChuckyTheGoat]

Baller, I don't like it. Strategy of search out the fish? No thanks.

That's not striving to beat the best. That's seeking out the Worst. I mentioned that the problem w/ Fish is that their Stack doesn't last long enuf.

I've hinted that I've really soured on poker. Rake is too hi, the house wins. Poker can be played for fun, but I really don't buy Poker as a Business.

[ChuckyTheGoat]

I'll continue w/ what I'm saying. I don't at all believe in a "Play Smart + You'll Win" theory. That sounds a lot like entitlement.

I know the current poker craze is this concept of Exploitative play. Yes, if that SPECIFIC opponent is off on one of his frequencies, there are ways to counter that. But it also takes a good while to profile your opponent.

[ChuckyTheGoat]

Baller, I'm not trying to be a downer. Just trying to be real.

I agree w/ what you say about Live Poker vs Online. Online, I feel like opponents are constantly putting me in tough spots. Really, they are balancing Value/Bluff spots + making me decide.

I have had some success in Live tournaments. Like u say, doesn't take much in hand-reading skills. Not too many bluffs...and when they do, it's pretty obvious.

[ChuckyTheGoat]

Baller, I'll offer up another Theory question. I hate when people say "How did u do?" Point being that this is asking for a Results-oriented answer.

THEY don't care if your opponent caught a 2-outer on the river. Results-oriented is a poor view of poker. We know that Poker has a lot of variance.

Let's take three views on poker results:
1) The Actual result.
2) The correct decision, based on theoretical ranges.
3) The true odds vs odds offered, when cards go on their backs.

I'd argue that 1) is controlled by the Gods of Gambling. We've all seen sick runouts.

2) is the most difficult. If we give our opponent a range of possible hands, we think about how OUR hand does vs that theoretical range.

3) is not as tricky as 2), but it's important to be getting it in good (most of the time). We want to be getting it in ahead. And if we're not ahead, we want to be making +EV calls. If we have 35% equity on a +200 call, that's +5% ROI. Our true odds were > our calling odds.

[Ballerholic]

Hey Chuck, no worries pal I completely understand where you are coming from. I was in that exact spot a few years ago. I couldn't understand how people actually made money playing this game. My eyes really opened up when I began to get coaching and realized 1) how bad my game actually was and 2) how much my coaches were making. I had a coach that quit his hedgefund job to play poker full time. Anyway, you are right in that the game is very tough and it is not easy money. If you look at people playing some of the hardest stakes in the world 200z on Pokerstars, you'll see the best players are making around $20/hr. It's actually really sad that these geniuses only make that amount when 10 years ago they'd be making millions a year. So NLHE is dying, and when I say that I mean with all the perfect strategy solvers out even guys playing $.10 online are using them. However, trust me, it is still beatable but it is a really hard grind. That's why now in 2019 is more important than ever to find the fish.

With regards to live poker, the games are in my opinion laughably easy. Online any $.10 winning player could beat a live lineup no problem. When I played live over a 50 hour sample I was making around $45/hr at 1/2. Definitely running good, but man the players were atrocious. Anyway you have a few options to make money playing today. Either 1) (Easiest) Stick to live poker and watch some training videos online, 2) If playing online NLHE you will need to study about 5 hours a week, 3) Pickup playing PLO or MTTs. These formats have way more bad players and will be easier to make money at, but the variance is insane. I'm actually going this route myself while also still playing NLHE and studying pretty much all formats.

It's funny you mention people asking "how did you do?". When I was in vegas a couple months ago I played probably 4 hours of 1/2 live. 3 times I got the money in as a 65/35 fave and lost. Then for a very large pot I got the money in on the turn as a 95/5 fave. I could not believe when he hit his 2 outer to win the pot. Anyway, my parents were giving me so much abuse for being this "winning poker player" that couldn't even win in vegas. Just don't mind these people. They don't understand the game at all, and sometimes are even trying to do it in a positive way as they might think you are a gambling addict and are trying to help you stop. All you need to do is make the correct play in poker and you will begin making money/crushing. If you are not crushing then you are not making the correct plays. Also keep in mind, the top players in the world go on 40-60 buyin downswings so you could be playing perfectly and just run bad.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Played a bit yesterday and made a little more money. Also studied a couple vids on MTTs. I really think I'll be fine playing postflop in MTTs because of my cash background, but man there are so many variables to remember with regards to shoving/calling/3betting/flatting preflop.

Also looking to form a poker group/betting group where we can talk hands or go deeper into discussion in real time chats. The same with sports betting. We can offer advice on in-game bets or opinion on matches much quicker and work together better. Send me a pm if you are interested and I will invite you to the group.

[Ballerholic]

Played a little yesterday, but just kept running into cooler after cooler. Either way it's normal variance. Also studied a little bit trying to get preflop MTT ranges down. I'll go over for MTT ranges later, but for now I'm studying some PLO videos this morning.

[ChuckyTheGoat]

Think I'm probably done w/ this thread. I don't like the Cooler talk.

Have heard so many guys tell me they got coolered. Makes for a good story.

[Ballerholic]

Fair enough man, coolers in poker are very common and they usually are good stories.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Haven't done too much study in past few days. Just enjoying some time off. Flying back to Chicago tomorrow so we'll be back on the grind then. Have also been doing a lot of sports betting study. I really think I've found some really good spots to bet on in this upcoming sports season.

[Ballerholic]

Been playing a lot of plo past few days. Game is tough to master, but a lot of fun.



+$29 on Global Poker over 6 hours.

Even though it's micro stakes games are very soft. Some people playing don't even know the rules lol. I feel it's a lot more fun to grind PLO and profitable so I think I'll just stick with it. Will probably move to 10NL soon once I get more study done. I purchased PLO Mastermind a few days ago. It's a training site and in my opinion one of the best for any kind of poker content.

[Ballerholic]

Small Update
Results for PLO5 so far are...BovadaGlobal Poker: +$28Total: ~$16 (24 hours played)Biggest Pot played so far...https://play.globalpoker.com/gp/10/h...f2d269f6Really loving this format of poker. People really don't know how to play it and it's way more fun than nlhe.
GL Everybody!

[Ballerholic]

Played about 6 more hours since last update. Very swingy few sessions in PLO streets, but ended up a little bit.

Total: $28 (30 hours played)

Couple hands...

Flopped Straight Flush
https://play.globalpoker.com/gp/10/h...4b0576f2d27212


https://play.globalpoker.com/gp/10/h...4b0576f2d273aa


https://play.globalpoker.com/gp/10/h...4b0576f2d286da


https://play.globalpoker.com/gp/10/h...4b0576f2d2739e

[pablo222]

You need to take a shot buddy. Can't keep grinding for 93 cents an hour.

[Ballerholic]

You need to take a shot buddy. Can't keep grinding for 93 cents an hour.

Haha I agree. Just waiting for bankroll to get large enough and try to build up the right way.

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Update

Total Hours Played: 38

Total Profit PLO: $120


Went on huge upswing since last update. I find PLO games are very soft and people are just making so many mistakes. Variance is insane though so we'll see what happens. Some hands...


https://play.globalpoker.com/gp/10/h...4b0576f2d39567

https://play.globalpoker.com/gp/10/h...4b0576f2d37acb

Should I be betting here at some point with straight blockers?
https://play.globalpoker.com/gp/10/h...4b0576f2d37611

Good Fold?
https://play.globalpoker.com/gp/10/h...4b0576f2d375a3


There are still so many spots I have no idea what I'm doing throughout the entire session, but studying everyday and trying to think logically while giving full focus by only playing 4 tables.

[Ballerholic]

Update

Total Hours Played: 42

Total Profit: $193


So far so good in PLO land. Been playing PLO 10 as my main game and running insanely hot vs many bad players. Study has really been lacking recently. I'm aiming on getting through at least 5 plo videos this weekend as well as studying some plo preflop starting hands as well. I am also aiming on playing at least 10 more hours this weekend minimum. I'm also currently waiting on a paycheck to come through, so if I do receive that today I may look at taking a small shot at some PLO 25. But we'll see. I only started PLO a couple weeks ago so I don't want to get overly confident while on a hot streak. Might also mix in some NLHE as I really miss playing that game as well.

[Ballerholic]

Update

Total Hours Played: $47.5

Total PLO Profit: $126

Bankroll: $1,000


Hit a slight downswing since my last update. Getting the money in good, just not able to hold for the most part. Will probably start mixing in some 25NL moving forward. Sometimes it's hard to get more than 3 tables running for PLO 10 so just trying to increase volume a bit. Have also been playing some NLHE and down a little there. I miss the game, but not enough to go back to it full time.

[Ballerholic]

Update

Total Hours Played: 57.5

Total PLO Profit: $152


The move up to 25NL was pretty rough at first as I dropped a few buyins and did not feel like I was playing well at all. But after a bit I got used to the stake and I think I'll definitely be playing more of it moving forward. I'm not too happy with the hours being played or time spent studying so I'm really going to make an effort to improve that. Today I plan to go over 3bet pots for mw flops and then review some starting hands.


Some hands...

1. Is this a call on the flop? I like the fact that I have the 5 blocker to the lower cards and also a flush draw with an overpair. But in a mw pot this seems pretty thin
https://play.globalpoker.com/gp/10/h...4b057f27c0b4d6

2. Is this played ok? He can have better flushes and a full house on river.
https://play.globalpoker.com/gp/10/h...4b057f27c0b4c4

3. How is this played?
https://play.globalpoker.com/gp/10/h...4b057f27c0b4a4

[Ballerholic]

Update

Total PLO Profit: $546

Been running very well while playing 25NL as main game. Definitely tons of fishes out playing and I'm very confident that I beat this level.