Mistakes

Been playing mainly pot-limit hold'em home games now for about a year. Started with TOP and then on to most other 2+2 books as well as a few others from other authors ( Caro, Caffione, Cooke, to name a few).


When I try and look at what holes I have in my game, I see mainly two that are costing me money.


(1) I tend to misread players too often. Picking up tells is something I have a lot of trouble getting good at. I should also state that the competition I play against is mediocre. Should I concentrate more on playing the cards and not the person in this case ? It's like when I'm commited to a tell, I will stay with my assumption no matter what. Maybe concentrate more on the math ( whether or not the odds are there or not to check, raise, call or fold )?


(2) I find myself playing a bit too tight in loose games. I'm losing money folding on the end with good hands. At least once or twice a night I do this. Is this common for tight players ?


Any thoughts or comments on the problems I'm having ? Thx. B.

Brian,


1) Don't worry about tells. I think you may be placing too much importance on them. You should be concentracting on how people are playing there hands preflop, flop, turn, and river. Figure out who is misplaying their hands, for they are the bad players. If you can't figure this out, I think you better start reading the books more carefully until you understand them. Then think about how you are playing your hands. Are you making lots of mistakes?


2)If you are not calling bets on the end, you could be getting bluffed out of pots. Once, someone thinks you would throw away a winner, you will be rundown. You should be making your calls on the size of the pot.


Good Luck


Mark

It depends on what "tell" means. If your trying to guess what a person has by their mannerisms, that's not the way to go. If "tell" means trying to put an opponent on a hand by their betting patterns, that's an important skill.


The pot odds determine the correct strategy in many cases. Here's one example. If there are 2 players and 4 bets in the pot, correct strategy dictates bluffing 1 out of 5 times you would legitamately bet and folding to a bet 1 out of 5 times with a hand that can only beat a bluff. Most opponents will not do this. They'll either bluff too often, or not enough, or lay down too many hands, or not enough, etc.


Against an opponent who lays down too many hands, you should bluff more often. Against an opponent who doesn't lay down enough, less. And so forth. For a given mistake, it's often easy to come up with a strategy to take advantage of that mistake. The key is to recognize when the mistakes are being made. It's these mistakes you need to be looking for more than "strong means weak" type of tells. (You also need to know how to interpret these type of tells. For example, an opponent may think he has a strong hand, but he could be wrong. That is, the hand he likes -- so he's acting weak -- really isn't that good a hand for the given situation. So you've correctly identified he things he's strong, but how strong is strong?)


You make your money in poker off of your opponents mistakes. The books you study will teach you what the mistakes are you should be looking for. Then it's up to you to figure out how to take advantage of them.


Regarding folding. If you're up against one opponent, you should call almost all the time. At least wiht a hand that can beat a busted draw. If there are 15 bets in the pot at the end, you only need to be wrong once in 15 times to cost yourself money by folding incorrectly. This is a very big mistake to make, as opposed to the mistake of calling on extra bet on the end.


On the other hand, there are situations where you can confidently fold. For example, in a 3 person showdown, you have a hand which can only beat a broken draw, person 1 bets, person 2 calls, you can fold. This is a very conservative example, but illustrates the point that a lot of times you can work out what's the minimum hand the caller can have, and fold if you can't beat that. The more people acting in a pot, the less concerned you have to be with a bad fold, especially with a caller. Callers don't bluff.


Ciaffone's book has excellent information on folding, by the way.

He plays pot-limit. He SHOULDN'T be calling most of the head-up river bets. However for limit poker your advice would be correct. He needs to learn how his opponents play a draw on the flop and turn. How they play an overpair or top pair on the flop.