Anyone care to give general advice to a newbie???

[DarrenJG]

Hello folks,

I am brand new here -- first time on the board. I posted in the Beginner forum, but it looks like more people hang out here. I basically want to get the lowdown on becoming a winning player and get a flavor for the folks on this forum.

I am seeking feedback regarding realistic financial returns and time necessary to reach such levels. Any serious feedback would be greatly appreciated. Maybe down the road I can return the favor. I will certainly try to do so.

I am just starting to make a study of poker. I have been a BJ cardcounter for about 7 years and made pretty good money at it. It was basically a part-time job through my latest stint in school. I have good math ability and I am very, very disciplined. I have never had a problem playing properly under stress and avoiding "tilt". As a result of the cardcounting, I also understand, all too well, the swings inherent in this stuff and the idea of expected value, random walk w/ an upward drift, etc. I am a pretty seasoned veteran regarding some gambling concepts, but brand new to poker. At the casinos the only game I EVER played was BJ. It was a job to me, I was not there to play games or "gamble" for fun.

My real job takes a lot of time now and so my card counting has dropped off. The games around here are getting tougher and my partners have more or less disbanded. I don't have time to build or keep a small team together. I like the idea of poker, especially in light of online play.

So, over the past month, I've bought 10-12 poker books -- pretty much all the standards (I tend to really dive into things). I've found my way to this forum. I've read enough to begin to understand the mathematical side and I like it. I have not played yet outside of a very little with some friends. Being so new I am only willing to put maybe $2,000-3,000 in play. Probably start quite small and build up to that. If I saw progress in my play I would be willing to stake myself $5,000 or a little more.

I would really appreciate ANY realistic feedback about the learning curve in poker -- what a pretty fast learner can expect to attain and in what time frame. I enjoy games and competition, but I would be doing this to make some money also -- not just for kicks. What can I expect? What advice would you give me?

I have decent faith in my ability to do well, if there is a realistic chance of doing well. I heard lots of people on forums and in person say that I couldn't make money counting cards -- but I seemed to disprove them. It sounds like there are lots of experienced players here. What does it take to consistently win? What kind of return can be had? How much must one stake? Should I just stick with blackjack and forget about this?

Thanks very much to anybody who had the patience to read this and respond.
Darren

[pryor15]

sounds to me like your learning curve would be pretty small, generally speaking. i'd say just jump in at the micro levels to get the hang of it, probably .50/1 and when you come up against situations that perplex you (or whatever) post them here and we'll all act like we know everything (that's what we do well, you see) and try to give you some solid advice. there's no substitute for experience.

good luck to you.

[CheckFold]

I also started with card counting and can assure you that poker is much more profitable with significantly less risk, especially with the quality of BJ games out there today. Given your background and mindset, you can probably become a reasonable low stakes winner with about 60 hours of practice in live or online games. I'd really suggest playing as much live as you can while starting out. It's just my opinion, but I think you can pick up a better feel for the game that way, and since it is slower, you'll stand to lose less while you identify and correct your mistakes than you would while playing 2 or 3x as many hands per hour online.

It is a very reasonable goal to earn a consistently great return playing poker. Live, you'll probably have to get to around the 10-20 level to make a decent profit, but online, you make a very nice side income multitabling the 2/4 and 3/6 games, especially with the rakeback deals and multiple bonus offers out there. A good winrate will be about 2.5 BB/100 at the low level games, but an expert can get upwards of 4BB/100.

My advice would be play, read, and post as much as you can, sign up on party and skins with as good a rake back deal as you can find, play $.5/1 with the goal of working your way up to 4 tables of $2/4 within a couple months. Get pokertracker, establish that you're beating the $2/4 for 2+BB/100 over at least 20,000 hands, then reevaluate.

[Stork]

What books do you have? Theory of Poker and Small Stakes Holdem are the only books you really need right now and are the most important to have. It might not be good that you have 10-12 books because alot of books give shitty advice.

With 2K-3K, you have a roll to play 3-6 or 5-10, but you should probably start small at .5-1 while learning the game before moving up. Typically you should have a 300 big bet bankroll for any limit you play, but you can take shots at a higher limit with less.

If you're good, you can expect to make between 2 and 3 big bets per hundred hands on average, but anything positive isn't bad. Of course, your winrate will drop off as you move up in levels and play against better people.

[DarrenJG]

Thanks. I wasn't sure I'd get any responses. I appreciate the supportive words.

[DarrenJG]

Sounds like we're coming from similar paths. You're right, the BJ games have gotten tougher to beat, especially in my neck of the woods.

Quick follow-up:

What have you found to be the # of hands that can be played hourly online and how tough is multitabling? How about the range for B&M?

Thanks

[DarrenJG]

I tried to stick with pretty reputable books.

I have Theory of Poker and Small Stakes Hold'em. i also picked up Supersystem, Harrington's new book, Lee Jones Small Stakes, Helmuth's Play Poker Like the Pros, Caro's Poker Tells, Sklansky's original Hold'em, Killer Poker, which I haven't looked at yet, and some others.

I plan to build a base from Theory and Small Stakes Hold'em to allow me to play small games well. I wanted to have the non-small stakes stuff to give me a sense of how small stakes differs. I guess, down the road, I plan to look into tourney play perhaps and see if I have any ability at that.

Is the 300 BB bankroll the standard benchmark? Have you stuck by this in your personal play? Seems kind of low and pretty reasonable financially. I guess the volatility is significantly less than with cardcounting.

The poker bankroll will be a small fraction of the necessary blackjack roll, which is nice. Less heartburn.

[mscags]

Yeah, generally between 200-300 BB is the typical. The closer to 300 the better though. I haven't played BJ that much, but I believe the swings that one takes wont be quite as severe when playing poker. Good luck with your play

[Stork]

I'd stick to reading Theory of Poker and Small Stakes Holdem and these forums and make sure you can tell good advice from bad advice before you venture to read other books that could be bad for you.

300 big bets is the standard benchmark, although how big a roll you need also depends on your winrate and how aggressive the game is. At the mid-high limits, some people perfer having 500 big bets. Personally, I'm still playing low limits and have not been adhering completely to the 300 big bet rule because these games are rediculously easy.

[Justin A]

[ QUOTE ]
Sounds like we're coming from similar paths. You're right, the BJ games have gotten tougher to beat, especially in my neck of the woods.

Quick follow-up:

What have you found to be the # of hands that can be played hourly online and how tough is multitabling? How about the range for B&M?

Thanks

[/ QUOTE ]

Multitabling is easy, but it's very tough if you're still learning the game. Once you get a ton of experience and you can make most of your decisions very quickly and correctly, then you can move to four, six, or more tables. Typical online games play at about 65 hands per hour, so an eight tabler can play 500 hands per hour. I want to stress again that it's best to multitable only after significant experience playing. Playing two tables to start out may be helpful, but I don't really consider that multitabling.

B&M hand rates are about 30-35 hands per hour. However, the players are usually worse and you can make better reads, which decreases variance greatly. Also, I think it's a lot more fun. Because of this most players feel more comfortable playing higher stakes when playing live than they do online.

[smoore]

Commit to memory the concepts in SSH, try to understand as much of ToP as you can get your head around. Sign up at a party skin (don't forget rakeback) and deposit $300. Buy a program called pokertracker and learn how to get hand histories into it. I would suggest NOT using a heads up display program like playerview for this incursion, learn how to win without it.

Play many, many, many hands at the limit holdem .50/1 level at the party skin and constantly analyze your play via pokertrackers "playback" feature. Figure out what is working and what isn't. Post really problem hands in the micro-limit forum. Take thier advice with a grain of salt until you figure out who gives good advice. Spend 1/3 of your "poker time" playing and the other 2/3 reading/analyzing.

Play live games every chance you get. Don't worry about beating the rake at low limit (2/4) at the casino, just play correctly. Play home games, learn the wacky games people like to call. You will have an advantage with that big'ol blackjack brain of yours.

Once you get a good 10k hands under your belt, try two tables at .50/1. Multitabling gives good return for little risk. I play four and may be ready to try six. Now you can go start to bonus whore some. Read "the zoo" here (internet forum) for the juicy bonus deals. When you get sick of whoring for a week or two, open up a PokerStars account and give tournaments a try. They have the best software and lots of fishy tournaments. I honed my NL skills in tournaments so I wouldn't get wiped out playing ring games. Keep playing live games the whole time.

Good luck. Don't move up in limits too quickly, prove to yourself you can beat the ultra-fish. When you get good stay away from ME! /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
I tried to stick with pretty reputable books.

I have Theory of Poker and Small Stakes Hold'em. i also picked up Supersystem, Harrington's new book, Lee Jones Small Stakes, Helmuth's Play Poker Like the Pros, Caro's Poker Tells, Sklansky's original Hold'em, Killer Poker, which I haven't looked at yet, and some others.

I plan to build a base from Theory and Small Stakes Hold'em to allow me to play small games well. I wanted to have the non-small stakes stuff to give me a sense of how small stakes differs. I guess, down the road, I plan to look into tourney play perhaps and see if I have any ability at that.

Is the 300 BB bankroll the standard benchmark? Have you stuck by this in your personal play? Seems kind of low and pretty reasonable financially. I guess the volatility is significantly less than with cardcounting.

The poker bankroll will be a small fraction of the necessary blackjack roll, which is nice. Less heartburn.

[/ QUOTE ]

Throw Helmuth's book away. Seriously don't even open it. If you're lucky some other aspiring player will find it and take it seriously.

300 BB's (big bets not big blinds) is conventional wisdom. But its more geared towards guiding recreational players as to when they can move up. If you're going to play seriously at a particular level, you want to be way more overfunded than that. The reason for that is that if you're following the 300 BB guideline you absolutely have to move down when you you go on a 150 BB downswing. And everybody has 150 BB downsings. Everybody.

The recreational player trying to build his roll to move up the limits can move down when he hits a big downswing. The serious player wanting to make serious scratch at mid-high limits takes a serious opportunity cost hit when he has to move down, so needs a roll that can weather 2-300 BB downswings without having to drop to lower limits.

Edit: At least some of the pros on this forum say they have bankrolls somewhere in the 900 BB vicinity.

--Zetack

[2ndGoat]

Just so we're clear, in limit play, BB stands for Big Bets, not Big Blinds. Not that you displayed any misunderstanding of it, but just in case.

Bankroll: I'm playing for a living and I try to maintain a 1000 BB bankroll. I feel uncomfortable with less than that. I'm sure some pros get by on less, but certainly not 300 BB if they don't enjoy being broke. 300 BB wil suffice for most people in the recreational world. Keep in mind your bankroll requirements are tied intimately to how well you're beating the game- if you're just a small winner, the numbers grow something nasty. Statking, available here, has a good bankroll calculation tool which will give you a bankroll necessary if you have X win rate, Y std dev, Z acceptable risk of ruin %, and also has optional fields for monthly nut and hours per month if you're playing for a living.

Multitabling- it shouldn't take "long" to get to handling 2 tables. To begin with, only add the 2nd table after you have a pretty good read on everyone at your first table- then you don't have to worry so much about picking up info on 2 tables at once. Beware that as you add additional tables, you decrease the experience you gain per hour- you don't have time to analyze situations in as much depth, and tend to be forced into simplified decisions. Thus multitabling can hypotethetically increase yoru current hourly rate while simultaneously decreasing your lifetime earn (if your skill increase stagnates and you get stuck at 1/2 or whatever). Moral of the story- just don't take on too much too fast. Still, don't get me wrong, multitabling is great.

Watch out for Super/System. Has gotten a lot of people in trouble. And I only paged through Hellmuth but I wasn't impressed.

Other decent books include Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players (required reading at some point) and most all of Ciaffone's work.

You're coming in with an infinitely better understanding of the swings and frustrations involved, and looks like you're going to take it seriously enough... so I'm pretty sure you'll be alright.

2ndGoat

[mindflayer]

Throw Helmuth's book "Poker like the pros' in the trash.

If you are playing No limit disregard the rest of this post.

Replace Helmuth's book with hold'em Poker for Advanced players.
This should be your second book Small stakes hold'em should be your 3rd book. Lee Jones your 4th. TOP your 1st book.

I have always found it easier to teach others to START tight, then loosen up your play. If you start loose, and try to tighten up it is much more psychologically difficult.

One of the common beginner problems is that they will typically hold a difficult hand to play such as KTo and decide not to play the hand, then follow the hand and see KT4 flop and wish they had played the hand, then play the next KT and have it dominated by KQ or AK and not realize that they just should not play the hand.

If you are too bored playing so few 'premium' hands then start to take notes on players. If you can take notes in your sleep and your still bored, add another table.
You will find that the EV of playing a hand below say KJ is somewhere in the range of +0.2BB to say -0.2BB THAT is IF you can play it correctly, so just drop the hand untill you become a proven 'good' player (say +2BB/100 H for 30,000+ hands at ONE level)
I say that HEPFAP is the number 2 book because it promotes Tightness over EV. What does this mean?
Well in SSH you are encouraged to play more hands because the quality of players against you is poorer because you are playing a low stakes. They expect 5+ limpers per hand so it becomes profitable to play small pairs and Axs, and suited connectors.
If you crave action sure go ahead and play the hands, your variance will go up and you will definitely gain more in the games described as loose passive, but know in advance you have to drop those hands when you move up or if the game looses its looseness.

In short,
With your bankroll i would start at 1-2 and play/post hands untill you can log at least +300 BB wins.
if you can do this within 15k hands (ie2BB/100 hands) then
move up in tables untill you can comfortably play 3-4 tables at a time. If you can do this and maintain your win rate, then you are primed to move up a level while dropping back to 1-2 tables.
At 2-4, same cycle, then repeat at 3-6.

5-10 i think is a different matter where you will have to learn different skills (agression and short handed play).
You will move from a rock style (tight is right) to a stone killer. (Psycology of poker Schoonmaker) I put this book somewhere 8-9th on your list.

My 2c
Mindflayer