O8 new player question

[Duck]

In general, over the long haul what % of flops should i be seeing...

I guess i should preface that w/ I'm a beginning O8 player, and want to play premium hands for now.

[Buzz]

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In general, over the long haul what % of flops should i be seeing...

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Duck - You're not going to get a general concensus on this issue.

My own opinion is there is no answer to your question. The question you ask is akin to asking how fast you should drive a motorcycle. If you're on the Santa Monica freeway at 3 a.m. on a clear night, I think 70 miles per hour works well. But that might get you killed at 5:30 p.m. in the rain.

The percentage of flops you should be seeing very much depends on how your opponents are playing, just as how fast you should drive a motorcycle depends on the road conditions.

General advice given to beginners, and I think it's good advice, is to play very tightly, at least while you're learning.

What do I mean by "play very tightly"?

First, play only hands with one or two aces.

If the hand has two aces, then either you require one card suited to each ace, or you require one card suited to one of the aces plus either a deuce or three, plus another non-paired wheel card (deuce, three, four, or five) as the fourth card in the hand.

If the hand has only one ace, then require one other card in the hand to have the same suit as the ace, plus you need a deuce, plus you require either a three, four, or five. Ideally you'd like a king or a fourth wheel card as the fourth card in the hand. Keep in mind that you don't like middle cards, sixes, sevens, eights, and nines. But if you have three cards as good as A/images/graemlins/heart.gif, 2/images/graemlins/club.gif, 5/images/graemlins/heart.gif, you can tolerate a single middle card as the fourth card in the hand.

There are some other good starting hands too, but if you stick to those hands listed in the preceding paragraphs, you'll be playing very tightly and playing most of the very best starting hands.

Playing that tightly is not, in my humble opinion, the optimum way to play the game, in terms of profitability. If there is someone at your table who is throwing money away by playing poorly, you obviously have to at least see the flop in order to profit from the mistakes of your poor playing opponent.

In addition, if you're an intelligent, sensitive person, you might go nuts if you play that tightly very long - or, at the very least, I think you'll learn to hate the game.

However, it's not bad to play that tightly while you're learning.

Stay focused on what your opponents are doing - even after you have already folded.

Just my opinion.

Buzz

[Duck]

Buzz,

thanks for the reply... i know my question(s) was vague at best, and yes "it depends" is a very good answer.

I after playing Hold'em for years now, when i look at my prelop fold % versus my profit/loss I have a perspective on what my problem/strength is for the session. (IE if i'm folding >80% i know I'm getting crappy cards; but if <70% i'm either getting alot of starters or I'm playing impatiently)

I guess i wanted a "jump" on getting perspective of O8. Again, thanks for the reply.

[Beavis68]

Flops seen, counting the BB should probably be in the 20-30% range. Less if there is a lot of raising.

VPIP would be in the 18-24% range I believe.

[kyleb]

All of my notes (only over about 4000 hands, I know, not a very big sample size) show pretty good profitability seeing 18-22% of flops - but that's because I've been playing in some REALLY loose/passive PL games where I can add hands and not get punished by raises down the line.