Learning my ABC's

[Marlow]

Hi. This is embarassing to admit, but I've been playing for over 6 years and still don't know my odds. But I'm trying to reform myself! I have memorized simple pot odds needed when looking for 1-16 outs (on flop and turn).

Next, I'm going to memorize odds needed to call an all-in bet on the flop (I'm mainly a NL player). After that, I'm going to learn the percentages of what beats what pre-flop. Finally, my plan is to learn how to take my read of my opponent's hand and calculate it into the overall probability of my own hand value (Harrington has an excellent section on this).

And that's all I've got for now. Is this enough? Am I missing anything glaring or absolutely crucial? Any advice is welcome. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

Marlow
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[LetYouDown]

If you're mainly an NL player, read up on implied odds. There's no formula for calculating them, as they're player dependent, but they're very important to consider. I don't think that memorizing odds will necessarily make you that much better at making decisions. There's certainly no harm in doing it, but after a while you realize that you tend to run into a ton of common scenarios that fall into general categories. You should focus on learning to make a calculating quickly.

Take a deck of cards out and deal two hands and a flop. For practice, do this a ton of times and then find a calculator online (www.twodimes.net) and see how close you were. If you're off by more than a few percentage points, figure out what you missed and how it affects the odds. Then move up to three hands once you get good at that. You'll find that after a while, your educated guesses will be suprisingly accurate.

[Marlow]

It's interesting because I'm a winning NL player. I sorta understand odds, but I win when I can feel the game. But if I want to improve, I need to understand when it's correct to call a minraise, or when to stick around with a gutshot draw. That kind of stuff.

I really love your idea about dealing, doing the math and checking on twodimes. Thanks for the great and very practical advice.

Marlow
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[SumZero]

I think learning when to call all-ins in NL is important. If you look at my post on a JJ 1st level decision on the STT forum I go throught the math:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=2703207&page=0&view=c ollapsed&sb=5&o=14&vc=1

Which takes advantage of the ICM: http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~sharnett/ICM/ICM.html

And of the poker calculator: http://koti.mbnet.fi/jraevaar/pokercalculator/download.php

Going through the math for some decision you had after the fact (or seeing other people's math) I think is enough to give you a good idea of what to do when.