ElSapo
03-24-2003, 11:38 AM
I’ve been playing poker for about a year now, relatively seriously for maybe six or seven months. By seriously, I mean I’ve been reading anything I can get my hands on, reading the discussions here in 2+2, playing in all the home games I can find and recently getting into online poker. I am, admittedly, no more than an educated beginner. But I love it – I really love poker, especially the game of hold’em.
About six months ago a friend and I made a trip to Atlantic City and played 2-4 at the Taj. Fun trip, but at that point I didn’t know enough to really grasp what was going on. I won in one session, bled money away in the next session, and had a great time though I really didn’t “get it,” for lack of a better phrase.
Fast forward to now. I spent the weekend in Vegas playing $2-6 spread at Excalibur, a poker room suggested to me by Dynasty. Thanks for this advice, by the way – the place was great, the staff very friendly, and some great games. Anyways, over four days I played about 30 hours, and I have no doubt that I learned in those sessions as much or more than I have in the past year. What I mean, I guess, was that after having read all these books and heard all the advice and guidelines, seeing it all in practice made it crystallize for me.
The first session I played was a sort I’d never seen before. It was, I guess, the “good,” $2-6 game. Bluff re-raises, value betting middle pair, capped pre-flop rounds on Ace-no-kicker. It was aggressive and the kind of game I was wholly unaccustomed to. I got run over. I got taken to school. I’m not saying I lost my head and all my chips, just that these guys played a style I’d never really seen, and so I couldn’t adjust quite quickly enough. I also realized a $2-6 game like this requires a different bankroll than a $2-6 game with rocks. Live and learn.
The second session I played was maybe the best poker I’d ever played. From about 5 a.m. to noon on Friday, I was aggressive, I watched the table, people feared my raises and I basically racked up the chips I’d lost in the first session. These first two sessions amounted to some of the best poker “lessons” I’d ever had.
Anyways, so after four days of hold’em and little sleep, these are some of the things I’ve learned. I’m even more enthralled by the game than ever before – the more I learned the more I realized how deep the game is, how complex. I can’t wait for the next time, get up to the Taj and play again. These were the longest, and easily the best, sessions I’ve ever played and they don’t compare to dealers choice four-hour home games where I can’t find rhythm switching between hold’em, stud, Omaha/8 and even draw… So here we go – all the things I’ve read and been told by you guys here. Turns out, they were true. I want to thank everyone for all their advice. This really is an invaluable resource – thanks to everyone who makes it happen, and who posts here.
1. They can’t all have aces. With only four aces in the deck, when three people call your raise there’s no reason to assume your Ace-King is beat. And when the flop comes A-2-7 and you bet and get raised, you’re probably still ahead. Granted, someone might have the set. But if you see monsters under the bed and dragons in the dark all the time, you wont win.
2. Changing speeds. About noon, I got JQs and limped in, only to see the pot bumped to the limit by a little old lady who hadn’t touched her chips in an hour. Fold, fold, fold, all around the table. She took the blind and the limpers' $2 and frowned. Too bad about those aces or kings… But thirty minutes later I and the guy next to me noticed she was in several pots, and no one would challenge. She’d switched it up – whether by plan or by realizing she was playing that tight, I never knew. But a change of speed added a lot of chips to her stack in that 30 minutes before the table caught on.
3. Position. Knowing where a raise pre-flop is likely to come from meant I could judge, depending on where the button was, how liberally I could limp in. Dynasty said, and it was definitely true, the key to the $2-6 game was limping cheap when you had cards that justified, and then pounding people when you hit – or charging limpers the max when you got big hands pre-flop. Absolutely true, it turned out. (Not that I’d doubted). And recognizing when the aggressive people were acting first allowed me to limp more liberally.
4. Patience. This is the hardest part for me – I’m not a patient person. I want to do something to win, and so it’s amazingly frustrating to realize sometimes fold, fold, fold is the best thing to do. And on those times you get a hand, sometimes it’s no good. After 45 minutes of no cards I caught KK and raised it the max. Three callers, and the flop came A-A-9. Bet, raise, and I fold. Another hand will come soon for me, and A-9 unsuited took down the pot Just b/c KK looked gorgeous a moment before, doesn’t mean I can do much with it after that flop..
5. Selected aggression. A lot like patience. You have to be aggressive, but you have to do it at the right time, also. Simply betting and raising away will thin the field, for sure, but the guy left standing is the one, of course, with a hand. You take a shot at the pot and get called or raised, time to think about what’s going on. I miss this sometimes. If the next card looks like a blank, too often I’ll bet out again, expecting a fold but getting a raise or a call. Don’t just go blindly forward throwing chips in. But when you get strong hands, don’t be afraid to back them.
That’s just a few things I learned. Or rather, things I knew before but which are not much clearer in my head. Anyways, it was an amazing weekend – at the very least, I’m relieved to know there are plenty of other people out there who can sit around the poker table for hours. My friends may think I’m nuts, but I felt pretty at home there. Next trip I’ll hopefully be a little more aware of all these things. I guess experience is the best teacher here…
...as a side note, I also found myself looking around and wondering if there were other 2+2ers at the table. If you were playing at the Excalibur over the weekend drop me a line...
Robert
About six months ago a friend and I made a trip to Atlantic City and played 2-4 at the Taj. Fun trip, but at that point I didn’t know enough to really grasp what was going on. I won in one session, bled money away in the next session, and had a great time though I really didn’t “get it,” for lack of a better phrase.
Fast forward to now. I spent the weekend in Vegas playing $2-6 spread at Excalibur, a poker room suggested to me by Dynasty. Thanks for this advice, by the way – the place was great, the staff very friendly, and some great games. Anyways, over four days I played about 30 hours, and I have no doubt that I learned in those sessions as much or more than I have in the past year. What I mean, I guess, was that after having read all these books and heard all the advice and guidelines, seeing it all in practice made it crystallize for me.
The first session I played was a sort I’d never seen before. It was, I guess, the “good,” $2-6 game. Bluff re-raises, value betting middle pair, capped pre-flop rounds on Ace-no-kicker. It was aggressive and the kind of game I was wholly unaccustomed to. I got run over. I got taken to school. I’m not saying I lost my head and all my chips, just that these guys played a style I’d never really seen, and so I couldn’t adjust quite quickly enough. I also realized a $2-6 game like this requires a different bankroll than a $2-6 game with rocks. Live and learn.
The second session I played was maybe the best poker I’d ever played. From about 5 a.m. to noon on Friday, I was aggressive, I watched the table, people feared my raises and I basically racked up the chips I’d lost in the first session. These first two sessions amounted to some of the best poker “lessons” I’d ever had.
Anyways, so after four days of hold’em and little sleep, these are some of the things I’ve learned. I’m even more enthralled by the game than ever before – the more I learned the more I realized how deep the game is, how complex. I can’t wait for the next time, get up to the Taj and play again. These were the longest, and easily the best, sessions I’ve ever played and they don’t compare to dealers choice four-hour home games where I can’t find rhythm switching between hold’em, stud, Omaha/8 and even draw… So here we go – all the things I’ve read and been told by you guys here. Turns out, they were true. I want to thank everyone for all their advice. This really is an invaluable resource – thanks to everyone who makes it happen, and who posts here.
1. They can’t all have aces. With only four aces in the deck, when three people call your raise there’s no reason to assume your Ace-King is beat. And when the flop comes A-2-7 and you bet and get raised, you’re probably still ahead. Granted, someone might have the set. But if you see monsters under the bed and dragons in the dark all the time, you wont win.
2. Changing speeds. About noon, I got JQs and limped in, only to see the pot bumped to the limit by a little old lady who hadn’t touched her chips in an hour. Fold, fold, fold, all around the table. She took the blind and the limpers' $2 and frowned. Too bad about those aces or kings… But thirty minutes later I and the guy next to me noticed she was in several pots, and no one would challenge. She’d switched it up – whether by plan or by realizing she was playing that tight, I never knew. But a change of speed added a lot of chips to her stack in that 30 minutes before the table caught on.
3. Position. Knowing where a raise pre-flop is likely to come from meant I could judge, depending on where the button was, how liberally I could limp in. Dynasty said, and it was definitely true, the key to the $2-6 game was limping cheap when you had cards that justified, and then pounding people when you hit – or charging limpers the max when you got big hands pre-flop. Absolutely true, it turned out. (Not that I’d doubted). And recognizing when the aggressive people were acting first allowed me to limp more liberally.
4. Patience. This is the hardest part for me – I’m not a patient person. I want to do something to win, and so it’s amazingly frustrating to realize sometimes fold, fold, fold is the best thing to do. And on those times you get a hand, sometimes it’s no good. After 45 minutes of no cards I caught KK and raised it the max. Three callers, and the flop came A-A-9. Bet, raise, and I fold. Another hand will come soon for me, and A-9 unsuited took down the pot Just b/c KK looked gorgeous a moment before, doesn’t mean I can do much with it after that flop..
5. Selected aggression. A lot like patience. You have to be aggressive, but you have to do it at the right time, also. Simply betting and raising away will thin the field, for sure, but the guy left standing is the one, of course, with a hand. You take a shot at the pot and get called or raised, time to think about what’s going on. I miss this sometimes. If the next card looks like a blank, too often I’ll bet out again, expecting a fold but getting a raise or a call. Don’t just go blindly forward throwing chips in. But when you get strong hands, don’t be afraid to back them.
That’s just a few things I learned. Or rather, things I knew before but which are not much clearer in my head. Anyways, it was an amazing weekend – at the very least, I’m relieved to know there are plenty of other people out there who can sit around the poker table for hours. My friends may think I’m nuts, but I felt pretty at home there. Next trip I’ll hopefully be a little more aware of all these things. I guess experience is the best teacher here…
...as a side note, I also found myself looking around and wondering if there were other 2+2ers at the table. If you were playing at the Excalibur over the weekend drop me a line...
Robert