lightbulb moment
 

I've been playing for about a year. I play about an hour a day and am behind 35.00 for the year. I don't believe I know how to play and have been reading a lot of books.

What I'd like to know is what went off in your head that changed you from a break even to a winning player?

Re: lightbulb moment
 

When I read SSHE, the most important thing it said to change my game was this:

Almost never Cold-Call.

I was at the .25/.5 level at the time and previously had been CCing about any hand I was playing.

Re: lightbulb moment
 

What books have you read? What's your VP$IP? I think it would be pretty hard to not be beating the microlimits after an hour a day for a year; it's generally enough to win the really low limits by just following a starting hands chart and betting when you hit.

Re: lightbulb moment
 

[ QUOTE ]
I've been playing for about a year. I play about an hour a day and am behind 35.00 for the year. I don't believe I know how to play and have been reading a lot of books.

What I'd like to know is what went off in your head that changed you from a break even to a winning player?

[/ QUOTE ]

My lightbulb moment was when I noticed how relatively well maniacs tend to do. I mean, they may not be winning players, but they don't do too badly considering that they raise insanely on any two cards.

The realization was, if loose stupid aggression does ok, then tight intelligent aggression is going to crush other players. Which it does.

Re: lightbulb moment
 

Learn to ask the right question.

Re: lightbulb moment
 

[ QUOTE ]
I've been playing for about a year. I play about an hour a day and am behind 35.00 for the year. I don't believe I know how to play and have been reading a lot of books.

What I'd like to know is what went off in your head that changed you from a break even to a winning player?

[/ QUOTE ]

Pot odds was actually the lightbulb for me.

KO

Re: lightbulb moment
 

When i read the 8 mistakes of poker by Sklansky. Specifically the mistake of calling when you should raise. He suggest that everytime you think of calling, you should push yourself to see if a raise would be better.

One gets surprised how often this is the truth.

I combined that with Ed Miller´s saying of:

Play tight when the pot is small.
Play to win when the pot is big.

These thoughts seem to have helped me a lot.

Re: lightbulb moment
 

I don't know if this is a light bulb moment or just a point where the dimmer switch was moved and the room became a little brighter, but I found the quality of my winning sessions increased when I learned to let hands go. The losses of my losing sessions were smaller and the profits from the winning sessions were larger.

Re: lightbulb moment
 

I don't think there was a moment that I 'became' a winning player. I started off winning because I played ultra-tight. I remember reading Phil Hellmuth's book, (I seriously recommend not reading this!) and the thing pointed out repeatedly in that book was tight tight tight.

The point where I made the biggest stride was the concept of pot equity and a value bet/raise even when drawing. It was completely foreign to me at the time, but really changed my game.

Expected value, protecting, value bets, equity. All these things were 'lightbulbs' for me - some brighter than others.

Oh, and finding this board was more like a 10,000 watt lighthouse bulb! [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Re: lightbulb moment
 

When I first started beating the 1/2 game was when I learned not to be weak-tight. Tight preflop is good, but postflop good things happen when you bet your good hands and draws.

When I took it to another level, was when I learned to change my style of play against different opponents. Like playing against maniacs, and using SSHE to punish the calling stations.