[Cosimo]

I figure many of you know this stuff, but I'm new here. I also expect that some of this is wrong so I'm hoping you guys can give me some pointers, or shore up the more important of these. The items below are things that I realized over the past few days that have helped me adjust to playing SSNL.

1) Don't be greedy. One bad call every four table-hours eliminates all your profit. As a result of realizing this, I'm trying to control pot size a bit more to make sure I don't get pot-commited to a risky, marginal hand. For example, big CB bluffs from EP tend to inflate the pot and lead me to make bad calls on the river. See #2.

2) Position is so grossly extremely valuable that playing mid suited 1-gappers from LP is a good move, and low PP are questionable. I'm not actually sure that I'm making money with these hands, but it seems to me the sort of thing more likely to make money than trying to play TPNK with Axs -- which works in limit, because when it goes wrong it's not that expensive.

3) It's all about the implied odds. If the other guy doesn't have a deep stack, you're not going to get paid off. If he's super-aggro, you're not going to be able to chase a draw. I think fishing for sets HU is unprofitable (e.g. one limper, small PP from LP -- not likely to get paid off, toss it).

4) How opponents play post-flop is critical to profit, so reads are critical. Noobs like me shouldn't be trying to play ABC NL. I'm playing fewer tables now than I was at limit, and I'm finding that it helps a lot because I have more time to review play, take notes, and figure out what people are doing.

5) Domination sucks. Stay away from the weaker dominated hands until you know what you're doing, and from what I've read, even then they're no good. I stopped playing KTo from EP long ago, and I'm not playing it now, but now I'm more cautious about KQo or QJs when someone else pushes back.

6) Stay calm. Don't be greedy. The money will come. Trying to 'force' a draw or marginal hand works sometimes, but when it doesn't work, it's killer. Bad beats suck, but they're not what's killing you in NL. The beats are variance, but what was actually killing me was having trouble controlling the action when OOP (#2), calling raises with just TPTK, or trying to push lesser hands to extract marginal profit like I would in limit.