A newbie says hello

[Rubicon]

Hello!

This is my very first post here so I will start by introducing myself. My name is Daniel and I am from Linkoping, Sweden and I have just started my online poker "career" a few days ago. Just one week ago I didn't know much about Hold'em but I guess I was a typical calling station. And I had not really played more than a few hours of live Hold'em against my friends.

But now I have read a lot about Hold'em on the net, I have read Theory of Poker and today I got my Winning Low Limit Hold'em book which I read most of in one 6 hour marathon session (!!) but I didn't, as I suspected, really learn a lot (mostly to be more aggressive postflop), I had already learned from reading some articles on the net and also by about 12 hours of playing at Party Poker (but the book was GOOD and I highly recommend it). But, I have been playing regular board games a LOT in my life and I see myself as a very talented "gamer" and will win most of the time in almost any type of game due to my long experience and ability to adopt to rules and strategies of different games. I think that is one of the reasons why (I think) I have learned the basics of low limit Hold'em so fast. I still have a lot and a lot to learn about low limit (and above) Hold'em, for example fine tuning when to let go and fold (which isn't easy to know due to all maniacs and calling stations in low limit). But so far it feels good and it feels like I'm learing this game in rocket speed and hopefully my development will continue for a long time.

So far I have been playing for 19 hours the last 4 days and I'm up from $50 (+ $25 bonus) to $200. I have mostly played on one table but the last few hours I have gone from 1 to 2 to 3 tables. I still havn't tried anything but Party pokers $0.5/1 game. But I have already had "big" drops. In my first session today I went from $180 to $140 playing at two tables in 90 minutes. After that I tried three tables and went from $140 to $210 in the following 90 minutes. Do you guys feel that these kind of large changes is regular?

So far I feel that the $0.5/1 table is really easy to beat in the long run (I had a couple of bad beatings during my down session) so my second question is:
Am i ready for playing $1/2? do I have a sufficient bankroll?
How big are the differences between $0.5/1, $1/2, $2/4 and $3/6 ?

One last question, when calculating your hourly winnig rate do you count several tables?
Like if I'm winning $5/hour at one $0.5/1 table and $4/hour at another what is my hourly winning rate in BB:s/hour?

Thanks for your time!

[Inthacup]

Hi Daniel,


Welcome to the forum. You've done a good thing by reading books. Posting hands here will help you tremendously as well.


It's easy to looks at your 19 hours of play and make assumptions about your poker ability. The fact is that it takes hundreds/thousands of hours to get a true idea of your winrate and your ability to beat the game. Get pokertracker to keep track of your stats. It is an excellent tool.

My recommendation is for you to stay at .5-1 until you have won $500. Then I would suggest moving up. The 1-2 games are slightly tougher than .5-1 and there is not much difference between 1-2 and 2-4. I think there's a pretty big jump between 2-4 and 3-6.


I usually calculate my rate in BB/hour per table.


To recap, You should log a few hundred more hours at .5-1 and when you're properly bankrolled(250-300BB) you should move up to 1-2. Continue posting and reading. In time, your game will improve dramatically.



Cup

[Rubicon]

Thanks, okey, I will stay at $0.5/1 a while longer to make sure that I just havn't been lucky.

Another newbie question: When you say 250-300BB you meen $250-$300 on $0.5/1 right? but the big blind (BB) is only $0.5?

Yes I will buy Poker Tracker when my bankroll have increased a bit

[rayrns]

In this case the "300BB" would be 300 Big Bets. So if you want to play $1/2, you would want to have $600. The big bet is $2 * 300 big bets = $600. You may want to experiment at the next higher level when you reach 250BB (big bets) but if you lose, stay at the lower limit till you again have 250BB to give the next higher limit a try. If you are going to try the next higher limit full time, then you should want to have the full 300BB.

[Rubicon]

ah, okey, thank you

so the bankroll suggested at this site is a bit low?

http://www.pokerodyssey.com/challenge.html

[CrackerZack]

The author of that site posts here.

[jasonHoldEm]

Hi Rubicon,

Poker Odyssey is my site [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

The bankroll listed on that page is actually part of a personal challenge I developed called "Sophomore Poker". I've been playing for a little over a year online (add another year if you count my drunken fraternity game back in college), and I spent a lot of time developing the basics and building a solid foundation for my game (I only went from the micros to 2/4 in my first year).

The sophomore poker project is something I'm doing to improve my game and help me move towards my goal of playing the middle limits. It's important to realize I have a year of expereince behind me already, and this structure is probably too aggressive for someone just starting out...especially at the lower end (which is "review" for me). There are a lot of lessons that need to be learned from .50/1 to 2/4 to prepare you for the jump to 3/6 (I just moved up to 3/6 yesterday [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]) and the structure I've set up probably wouldn't allow a beginner to learn all those lessons.

My advice would be to take it slow and steady for your first 6 months - year. I admit I was probably more conservative than I needed to be during my first year, but I'll get to where I want to be eventually...poker isn't going to suddenly die out tomorrow.

Also, sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the hype surrounding some of the posts here. There are some very talented players at this site who have gone from .50/1 to 15/30 "overnight"...I'm not saying you might not be one of them as well, but the very large majority of players simply can't adapt that fast. Spend your time developing the basics now and then pick up more speed as you move forward.

(and thanks for reading my site)

Peace,
J

[Rubicon]

Thanks for your reply!

Okey, I will try to slow down a bit, right now I'm so caught up in this poker hype and I can't understand why I didn't try this earlier (so I have I lot to catch up with? right? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] ). No seriously, I'm such a big newbie so I can't really understand it myself. I have only been playing internet poker for 5 (pretty intensive) days!!! right now it so fun and I just want to ride this poker rush a few more days before I'll get back to a sort of more normal life again, but with poker included. Right now, I'm thinking, eating and sleeping poker. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

I will continue to follow your progress on your Sophomore Poker project with big interest.