New Player Comments and Questions

[Kelang]

I am quite new to Hold em but enjoy the game greatly (and enjoy reading about it almost as much). I have the good fortune to live minutes away from a card room in SoCal. So far I am playing 3/6 holdem.

I've noticed a few things through the haze of being a beginnger.
- 3/6 games are super loose with lots of callers
- it seems that playing tight/ aggressive stictly by the book doesn't really maximize
- in some games, bluffing actually works (semi-bluffing) if you can spot the folders and weed the field; but mostly bluffing is a waste of time ...
- except for advertising. It actaully works! Play a few loose hands early to get action later. It sounds too simple to actually work.
- at low limit you have to get playable cards then get hit by the flop, or have high quality starters and junk-to-mediocre flops (or of course, good flops for you)
- learn to fold, a lot, and sometimes with good hands (I dread having to lay down my aces, but I have layed every other quality starting hand down absolutely sure that I was beat- nice thing about low limit, someone calls it down to confirm it for you).

At this point, I am on the plus side (~80BB). I can look back at my ten or so sessions and attribute most of my winnings to a small handful of quality wins (really good/great hand against a really good second hand) and some good draws where pot odds said call. Oh, and I got plain old dumb lucky a few times. That and keeping away from second rate starting hands.

What really steams me right now is making dumb mistakes, not losing to longshot draws. Losing money is one thing, throwing it away is stupid. (oh, I get annoyed when I fold marginal starters that the flop clobbers- JTo UTG).

I see this as a long road to being a really good player (gotta have goals). I am curious how expensive the education will be....

I would love any comments.

Thanks