Just played my first live B & M 2/4 limit holdem game.

[mtdoak]

First off, welcome to the forums. Second, small stakes is HUGELY profitable if you understand how to play the game correctly. My first advice would be to purchase and read Small Stakes Hold'Em. Its the bible around here. Second would be to post alot of specific hands. Include details like reads on a player or anything specifc you observe about them. Thirdly, use the search button. If you have questions about bankroll, 2/4 vs 3/6 online, etc, they've probably already been talked about and good advice has already been given. Welcome again.

[Stinglikeabee]

Read some poker books.
When you first start out, keep your sessions from 4-6 hours. And learn to control yourself, patience is the key in low limit, and if you find yourself not playing your game, just get up and leave.
After a while, you will be able to play for 15 hours but it's not recommended when you first start out because most people can't remain focused that long.

[eh923]

The path to improvement is easy...STUDY (not just read) some quality books that are appropriate for your level of play. Play online when you can, and hit the card room when you can.

While you're playing, try to focus each hand on making the right decision. When you're out of the hand, don't worry about "what might've been" if your trash would've made a winner...watch other players and see with what hands they raised, cold-called, etc.

Welcome to the forum!

[RacersEdge]

One thing is to keep perspective. To "figure out" if you are winning - or how much you are winning - -you really need at least 10's of thousands of hands. Some might say even more.

But whatever - you played 15 hours - it seems like a long enough time to get a feel for things, but it's really what - about 450 hands? A drop in the bucket really. what that really means is that the variability in poker is so great , that you can't to always expect to win every session - even if you really ae the best player at the table.

[SheridanCat]

Welcome to the forums. You might swing by the Beginner's Forum too if you have a chance.

[ QUOTE ]

It was insane, got tilted and lost it all back plus 140 of my own money (playing trash hands of course). I left and felt I played good but way toooo long. I played for 15 hours straight


[/ QUOTE ]

So much packed it that bit right there.

1) It was ALL your money. Don't get into the habit that some gamblers do of thinking you're playing "on the house dime" or with someone else's money. That leads to tilt. That money is all yours.

2) Tilt. Sounds like you had both winner's tilt and loser's tilt going on. You were crushing the game so you started playing more hands and then the whack-jobs started hitting two-outers and that sent you over the edge. It's hard to avoid winner's tilt. But when you feel anything coming on that diverts you from playing properly, stand up and walk around. Get something to eat. Cash out even. Tilt is a killer. If you're so inclined read Zen and the Art of Poker by Larry Philips - it helped me. Also John Feeney's Inside The Poker Mind was very helpful.

3) 15 hours straight. Way too long for your maiden voyage.

As for your comment later about avoiding losing 35BBs in the future, I guarantee you'll lose that and more. Just because you've learned you don't like to lose, doesn't mean you won't. In fact, you will have large losing sessions, and the best you can do is prepare by learning to avoid tilt.

Good luck,

T

[pyedog]

Well I just recently started playing $2-5 limit holdem live at the casino in Brantford, Ontario. It's got a rake of 10% max up to $5 which seems pretty horrible. But I do enjoy playing live for a change of pace. I've played quite a bit of online limit mainly at stakes of between 0.5-1 and 1-2. I can beat those games fairly consistently, generally using strategies from Small Stakes Hold Em.

I thought I would post the results of my first few visits to the casino so that you can get an idea of the variance I had in these wild games. I found that the games were generally looser than the online games I've played, although there were some good players at the casino as well. They were easy to spot since they weren't playing every hand.

Each visit I played between 6-8 hours at $2/5.

#1 +$50
#2 +$40
#3 -$50
#4 +$10
#5 +$330

In my first 4 visits I was mainly breaking even because I was missing a lot of flops and getting sucked out on with runner-runner straights and flushes when I did hit a good hand. The last time I went I got super lucky and most of my good hands held up. I guess the lesson from my limited sample is that you need to be prepared to lose some nights, or at least win very little, but when your luck does hold you should get a nice payday from all the loose callers.

Anyways, good luck. Avoiding tilt is probably the most important thing when you're getting frustrated by wacky beats. I think I'm going to try 5-10 my next trip since I've heard those games are pretty nice too.

[revots33]

[ QUOTE ]
What are your suggestions for improvement?

[/ QUOTE ]

If you are a beginner, read Lee Jones' book. It's a little easier to digest than SSHE and should be enough to have you beating the $2/4 live game. Then read and study SSHE.

Don't get overconfident just because you've won some hands off total fish. Continue to play tight aggressive whether you're up or down in a particular session.

Don't tilt.

[GreywolfNYC]

"got tilted and lost it all back plus 140 of my own money (playing trash hands of course). I left and felt I played good but way toooo long. I played for 15 hours straight, which surprised the heck out of me.
I feel I can definitely beat the 2/4 limit holdem game if i plug my leaks."



Those are your leaks: tilting, playing trash hands and playing way too long. Now that you know what they are you can plug 'em.