My 2nd Biggest Losing Hand

[Pov]

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I just misplayed a hand, where I should have gone all-in with my pocket KK, after the flop. My opponent had gone in with Q5u, and managed a pair of 5s on the flop. If I'd have gone all in he wouldn't have completed his set of 555, and I wouldn't have lost the hand big!

Dave

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Without other details it's hard to say what you should have done, but don't fear getting drawn out on to the point of going all-in all the time. If you think you have the best hand then what you really want to do is bet the most you can that will get called incorrectly. Sure, you make money when your opponent folds, but you actually make more money when they make a bad call even though you lose some of the time. It's higher variance, but higher profit as well.

Also, what if your opponent had snuck in with 55 instead of Q5. All-in's have their place, but generally you want to stick to making bets based upon the size of the pot and what odds you want to offer.

[Student]

Thanks!

I have a feeling if you were to say more, you'd have to say very much more! Unfortunately I haven't arrived at the point where all poker ideas are within my sphere of comprehension. That's what all the experience playing hands is all about. I'm still getting tripped up by trips, and I suspect that error will vanish without a trace with another 2,000 hands played.

The neat thing about PT is it emphasizes that certain hole cards are our personal nymboses (sp?). I get killed with AA and KK, and have no special fondness for AK or AJ. Trips trip me up, and that's avoidable!

This past week I benefitted from my Metamorphosis, taking my backroll up nearly 1/3rd to nearly $45. So my playing lessons have cost $5.08 for nearly 3,000 hands. Soon I'll declare victory over 1/2 cents NL HE, and I'll take on nickel/dime games. Well, that's a jump of 500% in blinds, so I view it as a very serious new challenge! Of course, to say I've MASTERED 1/2 cents is nonsense. I've simply gotten to the point of diminishing returns, and soon there shall be no return from where I intend to go (5/10 cents).

I suspect I should turn from playing poker, and towards reading these books. The tiny parts of SSHE and TOP I've read has me drooling! I know these books will fill in empty spaces I presently don't even no exist.

Thanks very much!

Dave

PS: I continue to display the hand strength tables you'd given me in different formats. I don't spend a whole lot of time doing that, but your tables have transformed into much more useful form. It turns out one needs to have an opening hands table for many different situations, even if one specializes in only 9-hand 1/2 cents NL HE!

PPS: The all-in bets are courtesy of Mr. Ed Miller. If you are generally correct that your hand is truly the best hand, and if you aren't going all-in with $1.00 so as to capture a 6 cents pot, but rather are going after over 50 cents for example, then they have a distinct useful place.

Today I was playing against a fellow who usually opened for 10 cents, whereas he also could have raised to 4 cents. I also noticed that other players had noticed, and they would wait for the river and then bet the pot size, and he'd always fold. Then it came around to be my turn, and sure enough it worked. Of course I had quite a decent hand, but given the circumstances it didn't have to be quite as decent (I guess you'd say it was relatively indecent), given who I was head-to-head with! Advice?

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
The neat thing about PT is it emphasizes that certain hole cards are our personal nymboses (sp?). I get killed with AA and KK, and have no special fondness for AK or AJ. Trips trip me up, and that's avoidable!

[/ QUOTE ]
Your sample isn't very large, but you should be winning a lot with AA and KK. Maybe you should review your hands. Are you getting your money in with the best of it, or are you waiting until someone hits a flush or two pair to put the chips in? Are you overbetting so much that weaker hands don't pay you off, but stronger hands stack you?

[ QUOTE ]
This past week I benefitted from my Metamorphosis, taking my backroll up nearly 1/3rd to nearly $45. So my playing lessons have cost $5.08 for nearly 3,000 hands. Soon I'll declare victory over 1/2 cents NL HE, and I'll take on nickel/dime games. Well, that's a jump of 500% in blinds, so I view it as a very serious new challenge!

[/ QUOTE ]
I suggest that you first establish that you are a winning player at $0.01-$0.02. I recommend that you win back the money you lost, and another $25 or so. Get used to the feeling of being a winner. If you hit a downswing at $0.05-$0.10, you can return to $0.01-$0.02 to rebuild your confidence and bankroll.

[AKQJ10]

[ QUOTE ]
A good thing about moving up the levels, from the very bottom, and moving up only when one feels comfortable with the last level, is that you have to play many hands. Not just many hands, but many quality hands, before we move on.

I think the folks who move into multitabling are cheating themselves in the long run. Because they've settled for playing pretty good, good enough for the tables they're multitabling at, they'll never get very, very good at poker at any tables.

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I agree wholeheartedly. To quote from another 2+2er's website (http://www.kingscascade.com/Step_by_Step.html) which helped encourage me to start my journey,

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All the long months of moving up the micro limits is not a waste of time, even though you won’t be making much money. This is your poker education. Most people lose thousands of dollars in the beginning and chalk it up to the price for education. Following my plan, you can get the same education, while only risking a few bucks.

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Even though he's talking specifically about LHE, the principle applies to low-buy-in NLHE, 50c tournaments, or what have you.

[AKQJ10]

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If you think you have the best hand then what you really want to do is bet the most you can that will get called incorrectly.

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Very very important point! Although I'm of the opinion that there's no need for aspiring NLHE players to learn LHE first, this is one area where us limit converts maybe have a slight advantage. In limit you CAN'T blow your opponent out of the hand so you're often in a position of raising good hands for value, hoping to get called.

That said, I still have trouble remembering this principle. In Pacific $2 and $4 sit-and-gos, where I'm playing most of my NLHE these days, so many people make such bad calls that it arguably is maxing EV to push all-in on the flop at times when you hit your set! But even low-stakes Pacific players will fold if they have nothing, so there's still a great deal of subtlety not necessary to play against bad limit opponents.

[Student]

It's the decision I made for myself, to move up the limits of course. With no useful exposure to poker these many years, I figured I was as green as they come. Facing 25/50 cents poker might have presented enough challenge to some people to get them to apply themself, but that isn't where I come from. A poker education costing thousands isn't necessarily more valid than one costing $50, at most; it's just more expensive, that's all.

One who has thousands in playing losses will probably figure they know it all now, so there's no use buying and studying books! There seem to be plenty of that kind of player around, by personal experience.

Then too, maybe I'd have to face reality and realize age 67 is too late, for this young man's game! But happily I think I've reached escape velocity, and it will probably be soon that I get my bankroll back up to $50, at which time I get to go up a factor of 5 to nickel/dime NL HE poker! Then the next level is another factor of 2.5, namely to dime/quarter, and after that the jumps are at most 2 to 1, all the way up the levels.

At this juncture I haven't faced my first brickwall, but it sure was beginning to look like my first was also going to be my last! And then came metamorphosis...

Dave

[Student]

Thanks! I think I'm playing my AK big slick properly, raising preflop with a decent amount (of course, with 1/2 cents NL HE a raise of 3BBs amounts to only 6 cents, but JMHO it's enough to defend my strong hand preflop). Then the flop misses me entirely and someone raises 4 BBs, and I bow out gracefully. Or he raises just 1 BB, and I get to see the turn for just 2 cents more. So now I have about 5BBs spent, the turn is worthless for my hand, and someone else makes some sort of hand and prices me out of the hand with his turn bet.

I haven't loaded these hands into PT yet, simply because I'm using the trial subscription at the moment, and I want to make sure I do the procedures correctly when I pay for the registration, so I was waiting until Monday to attempt that. But my guess is there were at least 5 instances where I had a really strong hand dealt at the hole card level, only to see the flop fail me miserably. Then too, I can recall at least one time when I had JJ, and succeeded in getting a nice payoff. Yet another time I had 69u and the flop was my full house, and when I bet just 2 cents everyone folded. Those things happen, but yesterday they happened again and again. I'm lucky to have made a profit of net $1.26 yesterday. Gross profits and gross losses were quite large on my 240 hands, and that's a real understatement!

The exercise of moving bankroll from $34.12 to $50.00 is enough for me! The move downwards had plenty of content in terms of educational values, but the move since my metamorphosis on 7-16-5 has been quite dependable. Of course, yesterday taught me that variance could deal me a low blow. I started 7-16 with just $34.12, and now I'm up to $44.48, an increase of $10.36, or 518BBs.

From time to time I'd come to the conclusion that 1/2 cents NL HE is too much like freeplay for me, namely a game dominated by fruitcakes and maniacs. My computations of looseness of games showed as large a decrease in my looseness measure between 1/2 cents to 5/10 cents as exists between 5/10 cents and $5/10. That's probably a slight exaggeration, but not too far from the mark. Since I was still struggling to find the missing piece to the puzzle, I thought switching to 5/10 cents might be what my game lacked. Originally I'd planned on staying with 1/2 cents until bankroll came to $70. Then I'd go into 5/10 cents with a bankroll of 700 BBs. Moving from $34.12 to $50 is almost as useful to me as moving all the way up to $54.12 (at which point the bankroll increase would also be exactly $20). Yet I've gone thru a tremendous experience at 1/2 cents, one which I suspect won't be duplicated as long as I stay in the micro-levels with my NL HE poker. Of course, low limit includes $3/6, if I understand Ed Miller in GSiH! So I think I like jumping ship to 5/10 cents when I reach $50!

But I also agree with you that 1/2 cents can be my retreat game, if they beat me too fiercely at 5/10 cents! Although I can add cash to my bankroll, it's kind of an ego thing to make a success of it with just my $50... Then too, I'm trying to defeat ego in myself. So, there you have it!

Thanks!

Dave

[Student]

Yes, they say bluffs are meaningless in 1/2 cents NL HE poker! I'm running against my 1,000 hands limit with PokerTracker, but there are some quite interesting hands that I recall from yesterday. I'm going to break down and pay the $55 to PT tomorrow, but I want to check with them about the procedures I use. Just as PT is low on clarity at their site (all the clarity seems to come from groupies who have attempted to make up for what PT lacks), I've noticed quite a few complaints of people who have paid the registration fee, and then couldn't get started with PT. So I want to dialogue with them Monday, when I expect they'll be at the rudder!

Poker is a game with all sorts of interesting problems!

Dave

PS: Learning very much about limit HE is necessary to learning about NL. I was annotating a section in GSiH, which was specifically stated to pertain to limit HE, and 3 of 4 points he'd made were also important to NL, in fact even more important there, JMHO. After all, all that NL does is remove bet structuring. That said, I realize mine is a gross generalization and simplification, and one defending significance of limit HE, compared with the upstart NL HE, should have no difficulty at all defending their turf. Me? I don't care... I'm doing what I want to do, and these other guys are doing what they enjoy.

[pzhon]

I strongly recommend that you learn to beat NL $0.01-$0.02 before moving up. Having a few winning days doesn't mean you are beating a game.

If you can't beat the "fruitcakes and maniacs" consistently, you have a lot to learn at the penny-ante level. Knowing how to extract money from bad players is a crucial part of success in every level I play through NL $400.

[Student]

I intend to do just what you recommend!

When I go to 5/10 cents NL HE, what special problems do you anticipate will be the most important ones I'll have to overcome? I'm thinking I'll have to relearn an entire new list of players, and PokerStars has more 5/10 cents tables than they do 1/2 cents, if that's possible! Play will be tighter, though I suppose some of these guys, who started at 50/100 cents, might find this hard to believe! The numbers being bet will be bigger, but not 5 times bigger (5/10 cents being a more civilized game than 1/2 cents).

There's something to be said for staying at 1/2 cents with a new intention, that being to find the hardest games to play in at that level, and attempt to make money at those tables. So I'd get back up to $50 bankroll by hook or crook, and then find hard games to see if I can figure out how to build more capital at those tables.

Another useful aspect of slowing down at this useful juncture would be to spend more time reading books, which I'm afraid I'm still behind on! The occasion of moving up a single level can be an excuse to do all sorts of catchup activity. I want to build a library of opening hands tables. This library would be based on percentage of all hands I'd go into, for example 15%, 20%, 25%, even up to 75% (useful for increasing the bet above 1 BB, in the instance of being on the big blind). There is other mathematical research I can envision, and then too there is the mastery of PokerTracker and exploration of other poker software. Meanwhile, while all this outside work is being done, each day I'd continue to play at my present table level, searching out the hardest games rather than the easiest. It's truly an example of focusing on the important things, rather than the insignificant thing, bankroll size. If one just keeps learning how to play better, than eventually bankroll size will attend...

Dave