Anyone care to give general advice to a newbie???

[smoore]

Commit to memory the concepts in SSH, try to understand as much of ToP as you can get your head around. Sign up at a party skin (don't forget rakeback) and deposit $300. Buy a program called pokertracker and learn how to get hand histories into it. I would suggest NOT using a heads up display program like playerview for this incursion, learn how to win without it.

Play many, many, many hands at the limit holdem .50/1 level at the party skin and constantly analyze your play via pokertrackers "playback" feature. Figure out what is working and what isn't. Post really problem hands in the micro-limit forum. Take thier advice with a grain of salt until you figure out who gives good advice. Spend 1/3 of your "poker time" playing and the other 2/3 reading/analyzing.

Play live games every chance you get. Don't worry about beating the rake at low limit (2/4) at the casino, just play correctly. Play home games, learn the wacky games people like to call. You will have an advantage with that big'ol blackjack brain of yours.

Once you get a good 10k hands under your belt, try two tables at .50/1. Multitabling gives good return for little risk. I play four and may be ready to try six. Now you can go start to bonus whore some. Read "the zoo" here (internet forum) for the juicy bonus deals. When you get sick of whoring for a week or two, open up a PokerStars account and give tournaments a try. They have the best software and lots of fishy tournaments. I honed my NL skills in tournaments so I wouldn't get wiped out playing ring games. Keep playing live games the whole time.

Good luck. Don't move up in limits too quickly, prove to yourself you can beat the ultra-fish. When you get good stay away from ME! [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
I tried to stick with pretty reputable books.

I have Theory of Poker and Small Stakes Hold'em. i also picked up Supersystem, Harrington's new book, Lee Jones Small Stakes, Helmuth's Play Poker Like the Pros, Caro's Poker Tells, Sklansky's original Hold'em, Killer Poker, which I haven't looked at yet, and some others.

I plan to build a base from Theory and Small Stakes Hold'em to allow me to play small games well. I wanted to have the non-small stakes stuff to give me a sense of how small stakes differs. I guess, down the road, I plan to look into tourney play perhaps and see if I have any ability at that.

Is the 300 BB bankroll the standard benchmark? Have you stuck by this in your personal play? Seems kind of low and pretty reasonable financially. I guess the volatility is significantly less than with cardcounting.

The poker bankroll will be a small fraction of the necessary blackjack roll, which is nice. Less heartburn.

[/ QUOTE ]

Throw Helmuth's book away. Seriously don't even open it. If you're lucky some other aspiring player will find it and take it seriously.

300 BB's (big bets not big blinds) is conventional wisdom. But its more geared towards guiding recreational players as to when they can move up. If you're going to play seriously at a particular level, you want to be way more overfunded than that. The reason for that is that if you're following the 300 BB guideline you absolutely have to move down when you you go on a 150 BB downswing. And everybody has 150 BB downsings. Everybody.

The recreational player trying to build his roll to move up the limits can move down when he hits a big downswing. The serious player wanting to make serious scratch at mid-high limits takes a serious opportunity cost hit when he has to move down, so needs a roll that can weather 2-300 BB downswings without having to drop to lower limits.

Edit: At least some of the pros on this forum say they have bankrolls somewhere in the 900 BB vicinity.

--Zetack

[2ndGoat]

Just so we're clear, in limit play, BB stands for Big Bets, not Big Blinds. Not that you displayed any misunderstanding of it, but just in case.

Bankroll: I'm playing for a living and I try to maintain a 1000 BB bankroll. I feel uncomfortable with less than that. I'm sure some pros get by on less, but certainly not 300 BB if they don't enjoy being broke. 300 BB wil suffice for most people in the recreational world. Keep in mind your bankroll requirements are tied intimately to how well you're beating the game- if you're just a small winner, the numbers grow something nasty. Statking, available here, has a good bankroll calculation tool which will give you a bankroll necessary if you have X win rate, Y std dev, Z acceptable risk of ruin %, and also has optional fields for monthly nut and hours per month if you're playing for a living.

Multitabling- it shouldn't take "long" to get to handling 2 tables. To begin with, only add the 2nd table after you have a pretty good read on everyone at your first table- then you don't have to worry so much about picking up info on 2 tables at once. Beware that as you add additional tables, you decrease the experience you gain per hour- you don't have time to analyze situations in as much depth, and tend to be forced into simplified decisions. Thus multitabling can hypotethetically increase yoru current hourly rate while simultaneously decreasing your lifetime earn (if your skill increase stagnates and you get stuck at 1/2 or whatever). Moral of the story- just don't take on too much too fast. Still, don't get me wrong, multitabling is great.

Watch out for Super/System. Has gotten a lot of people in trouble. And I only paged through Hellmuth but I wasn't impressed.

Other decent books include Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players (required reading at some point) and most all of Ciaffone's work.

You're coming in with an infinitely better understanding of the swings and frustrations involved, and looks like you're going to take it seriously enough... so I'm pretty sure you'll be alright.

2ndGoat

[mindflayer]

Throw Helmuth's book "Poker like the pros' in the trash.

If you are playing No limit disregard the rest of this post.

Replace Helmuth's book with hold'em Poker for Advanced players.
This should be your second book Small stakes hold'em should be your 3rd book. Lee Jones your 4th. TOP your 1st book.

I have always found it easier to teach others to START tight, then loosen up your play. If you start loose, and try to tighten up it is much more psychologically difficult.

One of the common beginner problems is that they will typically hold a difficult hand to play such as KTo and decide not to play the hand, then follow the hand and see KT4 flop and wish they had played the hand, then play the next KT and have it dominated by KQ or AK and not realize that they just should not play the hand.

If you are too bored playing so few 'premium' hands then start to take notes on players. If you can take notes in your sleep and your still bored, add another table.
You will find that the EV of playing a hand below say KJ is somewhere in the range of +0.2BB to say -0.2BB THAT is IF you can play it correctly, so just drop the hand untill you become a proven 'good' player (say +2BB/100 H for 30,000+ hands at ONE level)
I say that HEPFAP is the number 2 book because it promotes Tightness over EV. What does this mean?
Well in SSH you are encouraged to play more hands because the quality of players against you is poorer because you are playing a low stakes. They expect 5+ limpers per hand so it becomes profitable to play small pairs and Axs, and suited connectors.
If you crave action sure go ahead and play the hands, your variance will go up and you will definitely gain more in the games described as loose passive, but know in advance you have to drop those hands when you move up or if the game looses its looseness.

In short,
With your bankroll i would start at 1-2 and play/post hands untill you can log at least +300 BB wins.
if you can do this within 15k hands (ie2BB/100 hands) then
move up in tables untill you can comfortably play 3-4 tables at a time. If you can do this and maintain your win rate, then you are primed to move up a level while dropping back to 1-2 tables.
At 2-4, same cycle, then repeat at 3-6.

5-10 i think is a different matter where you will have to learn different skills (agression and short handed play).
You will move from a rock style (tight is right) to a stone killer. (Psycology of poker Schoonmaker) I put this book somewhere 8-9th on your list.

My 2c
Mindflayer