PLHE - how to get better?

[adam74]

I think I'm in a rut. I've been playing for a year now, virtually all online PLHE. I've had a few forays into live play, but the blinds are too high for both my bankroll and my skill level - the only game I can get to has two £5 blinds and is dealer's choice, with PLO being chosen perhaps seven times out of ten.

Anyway, I started off as low as I could, with 0.10/0.25 blinds and have done pretty well. I began playing with 0.25/0.50 blinds a few months ago and have continued to have good success there also. However, the couple of attempts I've had at 0.50/1.00 have been pretty disastrous, and I've had to move back down again quickly.

The ways that I see that I can improve are through experience, thinking about my game and reading. I get plenty of the first two, but it's the last one that's bothering me. Obviously, the vast majority of poker books are devoted to the limit form of the game, and my concern is whether reading such books will help or damage my pot-limit game.

So do people feel it's worth buying and reading these books, or is the content likely to be detrimental to my game? Aside from the Ciaffone/Reuben book, are there any others that people would say are really important/useful reads for pot-limit play?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[William]

No other serious books on the market. Limit is another game. The best is to read one of the books that handle om game psychology and of course, experience

[nicky g]

Ciaffone's book on omaha if you decide to play in the PLO game. You don't say where you're playing, but you might consider trying some softer sites - eg Victor Chandler and Ladbrokes have softer pl games than Paradise, Stars and UB (I assume you're posting from UK).

[Saucy]

I don't know if its worth much, but I'd simply go along with the other responses. Its a sad and annoying fact, but if you like to play 'big bet' poker then the vast majority of poker books are useless to you.

[adam74]

Thanks, William. The two books that I've got that are psychology-related are those by Schoonmaker and by Feeney. Do you - or does anyone else - know of any others?

[adam74]

Thanks, Nicky. Yes, I've read Ciaffone's Omaha book, but it is primarily HE that I'm playing and that's likely to remain the case.

It's Poker Stars that I play at mainly, and there I'm beating the 0.10/0.25 and 0.25/0.50 games pretty comfortably, although for the latter that isn't over a huge number of hours. Recently I've been playing a lot at Victor Chandler as well, and the similarly-sized games there have been good for me as well. However, the PLHE games at VC seem to have died a death recently, which is a shame. [That's with the exception of the 0.05/0.10-blind tables.]

When I've tried 0.50/1.00, it's pretty much only been at Ladbrokes, with just a couple of hours at Stars and VC. I've heard many people say that the games at Ladbrokes are soft, and a lot of the play I've seen there would tend to support that - but I've really struggled there, and have lost fairly heavily. There's possibly an element of 'bad luck' to it, but I feel certain that there's more to it than that, and I've got a few ideas about what the problems might be.

I think for the moment I need to continue racking up the hours at 0.25/0.50 as much as possible, and then give the 0.50/1.00 games at Ladbrokes another go in perhaps a couple of months.

[adam74]

Thanks, Saucy. Would you go so far as to say that even some of the 'classics', like TOP, HEP and HEPFAP, are useless for big-bet poker? Are they perhaps even worse than useless, in that reading them might have a negative impact on a big-bet poker player's game?

[2ndGoat]

TOP applies to pretty much every form of poker. The ideas behind a check-raise, or implied odds... this stuff just doesn't break. Just gotta be more careful to apply the ideas correctly... there's a little more distance to extrapolate from the examples in the book to big bet games.

Analytical poker is based on maximizing EV. All the concepts in TOP are based on that idea. I infer from this that all of TOP applies to all of poker, in some form or another.

2ndGoat

[Yvonne]

T.J. Cloutier and Tom McEvoy have a book "Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold'Em" (Copyright 1997). It's not just about tournaments but ring games as well.

I don't know how it compares with the others, but I imagine it has some worthwhile information in it.

With so few books available I would think you would want to get this.

Good Luck,

Yvonne

[William]

The only thing I can add, is that in big bet poker, knowledge of your oponents is probably the most important factor. Knowing who checks, calls or raises and with what kind of hands is the real way to success. This is something that just time and experience can teach you. But remember that the other players will try to learn how you play, so you must also learn to disguise/use against them your own patterns. Good luck to you !! [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]