Did I do this right? First O8 Hand Post

[DCWildcat]

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If you think A22 is the perfect flop for an AQ34 hand, then you need to go read your books. Looks to me like you're drawing for half at best straight off the bat.

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This sounds like pretty solid critique to me.

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Forgive me for my standards, then

[Doc7]

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The problem with this hand is that it worked out. Generally the flop raise is horrible because it forces the field to call 2 bets cold on each street when you are drawing for half the pot (a wheel is ~never good for high here). These players are your only source of profit.

The turn is a good raise in this game.

The river is inexperience, or simply exploiting the low limit. Hard to say. The deuce is always out, and 3-betting lets the loose river callers get away from low-type hands that will pay you off when you only have half the pot, hopefully.

At some of the more ridiculous .5/1 tables, bad raises become +EV raises with several coldcallers behind, so it's difficult to critique hands without your honest thought process.

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Thanks for the helpful responses. Most of my strategy thus far has come from the post Buzz made which was recently 'bumped' in a new post, "Buzz's Helpful Post for Newbies."

A direct quote from that is:
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Fold on the flop unless you have the nut low, a good draw to the nut low, the nut high, or a good draw to the nut high. E.g. you have A267 and the flop is 45K, or you have KQJT and the flop is 29T (both good draws), or you have A2KQ and the flop is 378, or you have KQJT and the flop is 789 (both nut hands one way). [ QUOTE ]


3-4 paragraphs later, he states that IF you have one of these hands (referring to a draw to a one-way nuts) you should bet/raise the flop, and check call the turn if still drawing. I have been doing this (pumping draws) and at least at this limit it seems to be paying off, though I could currently be a luckbox...

I guess it was kind of risky in this hand considering I only had 5/6/78 to help my hand and if a 3 or 4 came on the river, I was most likely going to lose the pot. But isn't this true of every nut low draw (it could get counterfeited on the river giving someone else you had 'dominated' a better low)?

[kyro]

I read part of Buzz' post, but I don't recall the jamming the pot with a draw to the nut low. My feeling is, you should only be jamming with a draw to the nut low AND a decent chance for the high. You obviously shouldn't fold here, but I'm not sure raising is a great idea.

[Doc7]

Buzz, referring to the first quote (which was point 3)

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8. If you have one of the above starting hands, I would advocate betting or raising with it before the flop, and if you get a flop which meets point 3 above, I would bet or raise again, most definitely if there are four or more people in the pot. Lots of people could disagree with this advice for reasons which have a good deal of merit against sophisticated opponents. Against weak opponents who probably will just call and get no useful information from your bet, I would just bet/raise, though. It is simple and easy to remember and execute. Also, this will give you a generally good image.


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[kyro]

there ya go.

i'm in the same boat as you. i'm slumming at the .01/.02 PL for awhile trying to relearn. I have no original opinions, just trying to expand on what I thought ribbo was getting at.

[kitaristi0]

Preflop calling is definitely correct.

On the flop you have 16 cards to the nut low, and 4 of those to a wheel, which might or might not be good (probably isn't). With that many outs I prefer to call and try to pull in people, bloating the pot so that if I hit my draw I'll win a big one. The problem, IMO, with raising is the players behind you have to face two bets cold, and whilst people may call two cold with top pair or the 4th nut low draw at these stakes, they won't when you move up in limits, so raising will tend to knock out players, instead of keeping them in, which is what you want.

On the turn you've made your nut low and now's the time to start jamming.

The river comes and you've got the nut low and top two pair (which won't be good a lot of the time). Betting out is fine, but 3-betting it, again for the aforementioned reasons, isn't optimal IMO. It'll tend to knock out players who would've called the one extra bet, and that's less money in your pocket at the end of session.

[gergery]

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These bets and raises aren't bad, since he's got
1) Great equity
2) He's getting more than paid off to get half the pot

Maybe you could enlighten us by actually analyzing and critiquing his play, rather than quoting individual lines and mocking him like some 12 year old jackoff, ribbo. What does sitting back and posting like that accomplish?

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The flop bet is bad. Even with 34xx he does not have fresh money odds to be getting more money in, and he wants callers, not folders here.

-- Greg (btw, have I mentioned how much I love O8 [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] )

[Wintermute]

This is in no way meant as an insult to any microlimit players.

But reading this hand, seeing all the callers on every street, and so forth... is it really a good idea to play poker as a learning experience at such small stakes? Personally, when I first got into poker I tried free limit hold'em at yahoo for 30 min, and then jumped into a $.50/1 game on party. So I have no experience with these limits.

But from this hand it looks like games at this limit may play similarly to free games... and learning to dominate a showdown game might start bad habits. (For example, check-raising the flop with this hand may very well be the correct play in this game, whereas it probably is not in general.)

Again, not meaning to be a jerk--I'm genuinely curious, I'm sure Gergery and others have put some thought into this.

[Doc7]

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This is in no way meant as an insult to any microlimit players.

But reading this hand, seeing all the callers on every street, and so forth... is it really a good idea to play poker as a learning experience at such small stakes? Personally, when I first got into poker I tried free limit hold'em at yahoo for 30 min, and then jumped into a $.50/1 game on party. So I have no experience with these limits.

But from this hand it looks like games at this limit may play similarly to free games... and learning to dominate a showdown game might start bad habits. (For example, check-raising the flop with this hand may very well be the correct play in this game, whereas it probably is not in general.)

Again, not meaning to be a jerk--I'm genuinely curious, I'm sure Gergery and others have put some thought into this.

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Wintermute, you want to bankroll me?
Thanks if you do, but if you don't, I'm not touching .25/.50 until I have at least 75 bucks in my account (and that's a risky proposition at best!)

edit: just re-read the first line, i took more offense at your post than I should have : ) but still, I don't have a choice bro. i'm at ~$65 right now and .05/.10 is my limit.

[GooperMC]

Mute, with no BR I think that it is a decent place to learn the basics of the game not the strategy of the game. It is a good place to learn how to read the board, how to determine your low, etc. It is also a good place to lose some hold ‘em instincts, don’t draw to a T high flush, don’t play bottom 2, ...

If you jumped into a .5/1 game you would lose money learning these things at micro limit you will actually make some.

Also every time that you move up limits your game has to be adjusted. I think that the adjustment may be higher from micro limits to .5/1 then from lets say 2/4 to 3/6 but it is less then the adjustment from nothing to .5/1

Doc, don’t worry about playing micro limits. I think that the vast majority of us started there so we understand. Just realize that our advice may not maximized your micro limits earning but it will help when you move up. Take your time, learn the how the game is played at this level, gain confidence, create a BR, and then move up. That is what worked for me, not just for moving from micro limit but for moving up in general.