25 Weeks to WSOP Quest and some NL HE Questions

[dogmeat]

Another week has passed. 25 weeks to the end of my quest, $170 in the fund ($3570) for expenses and the first four tournaments at the 2005 WSOP!

I signed up for Full Tilt Poker last month, and found the bonus very hard to clear. I was forced to play no limit, which is not usually my first choice. I multi-tabled the .25/.50 blind games until I cleared the first 20% bonus and then quit. The games were the tighest I have ever played on. I can't tell you how many times I raised just a buck with AA, KK, AK etc. and came away with just 75 cents.

Now this month I joined Doyle's Room, hoping to clear 10,000 points and get Super System II for free (my bad - turns out you can opt for a cash bonus up to 35%). The point system is based on what you contribute to the pot (kind of like Pacific), so I tried $2/$4 limit, but decided the best way to clear the bonus was to play NL.

Doyle's "automatic" buy-in for the .25/.50 game is $10, which a lot (at least 60% while I was playing) of players use. The first time they go through the blinds they usually only have $6-7 left. This makes the game different for me, and leaves me some questions.

Firstly, if the game is tight (meaning if I raise $2 with AA - 99 and AK-AT and nobody calls 90% of the time) with just a single limper, should I go ahead and make my raise and take the $1.25 or limp myself most of the time. Play after the flop is poor, since player's stacks are so small, but there are usually only 2-3 seeing the flop. Often you can get a player to call a couple bucks on the flop and then they go ahead and call-off their last couple bucks on the turn or river. Becaue of this, you can't steal anything after the turn. So, what is an optimal raising/limping strategy?

Second, with this weak buy-in, weak playing game, how many hands can you raise to steal with do you think. Do you want to raise with almost any decent hand since you will often win .75 and sometimes $1.25? How much can you steal before you start getting more calls? (maybe I should have done my own experimenting, but I was really hoping for somebody that has experience here) Any other considerations for this game?

Anyway, that's my week - and my questions for this no-limit hold'em game at Doyle's.

Good luck this week, see you at the WSOP in June 2005.

Dogmeat [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]