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This may be trivial and very broad-based and I apologize if it is but I was wondering what goes thru your mind when the cards get dealt such as:
At the beginning of a tourney, do you only play premiums until you get reads on players or jump right in?
How do you get your reads/ranges of OP's? showdowns, calling stations, OP likes to bet pot after every flop etc? What do you look for? Does it change drastically the more tables you play in a session?
When cards are dealt, what factors do you use every time? position, EV, action before you, OP's tendencies, your chip stack, their chip stack, close to the break, close to blind increases etc? I am sure there are tons of things I am missing….
Do you ever have a problem with staying focused on the game? I now shut down my email, FB and any other crap I have open so I can focus but still find myself wandering on to other things when I should be focusing on what the other players are doing so I can make some intelligent decisions. ADHD can be a b*tch sometimes. “ok, so dinglenut is 3 betting poofiepuff…poofiepuff shoves, dinglenut calls…. YAY showdown. Now I can get some info…….. Ooooooh look at the shiny thing outside…. Awe crap I missed the hand again”. It's not that bad but.. Perhaps it's because I don't know what I should be looking for besides the obvious?
Anything else you might think of would be awesome. It may be trivial as most the players here seem to be seasoned vets but I am fairly “green” and impressionable and I don't want to believe everything I read elsewhere on the internet. You guys know what you are doing and saying. Besides I have heard that not everything is true that is posted on the net! Damn I wish I never sent that money via Moneygram to that Nigerian King needing to move his billions out of the country…..
Cheers,
D.
TPE Management
March 17, 2010
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One directly addressable question you ask is what to play early stages. Most strong tournament players don't speculate from early position early in tourneys and tend to play ABC poker – then open up as blinds get bigger. That's a generalization but you can't go wrong with that strategy.
In a sense the other questions you are asking almost seem to be about how do you develop your instincts. Most of the things you talk about are the observations which an experienced player then translates into information based on previous situations they have played before and what their experience has lead them to develop as practice.
For most players it's hard to do a lot of observing when you are playing a ton of tables. That's where a HUD really can help you. It's not the only information you should be using, and there are a lot of good players – bigdog for example, who don't even use one. But when you have a lot of tables up it's hard to notice what player A went to showdown with. A HUD can give you an idea of his aggression tendencies from which you can make some decisions.
That said, as a learning player you should be watching the tables and try to put people on ranges when not in a hand. I found that to be a really helpful tool that accelerated my learning process. And once you do that enough you can start to see patterns in play that you exploit in your own hands. And then that's how the instinct develops.
I am guilty of too many distractions. I always tend to be doing something else while playing and it's entirely my fault. If you can shut it all down, that's better.
So, the short answer is that it's really hard to answer your question but basically you should try to observe and put people on ranges. If you do that you will start to pick up information that you can use later when you are in hands with people and also pick up on typical patterns.
Thanks! Great! That is what I was looking for for answers. Just simple what you do and how you approach it, how you developed it.
THats awesome, thanks for taking the time to share your wisdom.
D.
October 6, 2010
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i find that a good thing to do is when you are put to a decision, just stop and think and ask yourself:
what cards can beat me on this board?
does it make sense for these cards to be in villain's range?
what cards could he do this with that i beat?
how often are these cards in villain's range?
based on this i think you can make a lot of tough calls and tough laydowns where your first instinct might be the opposite.
TPE Pro
TPE Management
July 20, 2010
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“God I love TPE”
I second that ttwist! Thanks Benny! That helps too.
June 11, 2010
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My first thought is usually along the lines of “Why the hell did i get Q2o again”. Once I get past that it gets a little more interesting. To be fair outside of EP and MP my cards tend to become significantly less important to me (don't mistake me that AA is very important everywhere and 72o sucks everywhere) but the dynamics of the table, the characteristics of the players who have acted and who have yet to act and what I believe the table thinks of me all come into play. ABC is a really great place to start and is really the substantially dominant methodology you will see discussed here (and it is highly effective and quite profitable). Something that I find is underrated in this topic area is having the discipline not to overreact to your cards. Make a plan, re-evaluate it on every street and be open to changing it if the conditions present themselves. GL at the tables and hope to see you out there or in chat!!
” I am not my Hand”. Nice!! It took me a second to figure out what u meant. It makes perfect sense.
LPGman- Thanks for your insight. I am pretty much ABC for now. It tends to make me some money instead of spending on re-buys. Plus it teaches me patience. Up till recently (like yesterday after my post) I hadn't really spent a lot of time watching the other players besides the obvious. Last night I really focused on what was going on and how “the others” were betting, re-raising, folding etc and I could really see some patterns with them and made sure to put some notes down on them as I went. In the end I still blew chunks as SB trying to steal the BB blind with 1010 (he had JJ) and I thought he was just trying to re-steal.. Good thing I haven't sold my biz to do this full time….yet!
Lots to learn and I really appreciate you all taking the time to answer my questions that I am sure are quite pre-school-ish to you. It's nice to feel confident and comfortable on TPE that I am not going to be berated or belittled for simplistic questions like on other forums. Everyone has to walk before they run.
Cheers,
D.
October 6, 2010
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thehyde said:
” I am not my Hand”. Nice!! It took me a second to figure out what u meant. It makes perfect sense.
LPGman- Thanks for your insight. I am pretty much ABC for now. It tends to make me some money instead of spending on re-buys. Plus it teaches me patience. Up till recently (like yesterday after my post) I hadn't really spent a lot of time watching the other players besides the obvious. Last night I really focused on what was going on and how “the others” were betting, re-raising, folding etc and I could really see some patterns with them and made sure to put some notes down on them as I went. In the end I still blew chunks as SB trying to steal the BB blind with 1010 (he had JJ) and I thought he was just trying to re-steal.. Good thing I haven't sold my biz to do this full time….yet!
Lots to learn and I really appreciate you all taking the time to answer my questions that I am sure are quite pre-school-ish to you. It's nice to feel confident and comfortable on TPE that I am not going to be berated or belittled for simplistic questions like on other forums. Everyone has to walk before they run.
Cheers,
D.
there is a reason why ABC poker works, its because it is clearly the best and lowest variance style for the majority of us out there.
with regards to that TT vs JJ hand, meh sounds like a cooler to me, without knowing specifics i would say i get it in there most times
i was just trying to be cryptic.
i think there's a lot fo good advice in this thread.
more than anything, just focus the best you can, and try to play each hand as best you can. keep a text file open and past hands in it that you're unsure of, and then go over them later and see what you or others might have done differently.
if you keep working hard it will get easier, and you will start to better understand all the variables that you have to take into account when you ask yourself “whats the most profitable decision i can make RIGHT NOW?”
On the internet I just settle in and go to work. I am guilty of looking for more tourney's/Sit-n-Go's though. I generally try to fire up enough tables that it forces me to concentrate only on the poker. If I don't then I'm doing what any other member of TPE is doing. I'm watching videos and following the forums. Distractions. Great Distractions though.
So my advice is to fire up just enough tables that you must solely focus on poker and are able to make good decisions.
Live is a different beast though. When the cards are first dealt I generally try to calm down because I get a big adrenaline rush. Its a big reason why I love Poker.
This is such great info. I have been really thinking about what is going on now. I am sticking with just one table at a time unless there is a short overlap so I can catch whats going on and write stuff down. I have to say, from what I have learned so far from the people at TPE has improved my game so far. I played some good hands tonight. Some bad but more good than bad IMO.
I am not sure how I would do live at this point. I think doing “the dance of joy” when I flop a monster might give me away…
Cheers all
D.
Building a stack early is much more awesome than waiting to shove 10-20bbs against regs whose calling ranges are perfect
Wein – unfortunately I am more often short stacked then deep stacked after the re-buy period has ended. It's something that I need to work on. I believe it's a combo of my inexperience along with the first hour of people playing like freerolls where every hand there are at least 4 limpers and someone going all in, then 2 or 3 others go all in with crap. One of them gets the chips and 3 hands later they lose them all and are re-buying. I try to stay out of it and just play premium hands to maybe double up but it takes time and sometimes too much time. Usually when I am in position is when the 2-7, Q-2 or 2-2's show up and someone always seems to go all in.
I am not bitching or gonna say it's bad poker or they should be playing like high stakes tables would. It is what it is and I need to adapt to that type of play so I can be deep stacked for late in the tourney and not find myself having to shove. After watching some of Big Dog's low stakes sweat vids I tried out his methodology by getting into lots of hands cheaply during the rebuy period in a bunch of MTT's but found myself having to rebuy like crazy. I know there has to be a happy medium and most likely a combo of things, I just need to figure out what it is and that is one of the reasons why I am here…
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