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I am a senior in high school who finds enjoyment in making little bets and gambling. With the recent explosion in online poker, I just could not pass up the opportunity of making money from what I enjoy. Throughout my extensive 3 month poker career I've done nothing but lose! Learning and especially improving at NL hold'em has been my agenda ever since I started at the play money tables. When I got confident enough I finally took the plunge and experienced real-money poker in the most difficult environment(one of the harder internet poker rooms) I could place myself in, thinking that after losing a couple of deposits I would ne able to understand and apply everything I've picked up from those books I ordered. Sadly, that's not the case. Having lost about $300 in the .05/.1 NL rooms I started to ponder, think, and re-think my mistakes, and with each deposit flushed down the crapper I picked up some hard earned lessons.

Basically, the problem is that I don't know what the problem is! In my typical 2 hour long poker sessions, I check out a couple of tables and sit down in the one that seems most profitable. I can spot who the mediocre players are, who the fish are, and which are the experts. I would say that I know my material but at the .05/.1 limits it's absolutely mind boggling. There are some loose aggressive players raising every other hand and taking down pots so I try their style, but I just get slapped back down to reality. This really confuses me because all I've heard was that aggression was the key to winning. You've got people making really tricky plays at such a low limit that I don't know what to think.

Then I see the handful of tight players who usually play at multiple tables betting only when they've got the goods and getting paid off. Naturally, I try to do that but the cards never come, and I'm in the 30%-40% range in playing starting hands. After the dealer button makes a few laps around the table I begin to get impatient and start playing hands like K-4 in early position all the while getting mauled by the blinds and never flopping anything good. It's true that I am occasionally dealt a series of favorable hands but as an average player I know well that those very same cards could have made some expert three times as much as I could.

I'm writing this to you after going broke for the 4th time and I would be grateful if you would take some time to respond. There's no doubt in my mind that there are other, more worthwhile questions for you to answer so I don't really expect a reply. Should I play two tables with a tight style so that I don't get bored? (usually, if not always, playing tight gets me to at least about even) Maybe a better alternative would be to step down a limit? Or would I be better off quitting while I'm not that far behind? Poker is one thing that I'd love to improve at, as it seems like a good way to make money with a little patience. Thanks for reading

--5th deposit's the charm?

Jon

PS please forgive me for my poor writing skills, it's 2 in the morning and proper english isn't the thing I am trying to worry about at the moment.

Answer:

The last thing I care about is proper English. This is a poker site, not a site on grammar. Occasionally I get people writing in and telling me that I've used "then" instead of "than" or "lessor" instead of "lesser." LOL Hilarious! Some people have major time on their hands. I'm not one of them, unfortunately.

Number one, you gotta think of your strategy as your anchor. Poker is unique compared to other games you might master. Whether your goal is to play par golf, bench three plates, wire switch tre flips, have a strong end game, or beat the last Xbox game you bought, it's all within your control. Poker is different because there is that degree of randomness. In the other games, you have more control over the variables, but in poker, you never have complete control. Ideally, what you have is an edge that manifests itself out after time. You'll have correct play that loses and incorrect plays that pan out.

What this results in is a very confusing environment to develop a winning strategy. But this isn't all negative, and is actually necessary. There is a game of poker because of this luck. If it were a skill based game only, where the best player always won, no one would play. It is this gray area that keeps the game alive. Bad players win sometimes, which is enough to satisfy them; the good players lose sometimes, but win most of the time, which is enough to satisfy them too. These unavoidable ups-and-downs make the game hard to understand and have confidence in unless you have a well thought out strategy -- your anchor.

Even when things get tough, you can measure your play based on your strategy and know objectively that it was correct, regardless of the short term outcome. This is important to remember because if you constantly adjust your strategy based on short term results, then you'll just spiral out of control. It sounds like this is happening some already: You get frustrated because you aren't getting any cards, or maybe a hand didn't hold up, and combine the fact that you see other players winning with bad cards, and boom, you have another big loss.

So stick to that strategy you read about. Secondly, it is a common problem with any player, old or new, when losing to not know why. It is actually more dangerous for a seasoned player to start losing than a new player because the seasoned player will be less likely to point the blame at themselves, while the new player isn't surprised they are losing, and in turn more likely to be open to change. Given that you have a strategy that will win, you need to make sure you are actually playing accordingly. You can't rely on your memory alone. Memories aren't objective. I'd recommend that you take some notes when you are playing online.

Write down key pots, ones that you won and ones that you lost, and see what happens at the end of a session. After you have that info you can go through and see how you are losing. Did you call a raise with AJ and lose a big pot? Did you win a big pot by doing the same? You want to compare the situations and you'll see whether your play was right or not. Getting lucky on someone else is fine in the short term, but that won't make you a winner in the long run, so the measure of correct play isn't if you won that specific pot or not.

Next, two hour session lengths may be a little short. At a full table, you won't see that many hands in that amount of time. I prefer to have a longer sessions. It takes me a couple hours before I feel warmed up and in tune with the game. Try playing a four hour session and see how you do.

You have to change your perspective on the game too. Think long term. No matter how well you play, you won't win it all in one day. Don't go in and think to yourself, "I'm going to win X amount of money today." Go in and think, "I'm going to play the cards as well as I can, and the rest will take care of itself." Winning is a process. You can't rush things. Part of why people lose money back is because they try to do too much too fast. (It is perfectly normal not to win for a number of sessions, then have a huge day. Nothing says your wins have to be in nice equal increments.)

Poker is a relatively slow game. This is good in some ways though because it allows you to gain information on players by watching them in other hands. Remember this too: Everyone gets the same amount of good cards and bad cards, what will make you different than the next guy? A monkey in your seat will win when he gets AA. He'll play it to the river and win the majority of the time, no different than you. What makes you better than the monkey is that you can avoid some of the situations where you are the underdog and will lose money.

The bad player will get caught up in some pots with weak hands and he'll lose back the money he made with his AA. Will that be you? And again, like I mentioned in the first point, what complicates matters is when the bad player is calling the raise with some junk, he'll occasionally win with it, which reinforces the bad play and makes it that much harder for him to figure out a sound strategy. The good cards will play themselves, it's the bad cards that define you. Just like the good sessions will play themselves, the bad sessions will define your overall success. Solid players can weather storms because they don't get flustered when they haven't played a hand in a while or won a pot. They have that anchor. They know their strategy is sound and they stick to it.

Be careful what you hear and take to heart. At any poker game, you'll hear people rambling on about "tips" and stuff. And usually the guy who is talking the most is the last guy you want to be listening to for advice. I'm telling you this because you mentioned aggressive play and how that is the assumed right way to play. Aggressive play isn't what you think it is. If you go watch a pro play, it isn't anything you haven't seen before. He sits there and waits for a hand, then plays it based on how it should be played. He isn't raising and reraisng every other hand, trying to run over everyone. Winning players play a solid game.

A solid game is made up of strong cards at opportune times and betting the hands in a way that maximizes the money they make. It is true that a pro will make more money than you in the same game (if given enough time), but that won't be because they are doing anything that crazy. He'll be able to value bet some more in some spots, pick off a few bluffs that you might miss in other spots, fold a hand that you might pay off, etc. It won't be a drastic change from what you think solid play is.

As for your specific game, I would recommend that you start out playing a tight solid game, instead of trying to get too fancy at first. How the typical winning player starts out is by playing overly tight, then loosening up some with experience. As the player fleshes out his/her knowledge of the game, some additional spots open up for play -- an example might be calling down with hands that weren't premium.

By and large though, the money won will still be from that tight solid play. This is what wins at ring games (nine and ten person tables). You have to understand this. In these types of games, "the best hand wins." What that means is, you'll need to show down the best hand to win pots, it won't be from tricky play; you're not going to win a bunch of money from trying to outplay people. To beat low limit holdem, you don't need to get too tricky or deceptive, because the opponents will pay off your good hand even if you wait a while for it. You wait for good cards and get paid off. So this is where I would start in your game.

Don't give up yet, you have a lot of time ahead. Just take it slow and try to not lose, then worry about winning. Play really tight. Make sure the vast majority of the time when you enter a pot you have the best hand preflop. Then as you get more experience you can branch out a bit and work on some other areas of the game. This will prevent you from losing more money and eventually giving up.

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