06- 2-05, LearnTexasHoldem:
Learning Texas Holdem
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After I read the results and a few of your comments, it is my view that you are trying to create a winning strategy based largely on math. Stats and percentages are nice, but they won't make you a winning player. Many poker books present holdem as a game where you wait for AA and AK all day. To beat poker, especially bigger limits, you need to have a deep understanding of what makes up the game.
Let me pose a question to illustrate this: What constitutes a strong holdem starting hand? Right now I would guess that your answer would reflect the S&M hand groupings and the hand's position. The problem with playing poker like this is you are using kneejerk reactions and you end up playing too mechanically. The highest form of learning is application. If you know the underlying principals to a game, you can adapt to both different games and different hands.
The answer to what makes up a strong hands is, "it depends." A hand's strength is relative to the amount of people in already and your position (to say nothing of how the players have been previously playing). Let me give you a concrete example to chew on. Some of the biggest pots I win, even in middle and upper limit games, are won with hands the books would never recommend I play, because their rules are too rigid.
If the game is loose, you can get away with playing more hands out of position -- small pocket pairs for example. Flopping a set with a hand like 22 or 33 is one of the best ways to win a big pot. What the books will tell you is that 22 and 33 aren't suitable for playing in early position because it is likely someone will raise in the back, charging you too much money for the hand to see a flop, making it unprofitable.
This is wrong again, though, because it doesn't take into account how loose a game is. Many of these pots are over a rack because the your hand is so well disguised and you can get a big raise in on the turn. Frankly, I don't win much with big pairs. They win ok pots, but nothing huge. I win just as much playing hands like KQ. Next, when people are playing badly, you win the most money from them by just playing a little better, not grossly better. Is there any reason to have a full house when trips would have won? Or maybe a better example would be, is there any reason to have a pair of aces when a top pair (a Ten) would have won? Sure, having all that power is nice, but there is no point. You would prefer to win more pots with less hand strength, not more hand strength and fewer pots.
The problem is, we can't play every hand (or even near that) and expect to win. Playing more cards, especially out of position, creates risk. The way you gauge how much risk, how many extra cards, you can play is by paying attention to previous hands. If you do what I suggest, you'll always be in the pot with a good strong hand based on the amount of players in. You mentioned before that holdem is unlike bridge because there isn't as much to memorize -- not so! You should be memorizing everything that is happening.
You do this not only because you want to know how people are playing when you are in a hand with them, but you also do this so you know if you can get away with playing hands like small pocket pairs, suited connectors, and other multi-way starting hands preflop out of position. There is a reason that most poker books don't include any of this information, and it is that it is very difficult to teach someone how to play a fluid, dynamic, adaptive sort of game. It is much easier to put together a bunch of computer simulations and slap on a cover, and send it off to amazon.
You would do yourself a great service if you learned how to play poker in shorthanded form. When you play with only 3 or 4 people, you began to realize how a hands value is based so much on the amount of people in the hand, and how many people got cards initially. You'll also learn how to play the hands that aren't pretty (which helps when you are playing out of the blinds in regular ring games).
Another point I want to make is how you need to base what hands you play on what hands the opponents are playing; no book have I ever read mentions this fact, yet it is one of the most fundamental keys to winning. Let me give you a little compare and contrast.
Let's compare reality with what the books say. In the book, "Inside The Poker Mind" (by the 2+2 publishers) there is a chapter that poses the AQ test. The test is, would you call a preflop raisers hand with AQoff in a regular middle limit holdem game? His answer was if you did make this call, "he would want you in his game!" Give me a break. The correct answer is, "hell yes I would, unless it was against a rock like you!" His point is that most people raise in early position with only AA, KK, AK, and QQ, therefore if you called with AQ, you are a huge dog and giving up money.
Well the fact is that in 99% of the games I play in, people raise with much weaker holdings than those hands. AQ looks pretty good when I have position on them and they have the regular raising standards. See most of these books set up examples based on unrealistic premises. Here the unrealistic premise the book makes before it gives us some lessons is that all people raise in early position with good hands.
Let me be the first person to tell you, not everyone plays like you do! Context! Put everything into context and you will do well in poker. If I have seen someone raise the last 4 hands with anything from a suited Ace to pocket 5s, why would I fold my AQ, KQ, KJ or AJ? I'm putting the information and his play into context. I'm not just assuming always that he has AA. Let me give you another example of a game I was in a bit ago -- it was a game exactly like the book I mentioned above set up.
A new player sat down to my immediate right, he was a young guy with head phones. He waited a few hands and then raised in early position. I had 77. I mucked my hand because I didn't know how he played yet and I wanted to see what he was raising with. It turned out in that hand he had 55. A few hands later, again he raised from early middle position, but this time I had AQ. Instead of folding, I reraised. I flopped an Ace and won a decent pot when someone else had a weaker Ace -- he ended up having 88 there. On the other hand, had I seen him raise only big hands in that position, I wouldn't have 3 bet him preflop. I might have just called.
What I am writing here should come as encouraging news to you. Trust me, I've been where you are. It was totally liberating to finally be free of all their mumbo jumbo. For years I was just a barely break even player at low limit holdem. I would go there and play just like the books said and I would barely eke by. What finally changed things for me was starting to play shorthanded poker. What I then realized was that I had a very narrow view of poker and that I had much to learn. Eventually I started to make sense of things, for the first time.
I began to see that most of the money in holdem goes in post flop, not preflop. Most books didn't tell me much on how to play post flop. I also realized that most of the games I played in weren't like the ones I read about in books -- they were much looser. I still play a fairly tight game, but I also see spots where I can get in with hands I would never have before. This makes playing holdem both more profitable and more palatable. I see rocks play all the time at my tables and they are small winners at best, hardly even worth the time.
Let me finish up here by just giving you a summary of what I now view a good holdem strategy. There are basically two kinds of hands (besides steal or bluffs). There are hands where you are trying to win the pot based on the current strength of your hand and there are pots where you want lot of players in to make the hand worth playing. Sometimes hands change throughout the betting.
For example, you may flop top pair with your suited connector and try to win with just that only. Another example might be if you have 55 and the flop is 997, you went from trying to win in a multi-way pot to trying to make the 55 win on its own unimproved. How many of these hands and when we play them is strictly based on how many people are in preflop.
Ideally, I would like 4 or more people in when I call with a little suited connector or small pocket pair. If I know that the game is loose and people are limping in a lot, I see nothing wrong with calling with the 44 in early position. I'm making an educated guess based on previous results; since the majority of pots have been 4 way (even with a raise), it is likely that this hand will be the same. Take comfort, all of this is based on math, but you do need to take the leap from what you can see already and what you should be able to predict.
The books suggest playing too conservatively because you only play first after you can see what developed. I suggest you play based on previous hands. Next, in addition to playing based on the number of people in (like getting in there with T8s, J9s, 86s when lots of people are in), you also adjust what you consider a good hand based on previous betting of individual players. You stop looking only at the strength of your hand, and base your hand strength on information you've gained by watching the opponents previous hands.
I think you are doing fine with the hands that are trying to win based on their own preflop strength (big pairs, middle pairs, AK, AQ, etc). I think you just need to flesh out the understanding of multi-way pots and what hands you can play in those situations. Eventually you'll get to a point where you'll be making good investments in every hand, either because the return is big or you already have a monster.
Thank you for the question. I think that you will do very well in poker because you are taking a systematic approach to the game.
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