04-26-05, LearnTexasHoldem:

Losing To Friends

Question: First of all I just wanted to say that your site is filled with more than enough information on playing holdem. I have bookmarked this site and all most every night I spend about an hour or so reading over your great material. I'm writing you because I'm having a hard time playing my cards. Once or twice a week (lately three times a week) me and my friends. The five of us buy in to a five dollar tourney everytime we play and the fun begins. Out of the times I have played, I' ve placed twice and frankly I'm tired of loosing to them. I sit back and look at all of them play and I know I'm a better player than them. My best play is a slow play and I get them everytime. I'm not so good at bluffing my hand but I understand that it takes time. When I try they usually call or raise just to spite me. So my problem is that i find myself chasing a lot of cards to the turn and river, Usually flush and straight draws.Now we are getting ready to host a big tourney ($20 buy in) and I don't want to be on the short end of the stick. I was wanting to know if you had any exercises that I could practice or maybe a place to start since I really just jumped into the game with out any direction. I talk a lot of crap and I want to be able to back it up before this tourney. On a side note, I'm not sure what the hand groups are for. Your site has been more than helpful and I'm sure that I just overlooked all this information in your articles. Thank you very much for your time.

Sincerly,

Tony

Top 3 Beginner Rooms

Answer: Thanks for the questions and comments Tony. I'm not sure if I can turn you into a winner with one answer, but I'll try to give you some help to get you in the right direction. Let me start of by talking a little about how I play against novice opponents. Let's say for example that I am hanging out having a couple beers with some non-cardplaying friends. Do I play my same game that I do against pros? No. The first thing that I change is that I take the approach I'm not going to lose a bunch of chips trying to push hands. ("Pushing hands" means that you raise preflop and try to bet everyone out of the hand when you don't improve on the flop.)

I see people do this day-after-day and it becomes a big hole in their game -- they don't adjust to bad players who they know will call, so they bluff their money off. So the first suggestion I have is to probably tone down on the bluffs. The more you bluff, the less potent they become. And if you are already getting lots of calls on your good hands, there is no reason to play tricky and try to bluff. You only bluff when you need to mix up your game because people are giving you too much respect. If you already have no respect at the table, just wait for good hands and get value on them.

Next, when I play against people who are significantly worse than I am, I allow myself to play way more hands preflop. I try to see as many flops as I can, without creating too much vulnerability in my own game. The reason I can do this profitably a lot of the time is because I can outplay them postflop. Now "outplay" may suggest that, again, I'm trying to be tricky and bluff and raise them off hands -- not so. Against very weak players, I can easily dodge their good hands, pick up some pots when I don't think they have anything, and get good value when I do flop something big. I'm not sure if I suggest you do that, because if you are still relatively new to the game, you won't be able to differentiate between when you should get out and when you should keep going in a hand.

Instead of playing really loosely, I would suggest that you brush up some on the fundamentals and then try that out. See if you can beat them playing what we call ABC poker; which is basically just waiting for a big hand and betting it. Now to do implement this strategy, you obviously need to know what a strong hand is. So brush up on the fundamentals of starting hands if you aren't confident. Most of the time at the lower limits, just knowing a good starting hand selection can be enough to win some.

Lastly, I noticed that you mentioned that often times much of your money goes to broken draws. I would suggest that in tournaments you try to avoid drawing hands as much as possible, unless you have a lot of chips. Two out of three times, you are going to miss the draws, so if you can avoid them, you'll have a more steady tournament game. Good luck with the tourney and let me know how it goes.

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