02-10-05, LearnTexasHoldem:
Tight Game Woes
I have been playing holdem at Empire Poker for about a month for say, 3 hours per day. My intention is to make an income from my play if at all possible. I have read Sklansky's book as well as your own rather excellent site. I feel that my knowlege is above that of a beginner but my results aren't showing this. I promise that this is not one of those "the other guys play so badly that I can't win" type stories!!
Top 3 Beginner Rooms
Often when I have the winning hand, I don't get enough action thus my losses end up exceeding my wins. I've had success with slow playing hands eg. JT with flop of 7TT and I have had good success with mid pocket pairs (if I dont flop tripps then its almost certainly time to fold). Often I can spend an hour folding on the likes of T4o and A6o only to have a small win that doesn't cover my blinds.
I don't want you to think that I am moaning or that I adhere to the starting hands chart as though it was the bible. I can mix up my play and I make a point of remembering the cards I have folded to see if I would have won if I had kept going. Once or twice and hour I find that If I hadn't folded 52o that I would have won a decent size pot with two pair or a full house. That's annoying of course but I don't start dabbling in bad starting hands as a result. Tight and aggressive is my aim. Often I find that I win 2 or 3 pots early to be $15- $20 up. Then I am in a holding pattern for a while, then the factors mentioned above kick in and I end up a losing player for the sheer want of a decent starting hand, never mind a winning one.
In an attempt to alleviate the above scenario I have tried playing two tables simultaneously. This has been partially successful as I often find that my losses on one table are equalled by my wins on the other. Still not the formula to make a winning night of it though.
I have recently tried my hand at the small no limit game, $25.00 buy-in, blinds $0.5/$0.25. Conscious of your advice about the greater range of options available to the NL player I find that I can hold my own if I can avoid bad beats like aces full of kings beaten by 4 of a kind kings!!! Lost my shirt on that one. Frequently I see players buy in, play nearly every hand for an hour, then leave $50 - $70 ahead. So much for the adage of it being good to win "one big bet per hour". Truth to tell, however, I get a bit sick and tired of the players who bully with their pre-flop raises in order to make a living off stealing the blinds.
Still more recently I have entered in the sit and go tournements, $5+1 NL. Letting the first 3 or 4 wild gamblers weed themselves out while I wait for strong hands is a good strategy. My heads up play lets me down a little and this has meant a couple of second place finishes though I an slightly ahead in money terms in this style of event.
Let me confess a degree of frustration with my plight. As you can see from my story I am not a total loser at the game. Like Mike from the film "Rounders" I am a law student, but unlike him, I am thus far, lets be frank, a losing player over all.
Questions:
1. Is it possible that the internet game, in this phase of its poularity, has become very tight in absolute terms, even at the smallest pot levels? I have read old posts from the internet that discuss the incredibly lose play at the low levels at Party/Empire Poker and how much money there is to be made. This has not been my experience!!
2. What would be your advice to me specifically? Stick at the tourneys? Bankroll my self into higher limit NL games in the hope that the players will play more predictably? Should I ignore the "life is one big session" motto and just quit while I'm ahead in a session?
Thanking you in advance.
Yours faithfully,
Adrian
Answer: Those are really good questions Adrian and I think you are right on the edge of figuring out the solutions.
1. It used to be that most players at low limits in the brick and mortar cardrooms never cracked open a poker book and if you had even a little bit of knowledge, it went a long way towards winning. Still to this day you can go into the average cardroom and play limits 3 to 10x bigger than an online limit and still have the game be looser (a 15/30 offline compared to a 3/6 online, for example).
Another factor that adds to the tables being tighter online is that people can play up to 4 or 5 tables at a time. When you play 4 tables, you don't lose your attention and you tend to slip into a really rigid, tight, mechanical player that just waits for his/her own good cards and bets them. The typical new holdem player is younger and more inclined to learn strategy which obviously makes the games tougher. Does that mean that these new holdem games can't be beat?
Every game can be beat with the right strategy; the question you need to ask yourself is if it is worth sitting down in. As you progress up the stakes ladder you'll find that good games are harder to find. Online poker rooms like to market how large they are. For me, the size of the cardroom isn't what is important. What is important is whether or not the games are good. If I play online, if I can find one or two good tables -- good meaning bad players are risking money -- then I am happy; if they have 1 or 1000 more crappy tables I could care less; you need to take this same approach.
When you look for tables to sit down on when online, don't just put your name on the list for the next available seat. Instead, look around at a few different tables and see if you can find one that looks like it will be profitable. Often times all it takes is one really bad player at the table to generate enough action to make it worthwhile to sit down. What happens is the bad player is in on every hand and other people start calling because of the odds or because they think they can isolate the bad player.
2. I don't think it is ever bad to quit when you are ahead, especially if you have had a run of bad luck lately. I wrote another answer about this a few weeks ago; the basic idea was just that if you quit when you are ahead you can keep pace better than if you just treat yourself like a poker machine that plays well under any circumstance. As for what game type you should play, pick the one you enjoy the most. I think it is easy for a lot of people to give up early in poker, maybe even more so than a few years ago when poker wasn't as popular.
The reason so many people give up now is because after reading some books and sites like this one they expect to go out and dominate everyone; to me that is an unreasonable expectation. If you are playing .5/1 holdem, consider any money you lose to be an investment in your game. My girlfriend started playing last year and moved up to playing $4/8 holdem at one of the local cardrooms in LA. After a while she gave up and was really frustrated. As delicately as I could, I tried to communicate to her that she was still just learning and to assume you have learned enough already to give up all together because the strategy has failed you is a little presumptive.
A decent analogy is if after the first day of law school you went and took the bar and beat yourself up because you didn't pass. Cut yourself some slack. Everyone, me included, likes to blame ourselves last for losing. So the two main pieces of advice are to look for a good game, not just the one you can sit-in on quickest, and secondly to treat low limit holdem as a place where you learn, not where you are going to try to make your money.
3. You listed a few specific problems that you are facing in these games. If I were you I would try to forumulate strategies to counter these problems. Are you not getting action on your good hands? Are you paying off other player's hands too much (like calling down with KK with an Ace high board)? Are people not calling enough preflop? Do you know how to defend out of the blinds? Are you using position well? Each problem in poker has a solution.
One of the best things you can do as a new player is try to start thinking about the game on your own. Knee jerk reactions you have read in books and online sites will only get you so far. The highest form of learning is application. Learn the process of "learning". Let me give you an example. Let's say the problem is that after an hour of play at a site you haven't won a hand and everytime someone raises your blind so you never even get to see a flop. Specifically, one aggressive player, more often than not, attacks your blind from late position and forces you to fold by betting.
The first thing I would ask myself is, "if this guy is always raising me, how can he always have a good hand?" Next, I would ask myself, "if the strategy he is using to not have to pay the blinds each round is working for him, why can't I do it too?" The next logical step is to adjust your play: If this aggressive player always raises, I'm going to stay in the hands more so he doesn't run over me. I am going to play against his raises differently than other players at the table. I will also call more on the flop against him compared to other players since he is more likely to have less hand strength. Do this sort of reasoning for as many situations/problems you can come up with and I guarantee you it will improve your win rate.
Your rating:
Click on the clover of your choiceTop 5 Poker Rooms
| Colt Poker Free $10 | Read Review |
|---|---|
| Cake Poker Free $10 | Read Review |
| Minted Poker | Read Review |
| Poker Stars | Read Review |
| 888poker | Read Review |
