Ten Percent of Nuthin'

First time ever playing Texas Hold'em against non computer opponents and I was the last man standing.  :woohoo:

$10 buy in with a 60/20 split for 1st and 2nd place. Walked away with $60.

If you never play again you can say that you've never lost at Texas Hold'em.  ;)

We started playing Mondays night games after work in one of our conference rooms.

Usefully 7-9 players.

Buy in is $20 and second place gets their money back and the winner takes the rest.

I haven't won yet, but it's a lot of fun and it got me reading a lot about poker strategy and I bought a shiny 1000 piece chip set.

(http://i.imgur.com/YsBzQe0.jpg?1)

:like:

I haven't talked about it much, but I am still playing poker. Lots and lots of poker. I have accounts with three online sites (Americas Cardroom, Bovada and Global Poker). I only play micro-stakes ($1 to $5 buy-ins) as I am still learning. I play mostly tournaments, but do play cash games from time to time. The last month or so I have finally crossed the line into being a winning player at the micro-stakes. I have deposited a total of $300 between the three sites and my bankroll is sitting at about $397 right now. It took a lot of losing/learning to get to this point (April to October).

I never realized how much there was to learn about poker until I decided to take it seriously. I've read several books, joined a coupe of training sites and read strategy forums and watch a ton of poker on YouTube/TV. The amount of information available is amazing.

There is a saying that I like, "Poker is not a card game with people, it is a people game with cards", but it is much more than that. It is also game of information, odds, equity and calculated risk. Playing online makes it harder to physically read people vs playing live poker, but you can still pick on tendencies and frequency of actions. There are also tools to use to make it much easier. I use a program called Holdem Manager 3  that tracks every hand I play as well as my opponents.

Holdem Manager 3 has a HUD overly that I can program to show different stats that give me real-time actionable information on how I am playing as well as how my opponents are playing.

Example: (screenshot from a $2.20 buy-in tournament I played last night - I am deadchannel and went into the final table as the chip leader, but finished 5th for $23)

(https://i.imgur.com/T0hd0IT.jpg?1)


It also has an overwhelming amount of information I can look at after the fact so I can review my hands/play. It's great for finding "leaks" in your game so you can focus on what you need to improve.


(https://i.imgur.com/BF5m1Vl.jpg?1)


I plan on sticking to the micro-stakes until the end of the year and then moving up to take a shot at the low-stakes games ($10-$50 buy-in games) to see how that goes. I am also planning to go to the World Series of Poker next summer. I don't expect to win anything at all, but I am going to buy into one of the $1500 buy-in tournaments just for the experience. The WSOP is 70+ events over a month 1/2. If I end up cashing in the event I play (highly unlikely) I may buy into another tournament depending on how much I cash for.

Anyway, poker is an amazing game. It has help with my patience, focus, emotional control and confidence. It's definitely not a game for everyone, especially people with gambling issues, but it has been a positive for me.

Online poker is too much like a video game for me.  I might forget we're playing with real money. haha

Quote from: Eric on October 26, 2017, 10:16:32 AM
Online poker is too much like a video game for me.  I might forget we're playing with real money. haha

There are definitely a lot of people who do treat it like that, especially at the micro-stakes.

There are several types of poker players.:

https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/multiple-level-thinking-in-poker-19458.htm

QuoteAccording to Sklansky and Miller, there are six levels to a poker player's thinking, which confusingly starts at Level 0...

Level 0. This lowly level is reserved for complete amateurs — or perhaps someone who is blind drunk — and basically says "I know nothing about poker!" We'd love to play against Level 0 thinkers all day long, wouldn't we?

Level 1 is the base level of thinking for poker players and basically consists of knowing what your hand is. Again, like Level 0, this level of thinking is extremely basic and thinking like this will result in losses against the vast majority of players a Level 1 thinker encounters.

Level 2 category, which finds the player asking the question "What does my opponent have?" At this level of thinking, players are aware of what their own hand beats and start to give thought to what their opponent's hand strength is. The majority at this level are still losing players, but at least they are progressing the right way up the multiple-level thinking ladder.

Level 3, things start to become a little complicated (although some may say more interesting). If you are a Level 3 thinker, whenever you're involved in a hand you will be wondering to yourself, "What does my opponent think I have?" and trying to play your hand based on how your hand strength is perceived by your opponents.

Level 4 you need to be asking yourself, "What does my opponent think that I think he has?" It sounds complicated, and it is, and even if you are thinking on this level it is unlikely any of your opponents are anyway!

Level 5 is reserved only for the elite thinkers in the game and will be almost useless for us mere mortals, but for completeness' sake I will let you know what is involved in Level 5 thinking. Have you ever played a hand and thought to yourself, "What does my opponent think that I think he thinks I have?" No? I thought not! Seems ridiculous, doesn't it? Yet there will be some battles taking place right now where players are thinking on that high level, on another plane than the rest of us.

I think I am a solid level 2 player who is starting to think more and more like a level 3 player. To be a good level 3 player you have to be good at hand reading and understanding ranges (your range and your opponents range). This is a weak point in my game right now.

Hand reading is basically putting your opponent on a range of hands preflop and narrowing down that range based off of how they bet and any other information you have gathered while playing against the them. If two level 3 players are  going against each other, they will be able to determine (reasonably) what range of hands their opponent is on and what range of hands their opponent puts them on. It becomes a bit of a chess match when you are playing someone the same level as you. You need to vary your bet sizing as well as the range of hands you are playing to get an edge.

I play really well against level 0, 1 and 2 players and have just started to hold my ground against level 3 players. Level 4 players own my soul and make me question why I play the game. I don't play at stakes where I will run up against level 5 players very often, but I did recently win a seat to $1,000,000 tournament via placing in the top 10 in a satellite tournament started the tournament at a table where I was the small fish in an ocean of level 4 and 5 sharks. They kept putting me in spots where I had no idea what to do. I ended up being too scared to play anything but AA, KK, QQ or AK and even then they had me questioning my play. It was not fun but very eye opening. :)

Back in my early twenties there was a group of us that would play poker on a weekly basis.  There was a distinct paradigm shift when some of them started taking it more seriously.  The max bid was pretty low, but there were still times where someone could drop $100 (1990 dollars) in the hole.

Quote from: Eric on October 26, 2017, 01:56:59 PM
Back in my early twenties there was a group of us that would play poker on a weekly basis.  There was a distinct paradigm shift when some of them started taking it more seriously.  The max bid was pretty low, but there were still times where someone could drop $100 (1990 dollars) in the hole.

Poker has changed so much in the past 15+ years. There are apps that can help you learn how to make the most profitable play in almost any situation. These apps aren't used in game, but rather as a way to analyze your hands after the fact to strengthen you decision making when you play.

Holem Manager 3 stores every hand I have ever played online and breaks down all the important stats. I use it during games to quickly review a had I just played to see if I can figure out what went wrong.

Flopzilla allows me to run hand range scenarios so I have a better understanding of how different ranges connect with certain flop/turn/river run-outs.

There are a ton of free equity and pot odds calculators available online.

The craziest one is PIOSolver. It allows you to program hand ranges, specific hands, bet sizes and run-outs and then it can give you the most profitable line to take. This can't be used real time as it can take many minutes to do all the calculations for a specific set of data, but it can be a powerful tool to analyze specific situations where you typically have problems making the correct decision. I just downloaded the free version of it today and will play around with it this weekend.

When I took the poker red pill back in April or so, I didn't not realize how deep the rabbit hole went.  :haha:

Just booked my hotel and flight for Vegas in June to play one of the WSOP events!

Still playing poker everyday. I am understanding the game more and more, but i know I still have a lot to learn and I am trying to be more disciplined with my decisions.

Anyway, I was playing a free-roll tournament last night where the prize was one ticket to the MDS (Million Dollar Sunday) tournament (The MDS is a $265 buy-in tournament). I was playing really well despite a lot of donks shoving all-in with almost any hand, because why not it a free-roll. I survived and spent most of the tournament with the 2nd biggest chip stack. the biggest chip stack belongs to a donk who would shove all-in, when anyone else shove all-in, with any two cards. He got lucky so many times. It was maddening.

I stuck to my guns and played tight and aggressive. I only played premium hand in position. i think I was dealt about 150 hand the whole tournament and only played about 20 or so hands. Long story short, it was me and the lucky donk heads up in the end. I was dealt KK and put out a bet and the donk called. Flop comes J, 7, 2. I put out a continuation bet and the donk jams all-in. My kings are way ahead of his all-in range and I call all-in. The cards flip and I see he has 9 7 off-suit. Turn is a 7... river is a 7.

:kirk:

I LOVE POKER!!!!!

Ouch!  So if I understand that poker-babble, you ended up with a full house (KK777) and he lucked into four-of-a-kind (7777)?  Great googly-mooglie.

yep

I hope that didn't come across wrong.  It was like you were speaking Greek--except for "donk", which was kind of obvious from your tone.
:haha:

 :haha:

Donk (Donkey or Jack Arse) or Maniac (A player who thinks their loose aggressive style makes them a Shark) = Bad poker player.
Fish = Player who plays OK, but plays too many hands and makes a few bad decisions while losing more chips/money than they should.
Whale = Rich Donk/Fish/Maniac who plays for fun and spews off lots of money and doesn't seems to care. 
Shark = Good player who preys on the Fish, Whales and Maniacs.

Me = A former Donk who is now a Fish trying hard to become a Shark.

Sharks could not make money without the Donks, Fish, Maniacs, and Whales.

I wish I would have played during the poker boom of the early 2000's. At my current skill level I would have been a shark because there were so many bad players. There were people making a living online with a similar skill set to mine. Now there is so much info on how to play solid poker online that the skill gap between good and bad players has shrunk drastically Also the bar for being considered a good player has risen quite a bit.

Despite the bad beats, poker is a lot of fun. The more I understand about the game the more it becomes kind of a puzzle game. You try to put your opponent on a range of hands pre-flop and then narrow than range down based on behavior and betting patterns. If you pay attention to every hand, everyone falls into patterns that can be exploited. Even good players fall into patterns, but they review hands after the fact and fix their mistakes, bad players don't.

The good players try to play as balanced as possible. They don't have many patterns to pick up on because they will try to play a whole range of hands the same way every time. This makes it very hard to exploit them. I play AA they same way I would play TT+, TJ suited +. I also don't over-bet my bluffs. I bet them the same as if I was betting for value with the best hand.

Most bad players play passive with weak or moderate hands and check, place small bets or call too much with them. It is easy to pick up on this and bluff them off almost all these hands. They also tend to over-bet their good hand, making it easy to fold against them and not pay them off.

Can't wait to test my metal at the World Series of Poker in a couple of months. Spending $1,500 on a buy-in is going to be a lot different than the $0.50 to $6.00 I spend now.

Quote from: Spooky on December 12, 2017, 04:20:21 PM
Just booked my hotel and flight for Vegas in June to play one of the WSOP events!

Decided not to buy into a bracelet event. Paying $1,500 for one tournament that will have over 6,700 entrants in it seems like the odds are stacked against you to just min-cash (about 1,000 out of about 6,700 cashed last year in the event I was planning on entering). There will be daily $250 WSOP deep-stack tournaments going on at the Rio. I can use my $1,500 to buy into 6 of those and up my chances of making some money. They get about 1,000 entrants and about 150 get paid (the winner gets around $30,000). I like the odds of playing 5 or 6 smaller tourneys with a lot less people in them. Getting a bit excited for the trip!

:D  :beercheer:
Keep us updated.

This kind of blows my mind...

Day 1

Got here at about 2;30 PM

Just chilled at the Rio and checked out all the poker rooms and celebrity watched. Got to see a few well known player. Decided to put $20 in a slot machine and three spins latter I won $170... Cashed out and put another 20 in a slot and won about $180 after 5 spins.  I cased out and put $20 in another slot machine ad won $263 lol. I tihnk I need to stop while I am ahead.

First tournament starts at 1 PM tomorrow. Hope the slots luck holds over.

Day 2

Entered the 1 PM $250 WSOP Deepstack event.

I was nervous once the cards were dealt. Took about an hour before the adrenaline burned itself out. I played OK. Won a few big pots off off a few players who were scared of reraises. I called down with a few mediorce hands and my 20k starting stack was down to 17k at the orst break.

First hand after the break I got dealt AK offsiut. I was raised beore me and I reraised. I got three callers including the orginal raiser.  The flop and Ace came on the flop (don't remember the other cards) and it checked to me. I raised and got one caller. So headsup on the turn which was a K. I check and the other guy bet. I reraised and he folded. That was a 5k pot.

30 miutes latter after having made a couple of mistakes, I was down to 7k. I was dealt TT. it was raised to me and I reraised. I got one caller and the flop came T98. I raised and was reraised. I reraised all in for my last 5.1k chips and was called. He turned over KQ. The turn card was a 3 and the river was a J. He beats my three of a kind with a rivered straight.

I'll be back at it again tomorrow.

You can do it, Spooky! :D

Copy/paste from FB.

Tournament #3 about to start. Took yesterday off. I was feeling a bit brain fried.

Had to make a couple of big laydowns. Same guys keeps sticking around and making straights and flushes against my 2 pair and trips. He is gracious enough to show his hand after. About 16k at first break.

15 minutes ago I was 51k and was 2nd in chips at my table. Two short stacks go all in. The biggest has about 24k. I have KK and a call. It my KK against AK and QQ. QQ hits a Q one the flop and I don't improve. Down to 26k. Few hands latter I have AK of hearts on the button. A couple of raises in front of me and I reraise. Big blind calls and the initial raiser calls who is now the big stack. Flop is KsJh5h. I have to pair and the nut flush draw. big blind checks. Big stack raises enough to put me all in if I call. I think about it for a few. He had been very aggressive with any pair all day. I can't fold top top with the nut flush fraw and I call it off allin. He has JJ and no K or heart comes to help me out.


https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157627059256562&set=a.10150512174406562.463202.690776561&type=3&permPage=1

Copy/paste from FB

So cool. Just got to meet Joey Ingram. Professional PLO player and poker podcaster. He had just busted out of the $10k PLO event in 17th place and still took a couple of minutes to chat with me. He has an enertaing YouTube channel if you like watching poker content.

https://www.youtube.com/user/joeingram1

:D

How long does this go on?

The World Seies of Poker goes from May 29th until July 17th. There are 78 official "bracelet' events wherer the winner get money and a cool bracelet for winning.

(https://d1nz104zbf64va.cloudfront.net/pt/a/4/v1-577e5866d3904388548b45d1.jpg)

I am playing in a $250 buyin tournament that runs daily starting at 1PM. You don't get one of the cool WSOP bracelets for winning a daily, but there is $30k to $40k for the winner of the daily I am playing. I will be here until Friday.

:beercheer:

busted out elry today. FB copy paste:

Very early exit today. Had TT in the small blind. The under to gun player makes a standard raise and it folds to me
I call. Flop is TA8. I raise. He goes allin. I figure he has AK or AQ. I call allin. He shows AA. His trips beat mine. I think I am done playing poker while I am here. Gonna spend the rest of my time exploring places I haven't seen in Vegas. I think it will take at least a couple of days to get over that last bad beat.

The WSOP was an amazing experience. I learned a lot about poker and myself. Can't wait for next year!

Great!  I'm glad you took a little time away from the table too. Sounded like you needed a break. ;)

A guy at work found out I play poker. We started talking and he keeps telling me that poker is a complete game of luck, even more than blackjack.

:wall:

I asked how much he plays. He said he played a couple of times in Vegas, but spend most of his time on blackjack and slots.

I need a poker friend. Someone I can talk hand histories and strategy with. Every conversation I have with people about poker ends up in an argument about poker being more luck than skill.

Poker legend Daniel Negreanu is selling some of his action to the WSOP this year.

Sadly there is so much interest that his site is dead. I want to buy just a small piece (maybe $50), but all I have been doing is refreshing the page for 30 minutes.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7WfzEZUYAA01x0.jpg)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7WOzKGUIAA1w_S.jpg)

They could not get the site going yesterday and had to move it to a new server to handle the traffic. I was able to spend $15 ($ of each package) today. It will make watching the WSOP a lot more fun now that I have a piece of the most famous poker player on the world.

So, if he wins then you win?

If he makes a profit the people who got packages will make money. He over sold and a lot of people, including me, got refunded our money. :(

So, they need to stop the Coronavirus before the World Series of Poker. I don't want it to be canceled. I have been looking forward to my trip since I booked my tickets last year. I would put money on it being canceled. hundreds of thousands of people from all around the world congregating at the Rio over a month and half to sit next to each other in big rooms to handle chips and cards for hours and hours.

:-\

LOL just realized how selfish that sounded.