• Welcome to Ten Percent of Nuthin'.

News:

Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse... but you take a boat in the air that you don't love... she'll shake you off just as sure as the turn of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down... tells you she's hurting before she keels. Makes her a home.  -Mal

Main Menu

Poker

Started by Spooky, November 29, 2013, 11:19:49 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Spooky

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.
And I'm thinking you weren't burdened with an overabundance of schooling.

Eric

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

Spooky

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.

And I'm thinking you weren't burdened with an overabundance of schooling.

Eric


Spooky

#4
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)




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.





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.

And I'm thinking you weren't burdened with an overabundance of schooling.

Eric

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

Spooky

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. :)
And I'm thinking you weren't burdened with an overabundance of schooling.

Eric

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.

Spooky

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:


And I'm thinking you weren't burdened with an overabundance of schooling.

Spooky

Just booked my hotel and flight for Vegas in June to play one of the WSOP events!
And I'm thinking you weren't burdened with an overabundance of schooling.