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So I just deposited some cash into my PokerStars account, played 3 sit n go's, $1 buy-ins. Lost all 3 =(.
By some miracle I was able to make a a really good poker (the guy made some serious cash) friend I met playing Starcraft. He coached me for all three 3 Sit n Go's, telling what to do, why to do it, and yelling at me when I got too anxious and put out a stupid bets. Although I did lose all 3 games in a forgivable manner, being coached made me realized I still had a ton to learn about the game.
Just like starcraft, when I first started out I thought I had a lot of things figured out, and had most of the fundamental stuff down pat. Obviously after losing a few hundred games, and finally pushing myself to like 2100 - 2200 pts in diamond I realized how terrible I really was, and still am.
I'm assuming poker is going to be the same way, but losing a couple hundred hands before fixing my mistakes will actually really really suck. So to avoid making the same mistake, I'm looking for ways to practice without getting into the real thing.
Right now I'm playing sit n go's with play money, using the same strategy I had for the SnG's for real money. Which is basically just keep folding, and only play with premium hands + no monkey business with them. One of the things I realized about my play is the fact that I still do not have complete control over my emotions just yet. I don't know how much merit playing games with play money has, but I assume it can still help me somewhat with practicing and learning how to control my emotions during hands I'm in.
Does anyone have any tips for a beginner poker player looking to just build up a bankroll? Although I got beat out by bad beats in the Sit n Go's, I know for a goddamn fact that without my coach there, I would do a lot worse. I really want to be good enough to at least beat the weakest players in the game before I start really playing hard.
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1. dont use playmoney
2. take it slow and be very conscious of everything you do and why
3. tight son
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Theres an article out there titled "Hellmuth's top 10 poker hands" that helped me become a lot better play by ONLY playing these hands untill i get to the final table, where the strategy starts to faulter. Always remember you want to make less mistakes then everyone else and only put money into hands you are pretty much sure you will win. Play super tight and highly agressive when you get good hands and you will start winning. You can start out with a 20 dollar deposit @ one poker website and if you can get yourself up to 200 bucks and re-deposit at another site for a free 200 bucks(100% match). You can keep doing this all the way up to about a 1000 bucks sometimes depending on what bonuses are available.
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So playing around with play money doesn't help at all? I'm still working on staying as tight as possible. My definitions of what is tight and what is loose got really rattled when my buddy told me what was what.
Getting accustomed to playing like 1 hand in an hour builds up a lot of anxiety and whatnot. I mean, once I do hit that AK, AQ, AA, or KK, it's tough to stay completely calm. Especially confronted with a nasty flop or turn =_=. Do I really have to just grind it out through hundreds of SnG's before completely solid against those lvl of players?
Well maybe I can look at it as an investment or something... lose my first $50 learning, and go uphill from there or something...
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Imo. playmoney is fine if you are just trying to memorize all the basic hand ranges for each stack size and position, the basic stuff that you're supposed to be able to do without having to think for long each time.
When you start playing real money just have plenty of buyins available at your current level and don't take idiotic shots before you have the proper br for it. Multitable grinding SNGs can get incredibly tedious after a while and you'll probably find yourself stuck at a mindless robot state where you can grind a few dollars an hour but aren't actually improving, try to avoid that.
Seeing as you already have a coach you should have no problem crushing the micro stakes sngs, theres tons of profitable idiots there.
"Hellmuth's top 10 poker hands" that helped me become a lot better play by ONLY playing these hands untill i get to the final table
No
If you want to read something you should read something that teaches how to think and not what to think, Mossman's sng book is something that is oftentimes recommended to newbies but you'll probably find plenty of good information for free on the internet (twoplustwo, liquidpoker).
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Teamliquid has its own site for poker.
http://www.liquidpoker.net/
You should def start posting and reading there. The articles in the beginning section is the best place to start reading. Also reason why you're starting with sng's first instead of cash games?
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On December 15 2010 05:04 Ilikestarcraft wrote:Teamliquid has its own site for poker. http://www.liquidpoker.net/You should def start posting and reading there. The articles in the beginning section is the best place to start reading. Also reason why you're starting with sng's first instead of cash games?
haha the "articles for beginners" section on liquidpoker is terrible, not that LP is terrible as a site, it's actually pretty good as a whole.
read twoplustwo instead.
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On December 15 2010 05:04 Ilikestarcraft wrote:
Also reason why you're starting with sng's first instead of cash games?
My coach said I learn the fundamentals easier from SnG's and Cash games have too much stuff to learn for a newbie.
@Puoso - lol yeah, my buddy kept going on and on about how juicy my tables were.
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I find it alot easier to make money at a single table of 6-10 people with each person buying in for 3-10 bucks. Cheap tournaments are a grind and most people are there to gamble and not play poker. You should be seeing less than 25% of the flop, and I find playing two games at once will be less boring because youll get more than one hand an hour. I really reccomend you learn about pot odds and just play way tighter than you think.
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On December 15 2010 05:06 jalstar wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 05:04 Ilikestarcraft wrote:Teamliquid has its own site for poker. http://www.liquidpoker.net/You should def start posting and reading there. The articles in the beginning section is the best place to start reading. Also reason why you're starting with sng's first instead of cash games? haha the "articles for beginners" section on liquidpoker is terrible, not that LP is terrible as a site, it's actually pretty good as a whole. read twoplustwo instead.
Its a good place to start off from if hes a total newbie. Of course it has outdated stuff but it also has valuable information for you're starting off.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/69/micro-stakes-pl-nl/unl-archives-memorable-strategy-threads-430489/
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sngs have higher variance than cash games. thus you need a bigger bankroll if you wanna grind sngs or mtts.
just play the .01/.02c games. play it real safe
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On December 15 2010 05:07 Snuggles wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 05:04 Ilikestarcraft wrote:
Also reason why you're starting with sng's first instead of cash games? My coach said I learn the fundamentals easier from SnG's and Cash games have too much stuff to learn for a newbie. @Puoso - lol yeah, my buddy kept going on and on about how juicy my tables were.
I actually think the opposite. Cash games nl 2 with a $50 bankroll is the best way to start. Its the only way to come out from the start as a winner. The players at that level are really bad that I see it impossible for you to lose your entire bankroll while you're trying to learn the game. Don't play play money unless you're really new with the rules or you just want to get used to the software for a few hands. The thing with sng's is that you're not going to win a sng with playing really tight. You're going to end up living longer but the blinds will eventually rape you and you'll be forced to all in with air. Sng's require you to adjust and loosen up as the blinds get higher. You'll end up losing your bankroll faster with sngs. With 2$ buy ins .01/.02 games you will just be losing a few cents here and there. While with sngs you're going to be losing 1$ each time you play.
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Nice links guys, I really appreciate it.
In the game I'm in right now I've only played 4 out 64 hands (6%). I've won all the hands I played in, so it's lookin pretty darn good lol. 6% Seems really really low though... of course all the players are a bunch of crazy monkeys, but is 6% a bit too low or just right with the way I'm playing? Seeing how I'm having success, I assume that I'm playing it right, but I want to hear from you experts out there.
Still on the lookout for the situation where I'll think that I'm the favorite in the hand, when in actuality flop is really nasty and bad things can happen... because that where I think I will screw up and lose it all.
In the meantime time to check these links....
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Another one bites the dust. Sigh... Oh well..
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6% a bit too low or just right with the way I'm playing?
This is an impossible to answer question when you give no other information, also 64 hands sample size is incredibly small and thus hardly tells anything. Stack sizes, position, how close to bubble we are etc. all affect your ranges a ton. This makes sngs a very math oriented type of poker and as a result often considered boring as fuck.
I definitely agree with ilikestarcraft, cash games might be easier to start with but more importantly in my opinion they are just a lot more fun to play. I figured your coach was an sng specialist himself and if thats the case then its of course sensible to learn sngs from him so you can build your br before becoming a true warrior of online poker.
Also you might want to take advantage of the free trial offers by different training sites, DeucesCracked offers one week for free and they have a ton of valuable content that you can watch during that time.
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For me I liked sng's better at first when I got started. And the reason was just because I could play more hands lol.
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As a poker player who uses winnings to survive in college, I have to say a couple of things.
1. Don't use play money, it's a waste of time. Throw up like $10 to start with, play micro funds and work your way up.
2. Choose right away if you want to be a Sit N Go player, or Cash player. It's really hard to transition from one to the other, as the styles are very different when blinds are $5/$10, or Buy In's are at $500
3. I would recommend reading Doyle Brunsons book Super System. It helped me improve my game a ton. I went from a good player to a solid player by reading this book, as it helped me tighten up in certain situations and loosen up in others.
4. Don't rage after you donk out of a tournament and play some super turbo game and lose a shit load of money. If you donk out, cool off and do something else. Play again after you feel okay.
5. Since you are a beginner, I would recommend playing 9 man SNG's, and play at a very micro level while learning the game. Play tight, while taking opportunities to check out your bluffing game and your aggressiveness as the money amount allows you to find your style of game.
6. Play on fulltiltpoker.net, my personal preference hehe
7. READ DOYLE BRUNSON'S BOOK. PM me if you don't want to go spend $50 on it, I have a pdf copy of it - o-. Learning odds is huge, and learning how to play certain hands is also huge. A consistent way of playing is important since bad beats will occur. LEARN ODDS/PROBABILITIES.
Feel free to PM me any questions, I have made over $10,000 in the last year or so just by solid play.
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On December 15 2010 05:09 Ilikestarcraft wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 05:06 jalstar wrote:On December 15 2010 05:04 Ilikestarcraft wrote:Teamliquid has its own site for poker. http://www.liquidpoker.net/You should def start posting and reading there. The articles in the beginning section is the best place to start reading. Also reason why you're starting with sng's first instead of cash games? haha the "articles for beginners" section on liquidpoker is terrible, not that LP is terrible as a site, it's actually pretty good as a whole. read twoplustwo instead. Its a good place to start off from if hes a total newbie. Of course it has outdated stuff but it also has valuable information for you're starting off. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/69/micro-stakes-pl-nl/unl-archives-memorable-strategy-threads-430489/
It's a specific system to beat the micros that worked in 2007 when almost all microstakes players were terrible. Twoplustwo has more up-to-date resources, and you shouldn't use a specific system anyways.
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Norway28716 Posts
1: it's too late to start playing online poker now and expect to make a significant amount of money, unless you live in a development country where making $4 per hour is a significant amount of money. even $4 per hour is gonna take you a fair amount of dedication to accomplish if all you've played is 3 tournaments.
2: you won't need a couple hundred hands to learn poker, or even a couple hundred sitngos. you'll need thousands of tournaments/sitngos and tens of thousands of hands.
3: there's no way to actually learn playing the stake of your choice without playing the stake of your choice, because online poker is about identifying patterns and exploiting these patterns. patterns your opponents follow depends upon several factors - what is trendy at the moment, is this player a good or bad player, and what stakes does he play.
4: even if you are theoretically strong at poker (which it is to some degree possible to become without having played a lot), there's no way of knowing how you deal with inevitable swings and whether you end up tilting. (Consciously or not). These factors are much harder to master than the theoretical aspect of poker, especially if you have some understanding of math, and more importantly, these aspects are largely ones where you actually can't improve. I have friends who know how to calculate pot odds, who know what amount of hands they should open from different positions, who know proper betsizing, but whom are still losing players after putting in a couple thousand hours on pokerstars. why? they tilt after badbeats or grow impatient after some period of play leading to them no longer following the theory they know. then, what is worse, they
5: become unbearable human beings because they refuse to accept blame for their own shortcomings, constantly saying that they lose because they are unlucky, talk about the badbeats they have received, and how poker sucks. and then they ask me if they can have money on pokerstars because they got sucked out on and went broke and they don't want to deposit (giving back money in real life of course!), and then I say yes because I am not their mommy, knowing that they're going to lose.
if you somehow decide to completely ignore my advice here, which I find it likely that you will, then please visit our sister site www.liquidpoker.net, which has plenty of interesting hand discussions going on, some articles that might be of some use, and an odds-calculator. good luck and have fun.
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Liquid Drone has many good points about the game. Tilts will happen no matter how much you know the game or odds. This is where I think consistency and being able to deal with tilt comes in.
I went from $1/2 NL cash games, had lots of success and thought it was time to play $2/$5. I got killed there and had to move back. As stakes go up, the style changes. You will notice that right away.
I still think that taking down $1/$2 or $2/$5 games is very possible using a consistent style of play. You will get the occasional donkey playing ridiculous hands, but playing cash games allows you to leave the table or sit out. You can't blame yourself for bad beats, and tilt hard and start hating the game. You must be able to know that shit happens and continue to play the way you do, as the math never lies. if you lose to a 1 outer, you lost to a 1 outer. It happens. You MUST STAY CONSISTENT.
One thing I disagree with drone slightly is saying that it's too late to play online poker to make money. I started playing micro stakes for fun the 1st year of college, and had success very quickly due to fast theory and mathematical aspects of the game. It's never too late to start playing, you will find out very quickly if you are able to handle the pressure and tilts that will inevitably occur and I think that's where most players just end up giving up or going broke. The dedication is for sure there to be able to be a solid, successful player, but moving out of the micro stakes to take down $1/$2 games is very possible, and assuming SNUGGLES just wants to play to make a couple hundred dollars for change, it's not really too late for him to start.
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The rich bad players will always be there, ALWAYS. If you don't take it someone else will, fuck, I WILL LOL.
-Rekrul
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Norway28716 Posts
yea if he just wants to make a couple hundred dollars absolutely. but assuming he can get a job, he'd make more from working, at least for the first year+.
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Yeah, I'm really just looking to make like say $50 at the end of the year or something like that lol. TBH I'll be pretty damn proud of myself if I manage to look back at my bankroll after a year to see it grow 2x or 3x its original size.
I think the process of building yourself into a decent poker player is good just for developing your character. I mean, I've already noticed how badly things can get with just the tiniest bit of tilt. If I can stamp that out, that means I'll most likely be able to make better decisions somewhere in life with that kind of mindset.
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Lets just say that in my first month, I made like $50 bucks and was up to $1000 by the 3rd month.
anything is possible with some dedication. A job really isn't worth it in college lol
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How do you even play poker online in USA?
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Norway28716 Posts
first of all, when did you start playing? poker was considerably easier two years ago than it is now, and significantly easier 2 years prior to that again.
second, 50 bucks from 1 month is significantly less than a job, and at least in norway, you make significantly more than $1000 from 3 months of part time jobbing as well. third, how many hours did you put in?
if your answers are 1: less than a year ago, 2: it was impossible for me to find a job that paid more than $6 per hour, 3: I only played poker like 4 hours a week, then you are exceptionally talented and or exceptionally lucky/variance never caught up.
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I started playing last September, so a little over a year
Player poker doesn't seem like work for me, I actually enjoy it and would much rather play and get some entertainment out of it than working some shitty minimum wage job and having to drive out there in like -40 weather.
I probably played around 10 hours a week, and the variance was there. During this period, I lost $200+ and such at casinos, but made it all back playing online.
There is many reasons why playing poker is better than working a part time job. so many reasons, I won't list them all but it's worth making a little less. Poker does not seem like work to me, as I enjoy it
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Sorry if I'm hijacking your thread but I'm curious about something.
I always notice that the people who are pretty good at poker don't want others to get into poker. I remember watching AskJoshy's interview with Khan. Khan said he wouldn't recommend people getting into poker.
I'm just wondering.. Is it really too late to get into online poker? Is it actually that difficult to get good at it?
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Best Tip - Learn and Play Omaha cash games if you want to win money. To make any money at holdem now you have to be very good and it's not worth it. It takes 30 minutes coaching to turn any holdem player into a small loser.
Reasons to Play Omaha
1. Weaker Players + More Fish - Always will be because it's harder to learn
2. More Fun
3. More Challenging
4. FewerCoolers
5. Money to be Made
Forget SNG's you will get bored of them quickly.
Other Tip - Your not as good as you think you are ever, especially when your winning and your not as bad as you think you are when your losing.
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On December 15 2010 09:11 yarders wrote:
Reasons to Play Omaha
1. Weaker Players + More Fish - Always will be because it's harder to learn
2. More Fun
3. More Challenging
4. FewerCoolers
5. Money to be Made
Yes there are weaker players
Yes it CAN be more fun, but it can also be some of the most AGONIZING poker ever if you are running bad
I find Omaha not as challenging, as I find it more of an equity game than a psychological game
Fewer coolers....lol
Money to be made, definitely
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1) I disagree with the guys saying don't use play money. Playing SnGs for play money at first is fine, you get a chance to learn the structure and you can practice playing tight. Yes, everyone is an idiot but it helps you to learn discipline and patience, which are probably the two most important skills you can develop as a beginner.
2) Having said that, playing cash games for play money is probably a waste of time. Real money 1cent/2cent games > the highest play money games as a learning experience.
3) If you are serious about playing for real money, read "The Poker Mindset" by Mathew Hilger or "Elements of Poker" by Tommy Angelo. Just do it. You will learn much more about what it actually means to play poker by reading these books than visiting any strategy forum or site.
4) Don't read anything written by Phil Hellmuth
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@Carthac
I take your point that it can be AGONIZING when you run bad but I think this will help a new player to gain discipline faster. It may also help them to decide if they really want to take poker on seriously.
Of course you can also run amazingly well. I once had a session where I was coaching a friend of mine at 25 PL Rush on FT (2tables) and we won 45 BI over the course of 4 hours, that was brilliant.
When I say there are fewer coolers what I mean is you rarely get it in where your crushed in PLO. Yes there is a lot of variance but again I think this helps discpline and you will become desensitised more quickly and your decision making will improve faster.
The bottom line is if you want to make money this is the way to go
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On December 15 2010 04:49 Divinek wrote:
1. dont use playmoney
2. take it slow and be very conscious of everything you do and why
3. tight son
4. Expect to lose money when you start out.
5. Don't get that "big win" get to you.
I deposited $30 into my account... Lost $12. Gained $14. Then lost $18 because I let that $14 win streak get to my head.  I don't plan to ever make a living off of this so I don't mind much. I do want to get better though.
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I finally made it through the bubble in a SnG with my friend coaching me on, and jeez... there's so much to learn...
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I also used poker to pay for college. Short and sweet, the best piece of advice has been laid out in front of you:
On December 15 2010 06:24 Liquid`Drone wrote:
1: it's too late to start playing online poker now and expect to make a significant amount of money
The days of simply set mining and making 100$ an hour are way over. I started up in 2005 and even though the games back then were way easier than they are now, I still feel like I missed out by two or three years to really make a profit. Nowadays, the difficulty of games coupled with how hard poker sites rake the micro stakes makes it massively hard for newcomers to do anything worth their time.
Play for the fun of it and don't get attached. If it's money your after, your better off holding out your hat to strangers at your nearest street corner.
"Blah, blah, blah read this, blah blah, practice practice, blah blah, I made this amount over this amount of time." You'll hear this endlessly from players. No. They're not baller, there's thousands others like this who freely state how much they have made and will provide their progress history. Same shit, different day. Being proud of being a marginal winner at low and mid stakes is standard, and many players will post more to brag than to help, without realizing how atrociously simple it is over time to do this. I believe getting raw advice hard to find with poker.
Enjoy it and try not to fall into the mentality of "hell, I don't care what people say, I can beat the odds. I'm going to make some serious money!" If you can do that and play to learn, and most importantly have fun, then your already a winner in my book. Progression will slowly come, but just be aware how relative that progression is.
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EPT
