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Learning Poker?
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Kaeru
Sweden552 Posts
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Pengu1n
United States552 Posts
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Kaeru
Sweden552 Posts
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MrCon
France29748 Posts
Check out pokertube and look for cash game show, WSOP is tournament play and you won't learn a lot, unless you watch the live streams that show every single hand, as they just select the few spectacular hands. "High stakes poker" or "poker after dark (the cash game)" are ok but it's not exactly learning shows. But it should interest you at least. 2+2 forums are more the TL of poker than LiquidPoker. There are various poker books torrent packs. Theory of poker by D.Slansky is a good book to read, it's a classic. Theory and practice by the same author too. There are more modern books but I haven't read them =) | ||
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Rhaegar99
Australia1190 Posts
2+2 forums is the largest community for poker. You can probably get all the information you need there if you search hard enough. I would still recommend you to visit liquidpoker. I'm not too sure what you mean by the quality. Sure its a lot less moderated compared to teamliquid, however the community itself can be very helpful if you ask the right questions. Most people that discuss hands are usually winners of the game. In 2+2 forums, it will be more difficult to know whether the answer you are getting are from winners or losers. | ||
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trias_e
United States520 Posts
You generally want at least a 20 buyin bankroll. Of course if you are a losing player no bankroll will protect you from losing it all eventually. But even if you are a winning player if your bankroll is too small you risk going broke due to a downswing. I would highly suggest starting at .05/.10, depositing 200 bucks. Grab hold'em manager so you accurately track your play, statistics, and easily review your big hands. Read 2+2 forums, get a wide variety of books. Sklanksy - ToP as mentioned is a great place to start. It's mainly to teach you how to think about poker mathematically. | ||
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Fumanchu
Canada669 Posts
When you're starting out, and you're not comfortable reading people yet, play only the top ten hands. If you play only these top ten hands, in most games low level games, you'll come out on top. The top ten hands in order are: A,A K,K Q,Q A,K J,J 10,10 9,9 8,8 A,Q 7-7 By only playing these hands you can get more experience at any given table and be able to stick out longer than most of your competitors. Also, if you show a couple of these hands after winning, it gets easier to bluff in later hands. Unless of course you're not playing for real money. Which leads me to... Don't bother using strategy in low money games. Don't get me wrong, I love playing poker with my friends and some of the greatest memories I have in poker have been created at a buddies house. But applying strategy just doesn't work when there's no risk involved. Even when you have a good group of guys who like to treat friendly poker games as "competitive", there's always a good possibility that after you make a great bluff on the river representing a flush, they come to realize that you're both playing for five bucks, and will make the call based on that. Same goes for online games. Don't bother applying strategy to games that have a free buy-in, or the people are playing for funny money. Learn to identify the people that you play with. In general there will always be these people, as represented as animals, in every table you play at. The Mouse: This is the guy who plays super tight. This is the guy who plays the top ten hands and hardly ever raises someone else's bet. But when he does raise, look out, 'cause he's got a great hand. The Lion: This guy is your better than average player. He plays more than the top ten hands, and he's not afraid to bluff, and he's not afraid to call bluffs. The Jackal: This guy loves to be in pots. He bets any face card, or any ace, and he has wild swings where he loses a lot, or wins a lot. If he runs good, you might think he's the world's best player. In general this guy raises like crazy, but rarely has the justification to do it. The Elephant: Basically the elephant just feeds the other players his money. He never folds when he's supposed to, and most of the time people don't bother raising him, because he just calls all the time. Only guy that raises him would be the jackal. Slowly but surely, he will feed the other players his money. Doesn't fold, doesn't bluff, just calls. The Eagle: The eagle is your super high stakes player. Most of us will never get to play with one. We're talking like top 100 poker players. He just sits high in the air, and chooses the right time to swoop down and take unsuspecting players chips. This is what I remember from the book. If I can find it, then I'll update my post to correct anything I said wrong, but I think this pretty close to what he says. You said you just wanted to learn for a while first. Spectate some games on pokerstars or ulimatebet or whatever your favourite poker site is. Remember to only watch games that have serious money at stake. Try and see if you can properly identify who the animals at the table are. Once you're able to figure out who the jackal is, who the mouse and elephant are, it becomes a lot easier to play hands. | ||
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Kaeru
Sweden552 Posts
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trias_e
United States520 Posts
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Kaeru
Sweden552 Posts
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Bourne
United Kingdom152 Posts
On August 18 2012 12:48 Kaeru wrote: Thanks guys! I'll for sure check out the books you mentioned, 2+2 Forum and give Liquid Poker another try! One thing about playing online that I thought about. I put in $500 as my bankroll and play on $0.5/$1 because I actually find it easier to play POKER against people at that level. I tried playing micro stakes in the start but it feels like everything is so random there. Is it even possible to read the people at $0.05/$0.1? I mean, if I were to compare it to StarCraft... I am about high master with all 3 races and if I scout a diamond league player I am usually 95% sure of what he is up to, what he is thinking, how to delay him, how to take his attention away and so on... If I want to go for mass BC, I know what to do in order to look strong and delay his push... But against a lower league I can scout and understand what he is doing... Scout 2 minutes later and tilt my head and wonder 'What the...? Ok, I guess he is preparing to attack soon...(?)'. But then no attack comes and you scout again and go '....? Ok, I don't know what this guys plan is...'. I won't know his plan because he doesn't have a plan. You can't read or learn anything from someone that doesn't have a plan! Thats why I figured going to the higher stakes would be smart. I don't have any experience in this, maybe there are solid ways of learning how to read and win at micro stakes. But do you guys agree on what I'm saying or am I flying in the blue here? SC2 does have some transferable skills if you are master league at sc2 and they are diamond you will beat them everygame, in poker you will still beat them, but you need the bankroll to support variance through bad beats. other than that, seems like your doing OK and mention the forums mentioned above! P.S please look at some bankroll management! dont want to see you lose it all! | ||
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Rhaegar99
Australia1190 Posts
I feel you are not quite understanding the meaning behind 'reading'. It does not mean you put them on an exact hand. You put them on a range of possible hands that they maybe hold based on the board, their actions, and their history. Micro stakes players are extremely easy to play against as they either do not know what they are doing, or they do not often mix up their play. All you have to do is to identify their types and play accordingly. Please listen to the peoples suggestion and start at the micros. Also understand that just because your good or decent at SC dosnt mean that your gonna be good at poker, nor will you learn faster, not will you be able to multitable better. These two are completely different games. Goodluck | ||
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justinqt
United States28 Posts
2+2 is also a great website for information. If you plan to play live more, listen to Bart Hanson podcasts, they are absolutely AMAZING. Improved my game so much listening and extrapolating and applying the theory and thoughts into my game. | ||
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GnarlyArbitrage
575 Posts
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Kaeru
Sweden552 Posts
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hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
Same goes for watching cash games. Some of the commentary is good but some contains advice that's just wrong. Maybe look at the durrrr Million Dollar Challenge with commentary from Isaac Haxton and Phil Galfond - both high stakes pros. Other than that, just look at different sources and try to figure out what's useful and what isn't. I think you'll find that the underlying structure of poker is very different from what it seems from a few days or weeks of play. But I don't want to prejudge either way. | ||
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Lyter
United Kingdom2145 Posts
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GnarlyArbitrage
575 Posts
On August 19 2012 02:00 Kaeru wrote: Thanks a lot, I didn't think of bankroll management so much until I posted this. Thanks! I'm for sure asking these questions to take the advice I get  So I will keep studying and move down to micro stakes. Obviously I am currently very bad at putting people on a range of hands, but that comes with time and study I guess.One other question I have is about the multi-tables. Would you play your game differently when being on 6 tables insted of 1? And HOW do people play on that many tables?! Does it come down to gaining more and more experience and spending less time on each decision? The only reason I am comparing to StarCraft is because I am on a StarCraft community so the metaphors becomes easy. Is this compareable with lets say you're Protoss and you see Terran goes 1-1-1, when I was not as good I could catch myself thinking really hard for 10-20 seconds 'What should I do?!? Sentry? Immortal? One more Gate? Flank? Move out? SHIT HE MADE CLOAK!'. When I got more skilled I could simply see his marine count, buildings and without even thinking about it do the correct decisions and stop it. Obviously I can spend my time doing other things then figuring out HOW to stop it. So, what I want to come down to is. What makes people sit on more tables and when is it time to add more tables? I Personally wouldn't sit on more then 1 table now, maybe try 2 max!! But I'm really interested in how people think when they are at 10 tables. To multi-table effectively, you need to know your opponents. Otherwise, you'll end up playing your cards and not the players themselves. This is where programs like poker tracker and holdem manager come into play. If you watch the big players play, you'll notice it's usually the same people playing. Once you go into micro stakes, it's next to impossible to find the same person. Micro stakes is where you learn ABC poker. Putting people on hands isn't really easy when the person you're playing agaisnt has no idea how strong his hand actually is. (Or weak.) If you have pocket aces, you should always bet out in micro stakes. Never try to be cute and slowplay them. You don't make as much money. There's two main types of players in micro stakes: Gamblers and nits. Either, the person doesn't give a shit about the two dollars and will be trying to either play you or just gamble, or the person will only play the strongest hands. With the gambler, you play like a nit because he will call you down. If you're playing agaisnt a nit, you play like a gambler because he won't be many pots at all. | ||
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MrCon
France29748 Posts
On August 18 2012 12:48 Kaeru wrote: Thanks guys! I'll for sure check out the books you mentioned, 2+2 Forum and give Liquid Poker another try! One thing about playing online that I thought about. I put in $500 as my bankroll and play on $0.5/$1 because I actually find it easier to play POKER against people at that level. I tried playing micro stakes in the start but it feels like everything is so random there. Is it even possible to read the people at $0.05/$0.1? I mean, if I were to compare it to StarCraft... I am about high master with all 3 races and if I scout a diamond league player I am usually 95% sure of what he is up to, what he is thinking, how to delay him, how to take his attention away and so on... If I want to go for mass BC, I know what to do in order to look strong and delay his push... But against a lower league I can scout and understand what he is doing... Scout 2 minutes later and tilt my head and wonder 'What the...? Ok, I guess he is preparing to attack soon...(?)'[. But then no attack comes and you scout again and go '....? Ok, I don't know what this guys plan is...'. I won't know his plan because he doesn't have a plan. You can't read or learn anything from someone that doesn't have a plan! Thats why I figured going to the higher stakes would be smart. I don't have any experience in this, maybe there are solid ways of learning how to read and win at micro stakes. But do you guys agree on what I'm saying or am I flying in the blue here? The sentence I bolded and italicized is terrible, terrible, terrible. I could write a lot more "terrible" but you get the point, you should not think like that (and the guy answering your post did a good sc analogy). Imagine you can play 2 tables : a table full of monkeys (real monkeys, imagine they can somehow play cards) and a table full of smart, average people. If you can't beat the monkeys, you won't be able to beat the smart people. But your reasoning was that the monkeys are too dumb so you can't beat them. Your winrate in very low stakes should be enormous or your winrate in low stakes will be zero or negative. Don't think you're an exception, because you're not. This is very important to understand this. Basically the higher stakes, the lowest average winrate, but as the stakes are higher your hourly gain is still better. (if it's not, you're better playing lower stakes with an higher winrate). Anyway I digress, I just wanted to warn you about this line of thinking in poker. | ||
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Kaeru
Sweden552 Posts
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guitarizt
United States1492 Posts
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Xiron
Germany1233 Posts
On August 27 2012 19:56 guitarizt wrote: As far as the technical aspect goes poker is easier than starcraft, but handling the psychological aspect of the game adds another variable that a lot of people have trouble handling. Being able to read your opponents is 95% of what makes a poker player. | ||
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EscPlan9
United States2777 Posts
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EscPlan9
United States2777 Posts
About books, here's what I recommend: * Harrington on Holdem series by Harrington (he has some on tournament games as well as cash games, and all of them are outstanding) * Theory of Poker / NL Theory Holdem and Practice by Sklansky (a little more abstract, but it's a book you'll re-read many many times throughout your poker life and always learn something new and know how to apply it to various poker games) * Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker by Little (must read for multi-table tournament players) * The Poker Mindset by Hilger (helps a lot with the psychological stresses you'll have to manage) | ||
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guitarizt
United States1492 Posts
On August 27 2012 20:06 Xiron wrote: Being able to read your opponents is 95% of what makes a poker player. NL holdem is getting to the point where people are technically figuring it out well enough that it doesn't even really matter what the other guy does unless he's awesome. You can play a certain range a certain way and if he deviates too far from what is theoretically optimal than you win. | ||
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BrTarolg
United Kingdom3574 Posts
On August 27 2012 20:06 Xiron wrote: Being able to read your opponents is 95% of what makes a poker player. Actually i think handling the swings and the money management and life management is way more important. I've seen so many people just spew it all away or just not be able to hold onto a growing bankroll. Some people can play great poker but just lack the ability to move up into higher stakes where really, the game isn't even that much tougher I mean, take the opposite there are loads of guys who never tilt, grind like monsters, don't get fazed by swings at all, live a normal lifestyle and rampantly fill up every table space and bumhunt queues for for one fish for a tiny edge. They don't even need to be good at poker to make money if they can do this lol | ||
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