Joined: Mar '13
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 40 (F)
Posts: 48
hi,
so been gettin into poker and after a storming start im back down to zero! now most from bad play and a little from pure luck
so after a little reading...
ive read your meant to keep your bets preflop the same size as to not show your good and semi-good hands - but you watch poker pros on tv and they are all over the shop in terms of size
how often are you meant to keep betting into people as a continuation bet when you have nothing? ive read a 20% bluff ratio should be aimed for? i know this is subjective but hey,
Joined: Apr '11
Location: Romania
Age: 35 (M)
Posts: 6669
It really depends on what you play, on cash games my advice would be to do a cbet with aprox 60% of the pot, you shouldn't be afraid to bet because many time you'll take the pot this way
On tournaments indeed you can cbet a bit less but on long term i assure you that is profitable
Joined: Feb '08
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 35 (M)
Posts: 1886
So many different points to raise here.
First of all poker on TV is edited to only show the most interesting hands, the players tend to be very over-confident, they know each other well so it's not the same as how they play with strangers, most of them are trying to show off rather than make money, and they are all receiving huge sponsorship to be interesting rather than good players. So players who watch the pros play on TV and think they can learn from that in online poker, are in for a shock.
now if you had a storming start and then lost it all very quickly, the chances are you didn't stick to good bankroll management, cos luck and downswings shouldn't factor in if you are making all decisions plus ev and play the right levels. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I recommend you read up on bankroll management and +/-ev. If you only won initially due to good luck then I suggest you learn some more about poker.
Regarding bet sizes, I personally think you should vary your bet sizes but try not to vary them according them to how good they are. In general, preflop raises should be bigger if there are more people in the hand regardless of whether you have KQ or AA but never over bet as it can be screamingly obvious you have a monster. The size of a c-bet varies depending on your position, the size of the pot and the flop cards. For instance if the board comes 10 9 4 rainbow, you wanna bet about two thirds of the pot, enough to price people out of calling but not so much it looks like a complete bluff, the secret of c-bets imo is to bet just over the amount they would call with crap.
Finally, knowing when to c-bet is difficult but very important. You get to learn instinctively when to make the move, when you can represent a hand, when opponents will fold. Don't set yourself a target of bluffing, don't ever think I'm not bluffing enough. Instead, think am I not being aggressive enough, am I not defending my pots enough, how many chances have I missed? Different players bluff different amounts but beginners usually bluff too much and in the wrong places.
Joined: Jan '11
Location: United States
Age: 60 (M)
Posts: 3361
awood makes very strong points especially when it comes to to watching the pros play on the tube. I'd have to say they are strategists also. They are playing against the odds as well as eachother and the fact of knowing how eachother play in various situations is an advantage in itself.
One thing I've learned in my short time of playing is, there are a lot of good hands and bluffing comes in only after you have had enough time to make an impression on players you been playing with. Since being on one site for quite some time and playing the same level with, for the most part, the same players, they (your opponents) know you as well as you know them. At this point I can get by with a bluff every now and then due to never really being that type of a player. Even if you lose hands, but they see you had a good starting hand they seem to know your not calling with nothing. Like I said though, this is due to playing what I'll call regulars at the same level of play.
Joined: Feb '11
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 59 (M)
Posts: 5712
Steffi....you aska question that seems to require a very simple answer, but I am afraid as you have no doubt gathered that there is no simple or correct answer to your question. Variation is key otherwise you will be read easily. Mix it up and keep people guessing, but also if you do, be prepared to lose some to win some.
Joined: Mar '11
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 1646
Just put in a lot of volume. The more time you spend playing poker the more situations you will get in that you can learn from. I have a thread with some hand charts in that i think you will find very useful as they give you a very good base to build from. Once you get more comfortable with the game and have put in some hours of playing you can deviate from the charts to suit the way you feel comfortable playing. http://www.bankrollmob.com/forum.asp?mode=thread&id...
I wouldn't use the play seen on TV as any kind of yardstick. As other have said. it's the interesting hands that get shown which basically means the hands where something unusual happens. You never see the vast majority of hands.
The best way to learn is to use websites like this one and to buy some poker books to benefit from the experience of others. Then you need to start practicing which means playing poker. One of the most important skills to master is proper bankroll mangement.
Joined: Mar '13
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 40 (F)
Posts: 48
cheers for the replies, ive seen those charts on badbeat, they do help. and it was bad bankroll mgt 2!
my next question - when does a check show a sign of weakness compared to just checking round to the preflop raiser? is it more reading the players after playing them for a while? or more when you move up the stakes to better players?
also - how often should you be chasing the draw or flush when your one off on the flop - is there a chart somewhere with all the odds?
Joined: Mar '11
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 1646
I tend to find at low levels that if someone has raised preflop and they make a C-bet of less then half the pot and then check the turn then that indicates weakness. So you can pretty much float with nothing on the flop and bet the turn and they will fold. Seems pretty obvious but you will be surprised at how often this happens. Also what i have noticed is that if you are the raiser preflop and someone donk bets (bets into the preflop raiser from out of position) then you can guarantee that they have hit the flop or they are on a good draw. So if you have an over pair or hit the flop hard yourself (set or two pair or the nut flush draw) you can re-raise and almost always get a call. If your re-raise isn't too big of course because they might be doing it with second pair. Or at the other end, if you haven't hit you can easily fold. Just remember that at low stakes you can't bluff people off hands so easy, they will call you down with top pair weak kicker quite a lot. Good luck
Joined: Feb '08
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 35 (M)
Posts: 1886
Posted by steffi500: cheers for the replies, ive seen those charts on badbeat, they do help. and it was bad bankroll mgt 2!
my next question - when does a check show a sign of weakness compared to just checking round to the preflop raiser? is it more reading the players after playing them for a while? or more when you move up the stakes to better players?
also - how often should you be chasing the draw or flush when your one off on the flop - is there a chart somewhere with all the odds?
If you flat call in early position preflop you are very likely to be faced with a difficult decision on the flop. As a beginner you are better off avoiding calling a preflop raise out of position with KQ, A10 or middle pairs, since it is really hard to know when to bet out/check-call on the flop unless you hit a monster. Sometimes however you will be priced in to calling preflop or come up against a player you suspect is weak. If you check the flop, with the exception of certain dangerous flops like flops of all one suit or J Q A, you are nearly always going to face a bet, so you have to make a decision whether it's easier to control the hand by betting out or by calling an aggressive player. There is no easy formula for this as it all depends on your read and your hand, that's why it's best to avoid hitting medium to strong hands out of position.
As for your next question, when to chase drawing hands, the simple answer is to use maths to calculate ev. This is where you count up all the cards that you think give you the winning hand and work out how much more you have to put into the pot compared to how big the pot is, so if you've got 25% chance of hitting the river you don't want to call a pot-sized bet on the turn. However, in reality it's more complicated as you need to consider implied odds too. Consider whether the other player is likely to call your massive bet on the river when the flush draw hits. Consider whether the other player could also be chasing draws and if you have a ten high flush draw you might wanna play it safe by letting it go early rather than face a difficult all-in decision. It is often better to bet out (semi-bluff) with drawing hands as it disguises your hand better.
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Portugal
Age: 44 (M)
Posts: 4827
They are playing a different game. And, when on tv, we tend to see only some of the hands, not the entire game, which fail to give us the exact leture of the tourney. If your game is singla table SnGs, you can try to play the most discreet possible, to turn things harder to read for your opponents. But you can also be loosing some chances to get more chips.
