Ask me about poker!

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JaySB: Nov 16, 2006

maskenfreiheit posted:

So what are most people's heuristics for when to go in vs fold?

I've been practicing and notice I have tendency to get bored and try to see the flop with sub par hands like J8s.

Just don't see the flop w/o at least a pair or suited face cards?

Lol wut

# ? Jul 21, 2017 20:59

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# ? Apr 24, 2024 22:32

maskenfreiheit: Dec 30, 2004

JaySB posted:

Lol wut

Like, how do you decide whether to fold pre-flop.

I've been folding pre-flop. unless I have at least a pair or suited high cards.

# ? Jul 21, 2017 21:04

bengy81: May 8, 2010

maskenfreiheit posted:

Like, how do you decide whether to fold pre-flop.

I've been folding pre-flop. unless I have at least a pair or suited high cards.

That's seems like a pretty exploitable play style tbh. I mean I don't play tons live but it probably good enough to win at 1/2...but I feel like at best you are leaving some money on the table...
I would at least try to find some decent starting hand charts and memorize those or do some flopzilla or pokerstove work and try to come up with some decent ranges for different positions.

# ? Jul 22, 2017 01:03

jase1: Aug 11, 2004; Flankensttein: A name given to a FPS gamer who constantly flanks to get kills.

"So I was playing COD yesterday, and some flankenstein came up from behind and shot me."

You can't just play the same starting cards everytime you have to mix it up. What position are you in? How many people at the table? Aggressive players or nits? There are so many different factors to determine besides just the starting hand.

I just recently moved to Florida and the play here is vastly different than Cleveland. In Cleveland a majority of people are super aggressive so I tend to play a little tighter based on position. In Florida they are all rocks and are sitting there waiting to die with their retirement money so I play super aggressive and steal pots with lovely hands all the time. I amaze myself at how many times I get old dudes to fold when I have nothing. In Cleveland I couldn't get bottom pair to fold and usually had to set a lot of traps and check call or check raise. Doing that also raises the risk of letting your opponent catch up to you or hitting his draw so it's very tricky. You should be constantly changing your play style so people can't figure you out. If you just play premium hands especially in a cash game then in my opinion you are headed for disaster.

# ? Jul 22, 2017 13:49

maskenfreiheit: Dec 30, 2004

to be clear, i'm not a total nit... if i have a chip advantage and someone seems like a shy player i'll steal a few pots here and there

ex: i'm playing 1/2 NL, catch A5 unsuited, BB is a slowly dwindling nit, i'll raise 5 or 10 and watch him run.

# ? Jul 22, 2017 15:42

JaySB: Nov 16, 2006

There's literally a million resources on hand ranges. Sticking to "pairs and suited face cards" is awful.

# ? Jul 22, 2017 18:50

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

JaySB posted:

There's literally a million resources on hand ranges. Sticking to "pairs and suited face cards" is awful.

To be fair you could do worse, but you can do a lot better

# ? Jul 23, 2017 21:54

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

maskenfreiheit posted:

So what are most people's heuristics for when to go in vs fold?

I've been practicing and notice I have tendency to get bored and try to see the flop with sub par hands like J8s.

Just don't see the flop w/o at least a pair or suited face cards?

Are you talking about in tournaments?

The cards you see the flop with vary hugely depending on the situation. I mean, you have to start with some rudimentary advice somewhere (we all did) but most of the people talking to you here have played poker for years and years and when you ask them "what are your heuristics for when to go in vs. fold?" the immediate reaction is to talk about the what-ifs because they are what matters the most in those decisions.

Here's one of the best players in the world talking about his decisions that went into how he played a now famous hand, it's in a cash game but I'm posting it so you can hear him think about what he was actually thinking about. When I first saw this video I was pretty excited to hear what was going on in his head because the play to me looked insane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR6AHzamALs

Here's another well known and very good poker player walking you though his decisions similarly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i97F6I2xrKc

If you're looking for a good place to start with what hands to open with in a tournament the best thing to start thinking about is a thing called M:

https://www.888poker.com/magazine/strategy/m-ratio-poker/

The key to all poker decisions is to think "does this make me money long term." Throwing away a good prospect is as expensive as pitching in money on a losing spot. Its difficult to do this well, that's the essence of poker.

raton fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Jul 23, 2017

# ? Jul 23, 2017 22:02

maskenfreiheit: Dec 30, 2004

Sheep-Goats posted:

Are you talking about in tournaments?

The cards you see the flop with vary hugely depending on the situation. I mean, you have to start with some rudimentary advice somewhere (we all did) but most of the people talking to you here have played poker for years and years and when you ask them "what are your heuristics for when to go in vs. fold?" the immediate reaction is to talk about the what-ifs because they are what matters the most in those decisions.

Here's one of the best players in the world talking about his decisions that went into how he played a now famous hand, it's in a cash game but I'm posting it so you can hear him think about what he was actually thinking about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR6AHzamALs

Here's another well known and very good poker player walking you though his decisions similarly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i97F6I2xrKc

If you're looking for a good place to start with what hands to open with in a tournament the best thing to start thinking about is a thing called M:

https://www.888poker.com/magazine/strategy/m-ratio-poker/

The key to all poker decisions is to think "does this make me money long term." Throwing away a good prospect is as expensive as pitching in money on a losing spot. Its difficult to do this well, that's the essence of poker.

Thanks, those are some cool links.

I'm more thinking of cash games.

I also don't have a ton of experience, so my upcoming trip to Vegas will be a trial by fire. (Purposefully set a budget I can afford to lose all of)

# ? Jul 23, 2017 22:05

jase1: Aug 11, 2004; Flankensttein: A name given to a FPS gamer who constantly flanks to get kills.

"So I was playing COD yesterday, and some flankenstein came up from behind and shot me."

I prefer this play. Balls of steel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2VkLJKfLYo

# ? Jul 23, 2017 23:18

Imaduck: Apr 16, 2007; the magnetorotational instability turns me on

maskenfreiheit posted:

So what are most people's heuristics for when to go in vs fold?

I've been practicing and notice I have tendency to get bored and try to see the flop with sub par hands like J8s.

Just don't see the flop w/o at least a pair or suited face cards?

I made a post earlier in this thread that's probably a good place to start for preflop strategy:

Imaduck posted:

Here are the basics for preflop poker for newbies:

1. You should not be playing very many hands at all. At a 10 person table, most solid strategies involve playing only 20-30% of your starting hands. Poker is a game of patience. 7-8 times out of 10 you should be folding, and typically as a new player, you should be on the tighter (more conservative) side of this.

2. There are basically two types of classes of hands you should play: hands that are naturally strong, like AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQ, KQ, etc., and hands that aren't necessarily strong on their own, but have the potential to make really big hands, e.g. TJs (the 's' means "suited"), 89s, 22+ (we're just trying to make three of a kind with small pairs), etc. These types of hands typically give us easier decisions as the hand progresses. Hands like Q7o ('o' means "offsuit") are difficult to play, because even if we hit our queen or 7, we won't know if it's the best hand since there are often going to be higher pair cards out there, or our opponents could have us out kicked. Hands like TJs are usually easy to play, because you can have flush and straight outs, and typically always have a decent idea where your hand stands by the river.

3. Never "limp" pots preflop. "Limping" means simply calling the big blind, instead of raising. Limping is a bad strategy, because it lets lots of other players into our pot for cheap, and often defines our hand as at least somewhat weak, which lets other players attack us too easily. Playing multiway pots is very difficult, and we want to maximize our ability to make good decisions by avoiding difficult spots. Raising lets us thin out the field. If a player bets in front of you, you should strongly consider raising or folding, and rarely should you call. If you are going to call in a multiway pot, you want to do so with more speculative hands like 78s, as opposed to strong hands like AA (although it's okay to raise both). AA doesn't handle multiway pots too well, and our opponents will be able to attack us pretty easily if they sense weakness.

4. Practice positional poker. Basically, being closer to the button is an advantage, both when you open your hand preflop where you'll have less people acting behind you that can attack, and after the flop, when you'll act last and always have the most information when you make your decisions. You can raise weaker hands preflop from the button, and if you're under the gun at a 10 handed table, you shouldn't really open things that are] worse than big pocket pairs and AK. There are a variety of charts out there that can give you a general idea of which hands you should be playing in what positions, e.g. this. As a new player, stick to those and commit them to memory. Down the road, you'll learn more about the game and can learn when it's okay to deviate from these plans.

5. Always raise 3x what the last bet was, unless there was a call. If there's a caller out there, you raise more (basically start with a baseline of 3x the last bet, and then add in each caller's bet to that total). There are mathematical justifications as to why you'd should stick around this bet sizing, but for now, just stick to it as a hard rule and you can learn the theory later. If you're finding that your 3x raises are getting called too often and most pots you open are going 4 or 5 way (this happens a lot in live games), raise fewer hands, and make your raises bigger, like the 4-6x range.

Note that this is meant to be advice for a place to start for newbies, not a complete, solid poker strategy.

If you want to understand the theory behind hand ranges and all that a little better, I really think Harrington on Hold'em does the best job explaining not only what hands you should play, but why you should play them. Hand range charts are a nice place to start, but if you want to grow as a player, you really need to understand the underlying theory of why you're playing certain hands in certain situations so that you can adapt on the fly, as opposed to sticking to some prescribed formula. Simple, prescribed formulas rarely work in poker, and will never work against very good players.

Imaduck fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Jul 24, 2017

# ? Jul 24, 2017 07:08

maskenfreiheit: Dec 30, 2004

Imaduck posted:

I made a post earlier in this thread that's probably a good place to start for preflop strategy:

Note that this is meant to be advice for a place to start for newbies, not a complete, solid poker strategy.

If you want to understand the theory behind hand ranges and all that a little better, I really think Harrington on Hold'em does the best job explaining not only what hands you should play, but why you should play them. Hand range charts are a nice place to start, but if you want to grow as a player, you really need to understand the underlying theory of why you're playing certain hands in certain situations so that you can adapt on the fly, as opposed to sticking to some prescribed formula. Simple, prescribed formulas rarely work in poker, and will never work against very good players.

Thanks a ton this is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for

# ? Jul 24, 2017 14:48

Subjunctivitis: Oct 12, 2007; Causation or Correlation?

One thing to keep in mind with preflop play is the "Gap Theory," which relates to calling. It basically says that when you call a raise preflop, you should have a stronger calling range than what your opponent raised with. How I approach this myself is to have well-defined ranges from Early Position (EP), MP, and the Cutoff (CO). If I'm playing full-ring (7-10 players), I have another range for the Hijack (HJ, one seat earlier than CO). I drill drill drill these ranges into my brain. Then, when someone opens from one of these positions, I can quickly tap into my own range for that position and think about how often this opponent opens from this position and then determine my calling range.

Say my opponent (Villain/Vil.) is raising PF (preflop) about as often as I do, and Vil opens from EP. I'll put him on a 8-10% range which means that I'll call him with about 5-6% of hands, i.e., I'll only call him with the better hands in Vil's range. I will only re-raise (3Bet) Vil with only things like AAs and KKs, maayyyybe AK (I won't go into the reasons for this right now). I will NOT call him with my full 15-18% HJ range. My 15-18% HJ range is only the range I open raise with.

However, if I'm on the Button, I may call with a 8-10% range that includes some worse hands than Vil has in their EP opening range. This is because there are only Blinds to act after me PF and I will have ultimate position post-flop, which I can potentially use to take down the pot. These worse hands will be things like smaller pairs (to hope to flop a set) and suited connectors (to hit a straight or flush).

If my opponent plays a tighter game than I do, I'll call tighter; I'f he's looser, I'll call/3Bet wider. I also adjust my ranges based upon the effective stack - i.e., potential $ to win. I'm more likely to tighten up against smaller stacks since the weaker parts of my range want to get more money when they do hit big, and using position to float/raise/etc. with these hands could put me into a bad situation against a smaller stack if I don't hit. I generally try to make sure that I am raising much much more often than I am calling, which means that AJo on the BTN usually doesn't look so good when someone opens in EP and then someone else in MP calls.

Edit:
For a bit of clarification:
If my opening range is 15%, when I have the opportunity to open raise, I am usuallyfolding 85% of the time, because I will only hit those cards in my range 15% of the time.

If my Call vs X is 10%, every time I have the opportunity to call, I will usually be folding 90%.

I say usually due to variance - I may catch hands in those ranges more or less often. The 10% is not about frequency played, it's about 10% of the 1326 possible starting hand combinations, I am playing 132 whenever I am dealt one of them. I'm not sitting there thinking, "Hmmmm, I've folded in this position 9/10 times, the next time I should open raise because I'm supposed to be playing 10% of the time."

Subjunctivitis fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Jul 24, 2017

# ? Jul 24, 2017 20:25

Subjunctivitis: Oct 12, 2007; Causation or Correlation?

Some quick questions on hands to have in a range:
How does my hand rank "absolutely"?
What made hand do I want to make with this hand?
How often do I expect to make that hand?
If/when I don't make my hand, how often can I still win the pot?

You can think about the following hands: AA, AKs, KJo, J9s, 66, ATo, A3s, 76s, 73o, Q4s

# ? Jul 24, 2017 20:32

Imaduck: Apr 16, 2007; the magnetorotational instability turns me on

Also:

How often can I make it to showdown when I make this hand? (e.g. a pair of sevens with Q7s)
How often will I lose even when I make my hand?

# ? Jul 24, 2017 20:45

wide stance: Jan 28, 2011; If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then he will do it that way.

Why is ACR so drat empty? You'd think the only normal site most Americans have access to would be filled to the brim.

They want to stay small so they don't advertise, like at all?

# ? Jul 26, 2017 23:27

Imaduck: Apr 16, 2007; the magnetorotational instability turns me on

I don't think they wan't to stay small necessarily... but I doubt they're flush with cash to spend on marketing. It's also unclear how effective it would be; it takes a decent amount of commitment by most people's standards to get up and running with cash on ACR. Poker is already a niche market at this point, and I imagine the conversion rate from advertisement to customer is rather low. In addition, it appears Google AdWords is pretty restrictive about what gambling sites they allow, and I doubt ACR would pass their scrutiny.

This is mostly just speculation, of course.

I also don't there's any chance of online poker becoming huge in the US unless it becomes unambiguously legal, player bases are merged across state lines, and it becomes easy to get money in and out of the sites. Even in the states where online gambling is legal in the US, my understanding is that poker isn't doing incredibly well. There's not a ton of competition, and many companies have gone under. PokerStars NJ seems to be doing okay, but nothing like the old days or PokerStarts international.

# ? Jul 28, 2017 10:30

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# ? Apr 24, 2024 22:32

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Imaduck posted:

I don't think they wan't to stay small necessarily... but I doubt they're flush with cash to spend on marketing. It's also unclear how effective it would be; it takes a decent amount of commitment by most people's standards to get up and running with cash on ACR. Poker is already a niche market at this point, and I imagine the conversion rate from advertisement to customer is rather low. In addition, it appears Google AdWords is pretty restrictive about what gambling sites they allow, and I doubt ACR would pass their scrutiny.

This is mostly just speculation, of course.

I also don't there's any chance of online poker becoming huge in the US unless it becomes unambiguously legal, player bases are merged across state lines, and it becomes easy to get money in and out of the sites. Even in the states where online gambling is legal in the US, my understanding is that poker isn't doing incredibly well. There's not a ton of competition, and many companies have gone under. PokerStars NJ seems to be doing okay, but nothing like the old days or PokerStarts international.

There was far more action on Bovada than the legal WSOP run site in Nevada.

# ? Jul 31, 2017 05:45

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