sorry for the kinda offtopic thread, but from earlier threads

some notes/reads on each player:

>player 1
- wont fold on flop but folds more often than the others after getting 2 barrelled
- usually gets to the river with some showdown value, e.g top pair (any kicker) on any 3 straight or flush board
- sometimes announces that he hit the board (and more often than not he did) and trys to talk people into calling, probably thinks it makes him look weaker
- checks his cards more often when hes drawing
- typically semi bluffs oop

>player 2
- raises, bluff re-raises excessively, got me to fold a better hand twice, might just overvalue his hands though
- seen him bluff all the way from flop to river with no showdown value
- often smiles a lot when hes picking up his cards and was dealt a strong hand (though what they consider a strong hand is questionable)

>player 3
- newest player out of the three, worst calling station of them all
- stays in hands until showdown and for some reason calls river bets even when he knows he has absolutely nothing and is beat
- got dealt pocket aces and went all in preflop when everyone was still super deep stacked
- noticeably struggles with himself when he knows he has nothing but wants to call

>>994207
here are some of the main problems i encountered and some of the reasons why my original strategy didnt work out:
1) the game being 4 handed i couldnt play as tight as i wanted
2) raising up to 5x pre-flop did not reduce the number of callers, i ended up limping aswell
3) with 3 callers c-betting or bluffing to get them to fold isnt effective
4) usually failed to isolate certain players with my bets (as for 3 & 4 i have to admit i didnt try betting pot or more)
5) despite having a tight image i couldnt semi bluff credibly on high cards, they didnt notice scare cards either

so if anyone really took the time to read through all of this bullshit and has some sound advice for me so i can make some profit next week id really highly appreciate it!

First of all, in poker you only truly make profit in the long run (thousands of hands) if you have an edge, short term winnings have more to do with getting lucky. Even the best possible situations (eg. pf all in with aces vs 1 other player holding rags), will result in you losing a significant percentage of times. The correct mindset is where you should start. You cannot go into a good game expecting profit. You can only go into a good game expecting to be making many +ev decisions, and your opponent to be making many -ev decisions.
If you dont understand this, dont bother with poker or treat it like gambling/having fun.

>>994208
First piece of advice: never try to bluff amateurs. It doesn't work. Only play when you have a hand and if you do have a solid hand, have the stones to bet it hard. Make them pay for trying to chase a gutshot straight draw to the river. If you have the nuts, put them in a position for all thier chips. Calling stations are easy to play against. You just have to be patient. Play premium hands even if they are calling 90% of the time preflop.

>>994279
Yeah but in a 5 handed game you have to open up your playing range and you have to bluff some percentage of hands (i include raising less stellar holdings in position preflop in the definition of bluffing here) even though the opponents are loose.

>>994278
i understand all of this (obviously you are absolutely right with your post) and have been playing online profitably for years. the reason i started this thread wasnt because i felt particularly upset about not making a profit in my first session but because i believe i need to adjust my game to make the most profitable decisions in the future and im not sure how. i think i got valuable information from that one session already, so i dont really mind that i had to pay for that. honestly, even if i dont adjust my game i think i will make a profit in the long run as i expect to make less mistakes than them, but these are player types i am absolutely not used to, so im looking for people who have experience with them to guide me and maybe propose a strategy i havent tried yet.

>>994279
thats basically my original strategy, but when youre playing 4 handed i believe you have to play a pretty wide range and cant really wait for a good hand when youre constantly posting blinds and dont get to steal any. playing tight ill also more often than not completely miss the flop while it fits their range fairly well and considering i play way less hands than them they can easily put me on a hand when there are high cards on the board. missing the flop wouldnt be a huge issue if they folded to c-bets but they dont.

So let me give /biz/ some poker advice for intermediaries (meaning you know the game, know some basics about whats good and bad, you're not a complete idiot, etc.).

In poker you only know what your true winning rate is after thousands of hands. Actually, make that about 30000 hands or so to start somewhat approaching your true expected win rate. You can already see the problem here for live games: you maybe play 20 hands an hour in a very fast live game (playing = getting dealt a new hand). Thats maybe 100 hands a night. Most live players will never approach an idea of their true win rate (coupled with the fact that your game improves or deteriorates over time, and your opponents do as well).
Corollary fact: many big tourney winners in holdem are mediocre to bad players.

So, the true path to poker mastery is playing many hands online, and become a steady winner over at least tens of thousands of hands. Going into a live game full of bad players is nice, but super swingy. You could play stellar poker over 5000 hands and net a loss. You could make wads of cash over 5000 hands and unknowingly play horrible poker, but think you are the shit (hello, 90%+ of live winners ever). So how will you know? -> Become a winning player online over at least 30000 hands, and apply the same startegies to the live game.
So, you want to crush the live 1$/2$ 5 handed donkfest? Become a steady winner at the .10$/.25$ short handed tables online, read some articles about live tells (way overrated but might help you boost your profit a bit), and crush the live game. But remember, it is hard to get to your true winrate live!!!! It is a gamble, albeit a +ev gamble, to play. You will hardly ever play 30000 hands with the same group of donks live.

>>994316
>this is what online poker players actually believe
Kek

>>994316
Now, some tips to really improve your game:
-Simulate the situations you expect as well as those you encounter.
Google "pro poker tools ranges", and simulate those situations. So you were in a multiway raised pot with 3 idiots and a good hit on the flop? Put every opponent on a range, plug in those ranges in the simulator, decide what the right bet would be to price them out/how much you should pay to call/etc., and apply later irl.
-Discuss hands on a non hater community (4chan=bad in this aspect). Twoplustwo used to be very good (it made me profitable), but ive been out of the loop for a while. You can also just read threads, they have short handed forums, your situations have probably been discussed a 1000 times before.
-REDUCE LIMPING TO A MINIMUM
-If your bankroll isnt 100x a full buyin for the game (100 big blinds), you are gambling, not playing pro poker. You are underrolled, and will probably not be able to psychologically make the right decisions even during losing streaks. Also, many $1/$2 donkfests are really 5/10 games because of the non stop preflop idiotic raises and calls, so adjust bankroll management accordingly.

>>994316
i play the same stakes (200nl) online. youre making a valid point and im well aware that it takes many thousands of hands to figure out whether you are a profitable player under certain circumstances. see im not here to whine about my single losing session against (subjectively) weaker players. im just hoping to get advice on how to deal with these kinds of players in the best way playing shorthanded. maybe how to use the info i got on the players to my advantage (e.g. to put them on a hand) when i get the chance to play them heads up.

>>994346
if short handed against 4 donks gives you trouble, become a short handed winner online at quarter stakes. That is my best advice. Discussing some hands or some general strategy wont help much imo, since you know the basics...
5 handed you should raise any time you are first in, and as always you should play a lot of hands in position, 5 handed you can open up your range significantly on the button, and you need to bluff more than in 9 handed games. Playing position makes sure you can keep the pot small when weak/not sure, and make calling stations pay the max when holding the goods. But you already know all this, thats what i say git gud in the same games online at lower stakes.

>>994342
see the issue with putting them on a range is that its pretty much 100%. im fairly sure one guy folded less than a dozen hands preflop during our 6 hour session. another thing is that except for one guy they are absolutely oblivious to pot odds so pricing them out is really difficult (though as i stated earlier, i havent tried betting pot sized + bets). as for hands i have discussed 3 particular hands that costed me the most money with some friends that are better than me and the overall consensus was that i played them okay-ish but the issue was that i couldnt put my opponents on a hand. bankroll is not an issue and rebuy is always an option.
>Also, many $1/$2 donkfests are really 5/10 games because of the non stop preflop idiotic raises and calls
well, none of them ever raised pre-flop, but they do bet and raise like crazy post flop

>>994316
>So let me give /biz/ some poker advice for intermediaries

intermediaries doesn't mean what you think it means bro

While I am at it, let me give some tournament advice, and make this a rare case of a useful thread on biz that might actually earn someone some money.
The best poker book i ever read was Kill Everyone by Lee Nelson et al. First, become an intermediary (a tight/aggressive winner at very low stakes, just read Harrington on holdem or something), then read this book to understand tourney poker's intricacies.

>>994363
>if short handed against 4 donks gives you trouble, become a short handed winner online at quarter stakes.
yeah ill do that. i most definitely have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to playing short handed. id say 90% of my online sessions are full ring.

>>994368
Ah lol dont know what the word is then, English is not my mother tongue

>>994375
thanks.
>>994380
no problem, im sure we all got it anyway.

>>994366
If they never fold PF, and never fold OTF, then indeed they have 100% ranges on the turn. However, pay attention and this can't be true. If it is, it should be very easy to make money (just bet according to your hand strength).
Truth is, you know on the turn, if they are still in, they have SOMETHING, and SOMETHING has a range percentage. So if it is any overcard + any hit + the nuts + any draw, you can plug that into the simulator and see how well your range does against that and bet accordingly.
Pro poker tools odds calculator is a free online tool where you can plug in to your hearts content any situation.

>>994385
And through playing many hands, you will integrate the knowledge from the range simulations into your game, thats why practice is key, and online you can 4 table and play 30 hands+ per table per hour for 16 hours a day if you want.

>>994392
Then analyze your game afterwards using holdem manager or something, sinds all hands are saved (another plus).

>>994385
>>994392
>>994394
aight, willl do that.
what do you think about betting pot or more to price them out? i remember back in my microstakes days it was fairly common to bet more than pot to get calling stations to fold. i was unsure about it because i thought a bet that big actually looks kinda weak and may look like a bluff to them (which it may very well be) which motivates them to call.

>>994403
you can try and see how they react, if they always pay pot or more when they are priced out that is like valuetown heaven... most probably, big bets will shrink their ranges however. Do it more often in position, where you want to be more often than not anyway. Just being in position in big pots more than them is a profit booster.
If they call a lot of very overpriced bets that makes the game way more swingy, and thus psychologically more annoying if you dont like that, but also way more profitable. And like I said, the low number of hands you play will make it possible for them to just run good against you and hit their draws above expectation... so i think you are dealing with a big psychological factor as well (the feeling you cant win against players that are way worse than you, a fact that will happen a lot in poker over the short term).

>>994429
>most probably, big bets will shrink their ranges however.
right, i think if i can not get them to fold pre-flop now, maybe if i can force them to fold their marginal hands on the flop with a very big bet they naturally start being more selective with their hands preflop and then respect my preflop raises more. im sure its gonna get more swingy that way and to some degree losing against them obviously bothers me but im sure i can get over it as long as i think i played my hands fine.

>>994451
if you dont play thrash, you would want to keep at least one of them in (or more if you are in position) if your range beats theirs.
If you dont do it yet, learn to think in ranges and how your holding plays against that range.
Like I said, if short term losing (against worse players) bothers you, its more of a mindset thing than a strategy thing. You should always feel comfortable knowing that over 10s of thousands of hands you will end up with a profit.

>>994303
Either fold or raise pre-flop, limping in is almost always a bad call at live tables.

Also, it seems you have decent breakdowns of the people you're playing against. Adjust accordingly depending who is in the hand.

As far as bluffing goes: since they're inexperienced, it is usually better to play tight and conservative, but not always.
Make sure you mix in some randomness into your play IE game theory.

And don't forget to calculate your odds

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89KB, 406x277px

If you don't know how to beat these players then you need to put some work into your own game. Not being a dick, but there are a lot of mistakes being made by the players in this game. Build a strategy based on this basic guide.

>>994626
Call a lot is such terrible advice

When i quit playing about 3 years ago, the Cbet had become such a standard thing to do that even the bad players understood. Calling stations solved this problem the only way they know how to, call even more. You have to study the spots in which to 2barrel or 3barrel now. Remember many bad players dont look at the bets in relation to pot size, but rather at the absolute size. You can often knock them off a meager holding on later streets.

>>994645
It's actually not, against certain players. I've called people down with K high before because they wear the opponent was wearing thier tell on their shoulders. Against a normal player an overbet on the flop is almost certainly a bluff. Most of the time they are on a draw or a weak pair. If you call hesitantly and not reraise then you can most of the time milk the hell out of a strong hand. You do run the risk of them catching something to beat your made hand but most of the time the reward of them bluffing off thier stack is worth it.

>>994645

That image is just a basic outline, not the poker gospel. From just a basic math standpoint if somebody is opening and c betting 75% of flops, you should be defending with over 50% of your calling range otherwise your game is leaking money.

>>994680

>with over 50% of your calling range

*over 50% of a standard calling range

I charge 200/hr to coach.

What do you want to know?

>>994829

Is it possible to make a decent living off of playing poker online? How much time would it take to become good enough to do so?

>>995432
Yes, as long as you have a time machine to go back to 2003

The bots and Romanians have solved the game, and are willing to play vicious tight aggressive poker for the $2 per hour which is all anyone can make these days.
It's over, find the next big thing.

>>995442

what's the next big thing?

>>995442
This is the post to believe.

>>995453
at home chip warmers funded by bitcoin

Any Limon fans?

>>995432
i don't play online. it's going to take a while to get good, and playing online will only speed that up, but it's not worth playing online unless you can play on stars. 10k hands might seem like enough, but you wanna strive for 100k, and then 1m.

then again, you never want to feel that you're good enough that you can stop working on your game. im always working on my game.

>>995442
>nlhe is solved

which is why there is still more fish than you can feed to a shark

it's not the most glamorous lifestyle playing just 200nl, but when you move up to 1knl+, then you're starting to make some real money. (though, if you hit a good year at just 200nl, you can break six figures)

it's commonly said that if you can beat 10nl online, you can beat 200nl live easily. just find yourself a nice home game in a nice area with the people who have so much money they don't give a fuck about learning the game. also provides extremely good networking opportunities if you can find the nicer games.

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>>996130
I started playing micro stakes with a really tight range 10-13% and fold when i dont flop trips, toppair or flush/straight so im a little bit passive do you think that this will work in higher games?

Is there a better strategy that you would recommend for the beginning im thinking about getting the ebook from blackrain79 but i feel like its a little outdated and there are maybe forums or skype groups where i can learn more.

>>996640
if there's an a, k, q, sometimes j, on the flop, i cbet 100% of the time. i can represent all of them and my opponent will fold 100% of the time he doesn't catch unless he's a reg that's seen my actual range, which i still have enough fold equity to make it a profitable spot for me. (sometimes ill have 76o from utg)

you would get fucking #rekt in a higher game. people will bluff you off of many hands and they will get away from you too many times, not to mention the times where they destroy you when you think your AA is good.

get flopzilla or equilab from pokerstrategy to see how ranges play against other ranges, and how certain hands play against others. 64 has more equity than you'd think against AK

i usually play around 30/20/10 at 6max. i raise any A, K, Q, suited jacks, connectors, any suited, pairs, on the button. make ranges for each position, keeping utg and mp tight, with co and bu the loosest, with blind v blind and blind v steal ranges

learn how to be aggressive

>>996709
Wow thanks man didnt expect to get a answer with so much value im trying to learn this game with a gun to the head mentality because i dont have alot of other options.