Casino Talks

Posted by: aliengenius at March 12, 2007, 7:21 pm

Topic: TAG is not the way to be in holdem Forum: Card Chat

First, try having 12x the big bet in front of you at all times when playing limit (I wont go too far into the reason, but that's enough to see it capped on all streets for one hand).

Second, do you have PokerTracker? There is absolutely no reason not to spend $55 bucks on it, it will pay you back, trust me. You will be able to see if you are playing too many hands, and if you are playing them too passively for starters.

Third, take a bit of a look at your game a bit. Why did you open raise w Q9s, but limp in with KTo? Do you even need to play either of those (dominated) hands at all? Why are you drawing to a one card straight when there is a flush tainting your outs? I don't want to really argue too much about the actual play of the hands, but I suspect your game needs more work than you might want to admit. TAG is the way to be in limit, but I suspect you are less TAG than you care to admit (PT will give you this in black and white).

Anyway, here is a plan of attack should you decide you want to win at this game:

STAGE ONE:
1. Buy Pokertracker.
2. Buy Ed Millers's "Getting Started in Holdem". The limit section is excellent, and a ery good introduction to some of the concepts you need to really understand.
3. Play 500-1000 hands of limit trying to incorporate what you learned from reading GSIH. STAY DISCIPLINED! Don't try to get fancy, just follow his staring requirements, and try to work on things like raising for alue on a nut flush draw in late position with lots of opponents and "buying a free card", plays you may or may not have been familiar with before.
4. Look at your results. Use Poker Tracker to replay some hands you think you may have made a mistake in. THINK about the game.

STAGE TWO:
5. Re-read Miller's book.
6. Play 500-1000 more hands.
7. Repeat until you think you are getting a handle on it, or feel you need more information/learning to advance.

STAGE THREE:
8. Buy "Small Stakes Holdem" by Ed Miller (the book has Sklansky and Millers name on it as well, but it was written by Miller). This book is probably too much to start out with if, so that's why I recommended GSIH first.
9. Buy "Texas Holdem Odds and Probabilities" by Matt Hilger.
10. READ them, one at a time-- I suggest Hilger first. Take your time, work through the test questions. You can even take notes. Underline the important concepts, write in the margins! Treat it like a serious course of study. Remember school? Even if you never look at your notes again, the ery fact that you codified the concepts in the book in writing will help to insure that you leaned/understood the concepts, that it didn't just go in one ear and out the other.

That's the START.

Is it as fun as playing, no. Will it make playing more fun, yes-- winning is fun. Write down questions you have, concepts you don't quite understand. You can't ask the authors or a teacher but you can post here ! People will give you their opinions, you can discourse, you can learn (we all can).

As you play more hands, grasp more poker theory, the ariance (suckouts) will start to effect you less. You might always struggle with it to some degree, I know I still am. But hopefully we can continue to deepen our poker knowledge and obtain the zen like enlightenment that comes with true mastery.

As you can see poker takes some WORK, some effort to get good at. If you don't want to put in this effort you don't, in my opinion, have any right to complain. You don't have to be a winning player to enjoy poker-- obviously a great majority of players are not winning overall but continue to play. They either do it for for enjoyment, or they are self-delusional, or a combination of both. But the greatest happiness' we get in life are often those things that we dedicated some effort to and found some success. Going on a rollercoaster ride might be fun, might make us happy, but anyone can do that. That's part of the reason it's transient happiness-- remember: if it were easy everyone would do it.

Ok, enough rant-- go forth and do grasshopper.

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