February 10, 2011
Online poker is like sex...
... you think you're going to be awesome at it until you try it out.
In case you didn't know, live poker is really easy for anyone with a brain. Having a brain, poker seemed like a good idea 4 years ago. Still playing regularly I decided to quit the wiffle stakes of live poker to try to learn the harder version... and it's killing my life.
Adjusting to these nitty uNL players is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought and I really cannot figure out why. Maybe its because I've only played 2k hands and I'm just the next guy waiting to turn my limited first deposit of $300 into enough money to donk off and become a sensation, or maybe it's just that with stats of 38/31/10 I'm about as skilled as Alan Meltzer and should just give up on life right now...
Honestly though, when you're used to winning at 200nl live, losing at all at 10NL sucks donkey dick so I'm doing this blog to get a dialog going about my play and try to improve through you other DC members. Realistically, it should just help curve my feelings about how bad I used to be when I read this crap in 6+months.
First question for you crazy kids to get some form of constructive response hopefully:
How do you construct your preflop range from each position to develop the overall key stats to build off of when starting out in the micros?
1 Comments:
OneLastRoll posted on February 10, 2011 at 11:09 AM
"to develop the overall key stats to build off"
I don't understand that part.
Anyways when considering what hands to play preflop definitely don't go off static range (ie. I raise ATo UTG, etc). Whenever you're thinking about opening a hand you have to consider "where's my value coming from?" be it stealing the blinds, getting into a pot with a fish, having a strong hand vs a weaker range, playing in position vs a weak regular who folds often to cbets etc.
In the earlier position you also have to focus on what is the likely scenarios if I open. If you're UTG and there's a 40/10 who folds to 20% of cbets on the BTN, a likely scenario is he's going to call pre and call your flop bet, so what are good hands for that scenario? Big cards like ATo/QJ etc go up in value, speculative hands like 78s and 33 go down in value. If there's just very good players at the table that make your life difficult you may be only opening 10% UTG, where as if there's nitty players behind you and a huge fish in the blinds then I'd be opening 30%+ in the same position.
In the later positions you have to take into consideration all those factors but also how likely you are to steal/get 3bet. If it's folded to you on the button and there's nits in the blind raise a ton (70% isn't even crazily high), if there's people that 3bet you a lot and are very difficult to play against tone it down to 20-30%, if there's a fish in the blinds - go back to that "what's the most likely scenario" and play hands that do well in those scenarios.
In general 38/31 is far too loose especially at 10NL (something like 21/16 would be more reasonable), I suspect it's because you're playing too many hands in earlier positions, and possibly the blinds. Fwiw my position stats from UTG -> BB are 16, 20, 29, 40, 19, 17 (40 is BTN). I play 25/20. So your VPIP by position should create a big up then down curve like that.
This is all just general guidelines though, none are rules, and no stats should be aimed for (like... I want to play a 30/27 style, have a 3bet of 12% and play 20% of hands UTG) just play each hand in the most +EV way and the stats will work themselves out.
GL!
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