April 12, 2011
NL5-100: How to get started
So, here are the four pieces we agreed upon as a framework when we got started:
1) Starting hands
My girl has been playing for several years, so she has developed a habit for starting hands that most likely wasn´t optimal. Instead of learning what hands she should actually play and what hands she don´t, I simply worked out a starting hand chart to get a baseline for profitable hands to start with. It´s a very tight approach (probably resulting in sth. along the lines of 13/11) but in my book that´s exactly the right approach to tackle the lowest limits, where you don´t have to bother playing marginal hands as long as the whales pay you off with 3rd pair and less. Here´s the SHC we´re working with:
2) Properly think about WHY we do what we do
From the first hands I witnessed from her one particular eye-catcher - that I see from most players all over the place (and which I was guilty for long time as well) - was to not properly think about why we´re doing what we´re doing. For example, we cbet the flop with TPTK, get raised and shove. Did we think properly about what we just did? Or did we just feel that it would be the easiest way to avoid difficult decisions on later streets?
So I made a little piece of paper with the following text on it:
I bet ...
... ... for value (what worse hands will call?).
... ... as a bluff (what better hands will fold?).
... ... for protection (against what hands, how many outs?).
I printed it on a sheet of paper with a red frame on it and placed it directly in front of her. The task was to have an appropriate answer to this questions for any single hand (and I regularly check the HEM-DB and grab out hands where I ask for it). It should be a good exercise to start with proper hand reading and thinking about the appropriate action. If we can´t come up with a good answer - well, then check (or fold).
3) Valuebetting / bluffing
Concentrate on valuebetting. Bluffing (namely anything that exceeds standard cbetting) should be a somewhat rare occasion and requires reads before being performed. The major issue though is valuebetting.
4) Number of tables
Finally - we agreed upon starting with only two tables simultaneously! It´s kind of "boring" for someone who is used to play up to 12 tables (when she was playing SnGs) but it´s necessary to accurately perform part 2) of the framework. If we see that she does well on the current limit she may open 1-2 more tables, depending on how comfortable she feels and how good the hands are played - in terms of accurate decision-making.
With that framework she started playing (and right off the bat showed some impressive results).
=> More infos on how she performed and some example hands in the next post.
- Tack -
9 Comments:
snarble5 posted on April 12, 2011 at 22:10 PM
Can you give an example of a bet to protect?
Love your posts btw. :)
Tackleberry posted on April 13, 2011 at 03:41 AM
Thanks a lot! And sure, I´ll look for one.
richbrown posted on April 13, 2011 at 11:04 AM
nice man. I was thinking about doing the same thing but i don't think my GF has the same discipline and tilts a lot.
she plays on facebook poker all the time, its not really good to learn but she plays like 4 hours a day sometimes lol.
if i could only get her to realise she could actually make a bit of money at 2 or 5 nl if she put some work in.
PrickselFish posted on April 27, 2011 at 21:13 PM
Hi Tackleberry.
Can you share this SHC? I play 10nl 6m tho but from those 2 post i realize that i need to change something.
Btw it is very nice blog!
PrickselFish posted on April 27, 2011 at 21:23 PM
Found it now :)
JST posted on May 02, 2011 at 05:07 AM
If this is a completely ridiculous question I do apologise in advance, but I can understand on your SHC why there is no chart for "UTG - raised pot" if you're getting the misses to play tight, but what about "BB - unraised pot"? What's your range like for raising limpers? The same as "SB - unraised pot"?]
Very nice blog by the way, for once the "bet for a reason" is actually getting through to me, rather than shunning it off. I think the results graphs after your analysis sessions are somewhat of an incentive.
Tackleberry posted on May 02, 2011 at 13:40 PM
@JST: The UTG-chart misses the "raised pot" because we´re first to act (remember, it´s all 6max!). Furthermore I avoided any limped-pot situation, because it just leads to too many permutations of different situation to get it done in a chart. Principally, if a pot is limped and I´m in the BB I try to take down the pot with almost any two - and if that doesn´t happen, by taking down the dead money postflop. But that depends too much on the number of limpers and the tendencies of your opponents to make it rule-based. I know that doesn´t help, but it might make it a bit clearer. :)
And btw - thanks for the kind words! Always appreciate that.
JST posted on May 02, 2011 at 16:14 PM
Ah, my bad, I was thinking that if I limped (naughty, I know) from UTG then got raised, but thats all covered as it's unraised when I play it originally. My sincere apologies, it was 5am.
I'm really looking forward to your next post. Maybe could you include some stats for good and bad sessions? And I know you did in the last post, but as well as some bad hands, do you mind showing a few more "how to" hands that were played well?
After reading your posts last night I turned my 1500 hand -15BB/100 session into 3500 hand +10BB/100 just by thinking more about what I was doing for once. Sounds stupid but my usual reasons for betting seemed to be "i think he's bluffing, so i'll try and out-bluff him" or "incase i manage to hit something later".
Once again, fantastic blog, and I look forward to more. Thanks man.
Tackleberry posted on May 03, 2011 at 11:45 AM
Thanks a lot, man, that sounds awesome!!!
And believe me, the "i think he's bluffing, so i'll try and out-bluff him" or "incase i manage to hit something later" part sounds so well-known to me, just yesterday I had a huge discussion with my gf - almost exactly about that. :D
And thanks for the input, I´ll definitely add some "well-played" hands into the next post!
I´d be a bit more careful with stats though as they need a huge sample to converge and stats for a single session are completely overrated - esp. if the game evolves pretty quickly (as my gf almost consistently changes things in her play from one session to the next).
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