Beginner Limit Hold'em Poker Forums

Hi all,

I'm pretty new to FLH having played quite a lot of NL online in the past, both in Sngs and cash games. A lot of the videos I've watched here on DC mention the rake as being a factor to influence some of your decision making processes but don't (as far as I can see) go into detail very much about how to alter your style of play based on site, stakes, etc. As far as I can gather playing on Stars as I do the rake isn't as severe as as on other sites but I would appreciate some advice on the following areas:

Game selection: At 1/2 I am pretty much tableselecting the tables I see with the highest players to the flop and then sticking with the table if I see at least 1 player making preflop mistakes or buying for lowish amounts and not reloading. Are these games good enough to be playing with the amount of rake I pay per hand or should I be really strict and only play when I have a good seat on the fish or when there are 2 fish.

Opening/Isolating/blind defense ranges: Looking at the preflop ranges danzasmack suggested for small stakes FL in 2008 in 'The Price is Right' I am naturally playing a fair bit looser mostly in steal/defend situations as I feel I can make better postflop decisions than my opponents for the most part. I would like to know whether this is reasonable with rake considerations and what danzasmacks (in my view) fairly nitty ranges in those spots were based on. Was it that you have to play very tag in almost all low stakes games as rake is so high, or that playing this tight was far better rewarded in 2008 as games were in general far more loose passive in general and you got paid with strong hands more often.

I'm assuming that playing 1/2 having slightly tighter ranges in general is going to be better than in some of the 5/10-15/30 videos I've had a look at but if anyone could possibly make up some examples of how to quantify these adjustments it would be great. For example could you tighten a CO stealing range from K6s to K7s/K8s.

As you can see I am not sure where to draw lines for myself considering that I have to compare wanting to play looser to make more postflop decisions against relatively weak players, to wanting to play tighter as I have to pay a higher proportion of the pot in rake. Any advice in these areas is welcome bearing in mind that I'm more looking for practical advice on how to approach situations rather than a list of numbers of how many BB/100 I have to pay in rake at each stake. Frankly I wouldn't have the faintest clue about how to use that information practically.

Stars rake is pretty good from what i understand; i believe they just tinkered with it a few months back and ended up lowering it for lower stakes, making the games more beatable (as compared to Merge right now where anything below 5/10 is a giant raketrap). i believe PTR had a big comparison chart at some point, which i can't find currently, so if anyone could link that that'd be great. so i would just try to play your normal solid game and not worry about rake too much. what we talk about when we are playing higher stakes in videos is that you can open up your range a bit more because the overall effect of the rake is going to be less (less of each pot is being raked, percentagewise). so you can play more marginal hands preflop without expecting the small profit you'd make in that spot (let's say opening A2o in the CO, for example, or 86s) to be eaten up by the rake as it would be at lower, more highly-raked stakes.

as far as constructing your preflop ranges now i'd say try and come up with solid default ranges, and be sure to be able to adjust them based on the specific game you're in. for example, if the button is very tight and the blinds are very bad, you're going to want to open up your cutoff range a fair bit. if button and blinds are all very strong then you're going to want to tighten up in the cutoff. if cutoff is a huge lag and both blinds are very tight you're going to want to be 3betting a ton on the button when cutoff opens. being able to adjust your ranges and deviate from your preflop "starting chart" so to speak is going to be quite useful in the long run. if you want to post your current ranges from each position we could go from there.

as far as game selection i would try constantly to take notes on poor players, and then try to get position to their left at a table. i think direct position on a poor player is more useful than choosing a table based on flop %. once you've noted a lot of them it will open up your game selection options. i don't know the exact composition of stars 1/2 at this point in time but i'd expect there are still some loose passive types, and spewy lags, and etc, right?

Thanks for the detailed response, was pretty much the info I was looking for.
Just to give you an idea into my default ranges which I do adjust somewhat depending on players left to act:
UTG: 66+, ATo+, A8s+, KJo+, KTs+, QJs
MP: 55+, A9o+, A5s+, KTo+, K9s+, QJo, QTs, JTs
CO: 22+, A5o+, A2s+, K9o+, K6s+, QTo+, Q8s+, J9o+, J8s+, 87s+, 97s+ (T9o)
B: 22+, Ax, K6o, K2s+, Q8o, Q5s, J8o, J6s, T7o, T6s+, 97o+, 97s+, 86s+, suited connectors 76+, connectors 87+
I haven't really got defined ranges in the SB (and even those above are just my best estimate) but I guess my general approach in SB is to open anything that has about 50% against a random hand or has good postflop 'playability' vs a decent BB, and against bad players in the BB I will be significantly looser. I don't really ever limp.

Back to the table selection, I generally choose the loosest tables first as they are more likely to be fishy and then after about 20 hands if I haven't seen some pretty obvious fishy tendencies from anyone I just leave and pull up a different game. The drawback of this is that I spend a lot of time in the lobby finding tables rather than concentrating on the games. So I guess the best answer is to have better notes taken and colour coding so that I find better seats rather than tables straight off. With regards to the games, there are definitely a fair few decent to good players at most tables but you still get some monster droolers at all times of day. And also I would say that the majority of the decent players are far better preflop than post being far too showdown bound in quite a few spots where I just don't have enough bluffs to warrant it.

the ranges look quite reasonable to me; if anything a bit on the laggy side for those stakes. certainly nothing that's going to be a huge deal. it's good to hear the games are still good at those stakes. try to start taking notes on bad players and see where it goes from there!

i roughly opened the same ranges in the sb and otb for a while and found it worked out pretty well. will need to vary based on opponent obv

Thanks for the advice. Seems like a good plan from the small blind I think, will give it a go

Btw BBB, I was wondering if you see much value in my learning FLH really well. I know you can't play on Stars at the moment but from what I read on various forums it isn't that much higher that games aren't too great. I've been doing well at NL- HUSNGs/Cash recently but kind of got disillusioned that firstly variance was really high and secondly pretty nitty boring play was the best way to win. So I decided to look for a new challenge in FLH as it seems I can play pretty laggy and not suffer huge swings. It also is a lot more interesting than just playing tight and then bet/folding every street at NL, but if prospects of making decent money at it long term aren't great then I'm not sure I should devote too much time to learning it.
Anyway I would be interested if you have any thoughts on this.

dont let the fact that its a limit game make you think the variance is lower. it can actually be the opposite as the variance in lhe/TD/stud might actually be worse than nlhe cash (i dont have any numbers tho).

Yeah I know it's not superlow variance or anything but I've been playing a lot of Hyperturbo HUSNGs recently and trust me compared to that it seems very low, and far less tilting. At least from my experience (again not based on numbers).

well like you mentioned, it's important to figure out what your short and long term goals are. if it's to learn a new game now with the hopeful payoff of big money in it down the road, limit holdem is probably not your best bet right now. if it's to play something fun that you enjoy, then you should play whatever you want that you find fun. i don't think getting solid at a number of games can ever be a bad plan.

As someone who plays a bunch of games I just want to say that if you are playing FLHE 6max because it's "lower variance" you are probably going to be in for a shock.

Ok I'm probably underestimating the variance due to hearsay and my own small samplesizes and experience. Guess having 25 buyin downswings at the same time as positive net ev lines has biased me.

Thanks for the constructive advice BBB. Think you have given me some good info in this thread that is gonna help me out.