[Closed] Silent Steve's Sinking Ship

Originally posted by SilentSteve

• Do you ever play backdoor flush draws?
• If you have two overcards in HU (OOP) will you go to the river?
• Do you throw away AA if there are four suits on the board?
• Do you ever call after a single raise and no callers?
• Do you ever 3bet with middle pair?

1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.
4. Yes.
5. Yes.

FLSH.

However, I haven't seen much of your hands in Hands Evaluation forum?

I play the 0.10/0.20 FL on Full tilt, usually full ring despite the fact that I seem to perform worse than on SH.

Leaky cards (thanks to Elephant):

This immediatley screams at me that im playing too loosely, which is a mistake at least untill I can read my opponents better. I do play the bronze SHC a bit looser than expected, especially when the pot is 3-4BBs preflop already.

Just stick to the charts, dont deviate from them till you have a better feel for the game and for opponents.

I am loath to play any low pairs currently, SHC says that 22-TT should call if one raises and two at least have called. Yet any flop with 3 people in the pot I find myself with lower pair than two of the cards on the board.

Stay away from those tough spots for now and just fold, your goal in 0.1/0.2 is to play ABC poker and get paid off. Trust me, you will.

If im playing 77+ then I like to see the turn if its not too costly but I probably shouldnt since the pot would have to be massive to be profitable on that.

Always play according to odds and outs when you think you arent ahead.

Everytime I play against pocket pairs they seem to be played way to aggresively, even when they dont hit a set on the board.

Take notes and that sort of play and exploit your opponent's play for future hands.

I seem to have a habit of playing bad Khigh Qhigh cards which are offsuit that seems to cost me a lot of money. I guess this stems from me seeing every card but an ace on the board for a while. This is ironic really because every other limper is probably holding ace high aswell, so there are none left to actually come out onto the board.

SHC is you best friend here.

I have seen quite some succsess (baring the obvious high equity cards) with Ax suited (+3$) however my K/Q/J + lower card suiteds have cost me -9.2$ so I really need a big no stamp on those cards. While the SHC is of course made by people far more experienced than I am, I do struggle when ive been waiting 30 mins to play a hand, an AK comes and it fails miserabley.

Again, stick to SHC. It's surely a mantra that needs to stick in you head.
Second, if you're feeling bored with the game, dont let it effect your play! either stop playing or consider adding another table if you think you can handle the action.

Postflop analysis:

My biggest hole in post flop play would be the turn, if someone is trying to push you out the hand then they will bet/raise you on the turn since its when everyone 'tightens up', my problem is I tend to second guess this and it costs me money. Its easier for me to bow out of multi-way pots because I can put people on better hands than me quite easily.

I used to think ppl were constantly bluffing me at first too. It took me a while to realize that in online poker, usually ppl arent bluffing, and if they play a hand strong, they usually have something (of course there are exceptions..). Just work on your reads and analyze the board texture the best you can. You'll get better at spotting bluffs as you progress.

But when its heads-up and everyone turns on the aggression in HU situations I usually give two much credit to overcards, or give them a way better range than I should. Especially since if I ever donk into a HU situation I am going to get raised, odds and outs wise any sort of HU situation seems to be unprofitable, which makes me wonder why at all I would want to isolate people by raising so much pre-flop.

Questions for any readers:

(grats for getting this far)

• Do you ever play backdoor flush draws?

  Depends on the odds im getting mostly, but there are some other factors as well. Generally speaking, you can call with anything, given you have the odds for it.

• If you have two overcards in HU (OOP) will you go to the river?

  Again, depends on odds. If i think my overcards might be good, i will even see a SD, it's read based.

• Do you throw away AA if there are four suits on the board?

  Depends on reads mostly. Taking notes is the best way to get these reads. It also depends on the development of the board and how aggressive/bluffy villain is. As a default, i can pretty easily muck them in that situation.

• Do you ever call after a single raise and no callers?

  Sometimes, i would recommend you avoid coldcalling untill you have more experience.

• Do you ever 3bet with middle pair?

  If i think im good, or if i think i can get villain off a better hand, sure.

While writing this my FT table has been incredibly tight, the last 6 hands have just been one raiser picking up the blinds, boring!

I realise that most of this reads as: 'Maybe I should stick to the starting hands chart more!' but I am trying to go beyond that, maybe im just playing fine and my first ever swing was a downswing worth as much as some people pay for a toothbrush. But I feel better and more thoughtful for writing it anyhow! Hopefully my next post will be that im no longer in the minus.

Steve

It's good to see you're analyzing your game and searching where to improve. I highly recommend you read all the articles you can. It's worth a couple of BB/100 I would focus mostly on standard lines.
Also,watch the videos. Seeing someone experienced playing gives you something to compare yourself to, and see what you might be doing wrong. Most importantly, post any hand you felt you missplayed, or question your decisions. cirith,frzl, dawnfall and all the awesome guys at the hand evaluation forum will gladly help you.

Looking through the other blogs I expect I am in the minority when I say this is not about the money for me, but im still losing and this must stop!

yeah right. Why would you care about losing if it's not about the money?

If you truly don't care about money you wouldn't care about losing because you would know your playing good and making no/very few mistakes and know for a fact your just having bad luck. So then you could just keep playing without it affecting you.

So don't act like you don't Very few people could actualy not care about it. Although ofcourse everyone wants to really be able to not care. But that's hard since how the human mind works is. That if you work hard you will get good results, and with poker that's certaintly not always the case in short term. So if you lose you will start thinking negative and that your doing things wrong.

well something like that anyway, i read it in a psychology article here on pokerstrategie

Thanks for the replies guys, ill take it all on board when I blitz a load of hands out this weekend.

@ the above, by not caring about the money might be better explained that I dont plan on going down a limit, if I go broke ill put in a deposit. I of course care about winning

The videos are good and I watched most of Terrorblade's ones, its a lot looser than the SHC though but thats proabably because he mostly plays FLSH. I should probably try some of the others videos.

Yup, better stick exactly to the charts in pf play for now. Adjusting your play to more loose/passive depends on opponents' playing styles and you have to know some theory behind equity, which you'll get familiar with with gold+ articles. However, imo silver articles are enough to be a winning player up to 0.5/1 with no big problem... probably even on 1/2, but it gets harder, because more good players are, the higher the limits you climb...

Friday was a very up and down day, up to 8$ then down again to -1$. Micro limits I just kept getting caught out by people limping to the end then hitting big on the river or so, with cards that they shouldnt even be playing in the first place. Maybe its juts full-tilt or maybe its just me, I decided to try something different in No limit.

Due to a misreading of the basic strategy I ended up allin with AQ twice, and lost, sure learned my lesson there, -4$ down. However sensible cap on, opened up 4 tables at pokerstars (best MT interface imo) and ground up on the extremely simple SSS.

My QQs and JJs reguarly got beat (-4$ in total for them) but my AKs (variance ho!) pulled me through to a +20$ over the weekend, or 27bb/100.

I think SSS or BSS later is much more my kind of game, marginal hands (middle pair) that I would call in FL are a straightforward fold now, Aces with low kicker are a fairly often fold now. Also when I see someone playing like they have a draw, I really make them pay out the nose for it.

The poker forcast for the future looks good!