Posted Thu Aug 31, 2006 7:13 pm GMT by rlb2252
Approximately one month down in my poker playing journey. I play limit Texas Hold’em online. I generally lose every time I play (relatively small amounts) but I chalk it up to the cost of my education. As someone suggested I do, I’ve moved down in stakes to 0.25/.050 so that the cost of my matriculation is relatively cheap.
Although I’m generally losing, as long as I feel I didn’t play ridiculously bad, I’m able to accept the loss with relative calm and aplomb. Logic would suggest that better days are ahead—just how far ahead remains to be seen.
So far, I’ve played about 1500 hands, I would guess. I say “guess” because my 1000 hand demo of poker tracker is over and I haven’t purchased it yet. I would tell you to wait while I scribble that on my “to do” list but this post is already long enough.
Now, to the point: One of the most important poker talents I need to better learn and improve upon is board recognition. It takes me a long time to work out what the board means, its possibilities and what it tells me about my chances to win and the hands I may be up against.
Sometimes I fail to see the connections at all, and what I do see and comprehend often trickles in somewhat slowly. Pairs, are the most obvious, of course. Sometimes straights too, as long as they’re somewhat consecutive and not too camouflaged. But for some reason flush draws often allude me.
Just today I got my butt kicked hard. I suppose some might call it a bad beat but I’m not sure you would classify it that way. What happened was my Queen high straight was hijacked by a Full house.
The bad guy had 69o with a board of      . I had QTo. Talk about not seeing that one coming. He kept raising me and I kept raising him back. Wondered what in the heck he was raising on. Boy did I find out.
Interesting thing about it is that (unbeknownst to me) he was actually ahead of me at the flop, having already caught his two pair. Then he improved, making his full house at the turn.
Paradoxically, if I had managed to beat him, say with a “fuller” full house, he would have been the one to scream about a bad beat.
Here’s the thing: How quick should a good player be able to analyze a board, see all the possible threats and draws for both their own hand and their opponents?
Is this a split second process? For many players, those multi-tabling for example, it apparently must be.
How often do you misread, miss something critical, get bowled over by a hand that you had never even considered.?
In the example above, both our hands, his full house and my straight, were both fairly camouflaged. For all our analysis, there have to be hands that no player, no matter how skilled, can predict.
Is there an order that you use to analyze a board, a template, say: Look for pairs first, then straights, then flush possibilities. Or does this all happen at the same time in no particular order.
I know I’m weak in this department because I’m often beat in a showdown and when I see the enemy’s cards, I’m not always fast enough to catch the how and why. Sometimes I have to look at the instant hand history to see what just hit me.
Faster recognition would save me money, I’m sure. I’d be less likely to stick in one last bet, possibly drawing dead, throwing good money after bad when chances are I’m already beat.
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Posted Thu Aug 31, 2006 7:29 pm GMT by swiftone
Recognizing the possible hands that can beat yours comes with practise. Perhaps you should play lower limits until you learn this vital fundamental.
Posted Thu Aug 31, 2006 8:11 pm GMT by Skribbles
It will become instant soon enough.
Don't concentrate on your hand so much. First, determine what hands can beat yours. Once you figure out which hands have you beat, figure out how plausible it is that your opponent is holding one of them.
Posted Thu Aug 31, 2006 8:23 pm GMT by Sean_in_NJ
| swiftone wrote: | | Recognizing the possible hands that can beat yours comes with practise. Perhaps you should play lower limits until you learn this vital fundamental. |
It's a little more complicated than that, and this may be overkill, but I feel like being long winded anyway.
| rlb2252 wrote: | | Faster recognition would save me money, I’m sure. I’d be less likely to stick in one last bet, possibly drawing dead, throwing good money after bad when chances are I’m already beat. |
As a simple rule of thumb, don't marry straights when there are 3 suited cards on board. Ditto with straights and flushes when the board is paired. As you progress, you not only have to recognize the possible hands on a board, but also the likelihood that your opponent has one of those hands. In this particular instance, the full house can admittedly be a little tough to see. (I would disagree that your straight was concealed. QT isn't an unreasonable holding.) But sometimes you have to put your opponent on an unlikely hand when it fits the action. I'm not saying you should fold, but you need to be able to slow down when your opponent repeatedly tells you via raise after raise that your hand may not be good.
| rlb2252 wrote: | | How often do you misread, miss something critical, get bowled over by a hand that you had never even considered.? |
I'm going to use this hand as an example mostly because I like drawing attention to my misfortune as often as possible, but I think it illustrates the point.
The question I asked myself after that is the same one you're asking now: Should I have saved some bets? Now clearly, you can't put someone on quads every time there's a lot of action on a paired board. But there are other hands that fit the betting, and I feel I was remiss in not giving them more credence.
After villain's check-call on the flop, we can reasonably assume he has some sort of hand. AA-JJ is unlikely, since those hands will usually reraise preflop, and this player didn't strike me as particularly tricky. x5 suited is possible, with A5, 65 and 54 being possibilities. Hands like these will often slowplay the flop, waiting for the big bets on the turn to start jamming the pot.
Once the money started going in on the turn 6, x5 seemed like the most likely holding. He wouldn't get that aggressive with just a pair of tens, since my preflop raise could very well indicate JJ-AA.
The river A really makes it tough, because one of his possible hands (A5) also fits the action, and I have that hand beaten. There are still three hands that I can't beat though. AA is unlikely due to the lack of a reraise preflop. 55 is unlikely for obvious reasons. TT however should have been a possibility given stronger consideration. I certainly never fold, but perhaps I save a bet by calling instead of capping the river.
Posted Thu Aug 31, 2006 9:31 pm GMT by rlb2252
| Quote: | But sometimes you have to put your opponent on an unlikely hand when it fits the action. I'm not saying you should fold, but you need to be able to slow down when your opponent repeatedly tells you via raise after raise that your hand may not be good.
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I agree. In practically every board there’s something to be afraid of, some possible confluence of cards that might, maybe, possibly, could be dangerous for us.
Is your opponent really being sneaky, slow playing you while holding rockets. Or can you raise him to scare him out of the pot.
If we pay too much attention to every possibility and then allow all of those possibilities—no matter how remote—to color our actions, we’d never aggressively pursue any pot.
Gambling is a recipe for habitual second guessing. Say we do “slow down”, checking or calling rather than raising just in case we’re being slow played. If it turns out we were being bluffed, we wish we had jammed the pot.
Alternately, if we raise and reraise but wind up losing, we lament not going slower. “Why was I being so greedy?
Posted Thu Aug 31, 2006 9:42 pm GMT by rlb2252
| Quote: | | Recognizing the possible hands that can beat yours comes with practise. Perhaps you should play lower limits until you learn this vital fundamental. |
I'm at 0.25/.0.50. How much lower can I go?
While I don't disagree that some vital skills can be learned there, my fear is that stepping down to penny games will be too much like wagering with play money.
What do you think?
Posted Thu Aug 31, 2006 10:21 pm GMT by Skribbles
| rlb2252 wrote: | | Quote: | | Recognizing the possible hands that can beat yours comes with practise. Perhaps you should play lower limits until you learn this vital fundamental. |
I'm at 0.25/.0.50. How much lower can I go?
While I don't disagree that some vital skills can be learned there, my fear is that stepping down to penny games will be too much like wagering with play money.
What do you think? |
You have to stay at a level that means something to you. That being said, once you are not comfortable losing what you have at stake, it will do plenty of harm.
Posted Thu Aug 31, 2006 10:54 pm GMT by davepoker
one easy way is to flop some cards at home and figure out what the best hands are. Some beginner poker books have flops out and ask you to find what the nuts and 2-7 best hands are at each point. It comes down to experience playing.
for example i was playing today
my hand- Q  J 
flop- K 7 4
turn- 5
river- 2
i didnt notice the flush draw until the river and was bluffing at the pot on the flop and turn, on the river i realized i had the flush. After you play 2000 hands you should be able to see what is out there. I just try to think what hands players will call me with, its hardest when theyre on tilt, but besides that it comes down to experience.
Posted Fri Sep 01, 2006 12:30 pm GMT by shorn7
| Quote: | | one easy way is to flop some cards at home and figure out what the best hands are. |
This is great advice. I did this 4 or 5 years ago when I first started out and it really helps. Just take a deck, do a flop and stop and ask yourself what is the best hand with that flop right now. Also, what are the draws to worry about. Also ask what would be a good hand to have for that flop. Continue on with this on the turn and river. I promise that a few hours of practice will go a very long way to helping you recognize things when you play.
I would also recommend just going online and watching the limits that you play. You can turn these exercises into two good things: (1) helping with your board/hand recognition, and (2) taking copious notes on the players that you are likely to see when you sit back down to play for real.
As someone else pointed out, seeing the nuts on any given board quickly will come naturally after not too long. So don't worry that this will be a major roadblock for you. Also be comforted that from time to time every player, no matter how skilled or experienced will mis-read their hand or the board and lose more money than they should. We are all human, so it happens. For me when it happens, it is a sign that I am tired or not interested enough to play so I get up from the table.
That is one of the great things about the game, especially on-line. There should never be any pressure for the recreational player to play since no matter what day of the year or time of day you log on, you will ALWAYS find a game waiting.
Good luck with it and keep us up to date with your progress.
Posted Fri Sep 01, 2006 12:53 pm GMT by rlb2252
| Quote: | | one easy way is to flop some cards at home and figure out what the best hands are. |
Agreed. That is good advice.
Actually, I wrote this original post sometime last week and didn’t get a chance to post it until recently.
Since then I have played quite a bit, maybe six or seven hundred hands. It’s amazing what simply playing can do for your competence. You can read about it, talk about it, but playing is seems to be what counts most.
In some ways, I feel that a light bulb has started to go off--if not completely exploding full on, at least it has recently begun to blink.
Already, just over the last day or so, I can see a tremendous difference in my ability to recognize patterns on the board. I’m no expert, of course, but am much more competent in that regard. In other words, I’m much more likely to see the truck that hit me than to get completely blind-sided.
To carry on with one’s eyes open…well, you can’t ask for much more than that.
I’m also reading more, Skalansky and others, both on-line and off. Immersion is a great way to accelerate the learning process both in poker and with any other skill.
Because of my improved recognition I’m much more likely to get out of hands early. My wining showdown percentages have improved as well.
Posted Fri Sep 01, 2006 11:55 pm GMT by lwestatbus
I don't think you've pointed out whether you are playing limit or NL. I think in another post you'd said limit but am not sure.
Your last post indicated that you have seen a big improvement in the last week and this will happen. There are many, many things in our lives that were troublesome at first and that then became automatic to us--riding a bicycle, driving a car, dealing with the opposite sex ("Yes, Dear").
A couple of my hard-won lessons:
1. Three suited cards are a problem. When two of them came on the flop they are a real problem since someone with two matching cards in the hole is much more likely to draw to the flush than to count on runner-runner.
2. Use your site's player notes capability (or a 3d party product) to not only track what players will raise with but what they will play. When my JJ sees a 4-7-8 flop I want to know whether the only guy who called my flop bet plays loosely and may be holding 6-9 or even 5-6. But even wackos get real hands from time to time.
3. SuitedAces (a forum member--not a starting hand) wrote once that every dollar that goes into the pot increases the chances that you are beat. UNLESS, because of your player notes or experience, you know that the player calling down or raising you is unbelievably loose.
4. Realize that the blinds can play unlikely cards if the board wasn't raised preflop. And, again, watch for those players that play 70% of pots or that you know are likely to play a wide range of hands.
5. There is virtually no protection against your opponent making a set to his/her low/med pocket pair. Your AK suited looks wonderful to a flop of A-4-K unless your opponent is sitting on 4-4.
6. You will rarely have the absolute nuts. As others have said, you have to determine the chances that someone else might have the nuts and decide what you want to do. You will have situations where there are exactly two cards that can beat you and, guess what, your opponent has them.
7. I think that I have saved more money than I have forgone by pulling back and calling down when I've got a very strong hand but am still facing incredible resistance from another player. (My favorite: I've got KK, flop comes K-J-J, turn and river are blanks--Me and Villian cap each round. You guessed it, he had JJ.)
Posted Sun Sep 03, 2006 2:23 pm GMT by rlb2252
Nice seven commandments, Larry. Especially commandments, 1, 3, and 7.
Posted Tue Sep 05, 2006 9:46 am GMT by shorn7
| Quote: | 3. SuitedAces (a forum member--not a starting hand) wrote once that every dollar that goes into the pot increases the chances that you are beat. UNLESS, because of your player notes or experience, you know that the player calling down or raising you is unbelievably loose.
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I have to say, I don't understand this at all. At the heart of poker is your ability to put your money in as a favorite and not as a dog. That is how good players win in the long run. Perhaps I am not getting the gist of what you are saying, because I think it is the other way around. For a good player, the more money you invest in a hand, the more likely it is that you should WIN that hand, not lose it.
The rest of your commandments were quite good BTW.
Posted Tue Sep 05, 2006 10:12 am GMT by Sean_in_NJ
| shorn7 wrote: | | I have to say, I don't understand this at all. At the heart of poker is your ability to put your money in as a favorite and not as a dog. That is how good players win in the long run. Perhaps I am not getting the gist of what you are saying, because I think it is the other way around. For a good player, the more money you invest in a hand, the more likely it is that you should WIN that hand, not lose it. |
Simplistic example: You have AT in middle position in a FL game. It folds to you. You raise. In one instance you get a single caller, in another you get 4. In which hand are you most likely to be ahead?
Posted Tue Sep 05, 2006 11:11 am GMT by shorn7
Hmmm. I guess I interpreted what he said as every dollar that YOU put in the pot, the likelhood you lose increases. Based on your example, I understand what he was getting at now.
Thanks.
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