Some words of wisdom

[Suited_Queens]

Great post. Even the people that say 25NL is the same as 10NL are very wrong. Each level brings it's own unique challenges you have to figure out. Also remember on average, as you move up, the competition is always going to be a little bit better as a whole. You might get lucky and find a few tables full of idiots but overall that new limit will be slightly more difficult.

[avfletch]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Reads/stats:

[/ QUOTE ]

Reads >>>>>>> stats. Turn your HUD off from time to time and play the least number of tables you can without going crazy and donking off your roll. At the end of it write a paragraph describing each of the player's biggest mistakes and how to profit from them. Then ask yourself why you weren't doing it while you played [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a sick idea, thanks a lot. To make it even better, do it on a table with a bunch of regs, people that you will play again and again. Whenever I see that I've played 200+ hands with someone and I have no or little notes on them, I feel complacent and stupid, since they had to have done something interesting in that span.

[/ QUOTE ]

I try to go through my PTDB at least once a week and read the HHs for the people who I have lots of hands on then summarise the biggest faults I see. Also, and probably more importantly, I spot the tough regs who it's better to avoid or only play when I would rather lose and learn.

[Grunch]

Nice post, I have one to add.

They aren't bluffing as often as you think. You didn't put any strategic advice in your OP, so this goes against the grain a bit. But I know this was -- and is -- one of my own biggest hurdles. Everytime they bet or raised I questioned why they would be bluffing so much. It's like I flat refused to believe anyone but me could make a hand. Or maybe I just refused to acknowledge that my opponents might actually have a few functioning brain cells. As far as my own results go, I know that a major portion of all the large pots I've lost have been to me just not believing them. Worse yet, not even thinking about what thier bets might represent. I was only thinking about what bluffs they may be running.

When you get in to this pattern, do what I do. Stop and consciously think to yourself, "if they were betting straightforward for value here, what hand range they have?" I find a lot of times that when I come up with this range it fits perfectly with how they have played, and when I make the calls anyway and the hands show down, more often than not thier actual hand is in this range.

[avfletch]

[ QUOTE ]
Nice post, I have one to add.

They aren't bluffing as often as you think. You didn't put any strategic advice in your OP, so this goes against the grain a bit. But I know this was -- and is -- one of my own biggest hurdles. Everytime they bet or raised I questioned why they would be bluffing so much. It's like I flat refused to believe anyone but me could make a hand. Or maybe I just refused to acknowledge that my opponents might actually have a few functioning brain cells. As far as my own results go, I know that a major portion of all the large pots I've lost have been to me just not believing them. Worse yet, not even thinking about what thier bets might represent. I was only thinking about what bluffs they may be running.

When you get in to this pattern, do what I do. Stop and consciously think to yourself, "if they were betting straightforward for value here, what hand range they have?" I find a lot of times that when I come up with this range it fits perfectly with how they have played, and when I make the calls anyway and the hands show down, more often than not thier actual hand is in this range.

[/ QUOTE ]

QFT.

[Xanta]

I made a post in the microbrew a while back about something one of my profs called 'competency awareness,' which is pretty important in learning poker IMO, so I'll try to expand on it where it seems to fit. Basically what the concept boils down to is this. When I play a session I make two kinds of mistakes. Mistakes that I know are bad, and mistakes that I thought were correct.

The first kind are the ones where you're playing a hand and you get that sinking feeling in your stomach right as you make a decision, where you say to yourself 'I have no freakin clue what to do here.' We have a well paved avenue for fixing those mistakes. Just go over the hand looking for a solution, if none is apparent then post it on 2+2 and talk it out. Easy. The majority of my progress so far has been fixing those mistakes, and it's been good for my game.

The second kind of mistake is trickier to fix, and the difficulty lies in recognizing that it is a mistake. These leaks lie unplugged because we never give them a second thought, just let them fester in our game eating at our winrate. I'll give an example that I see all the time on uNL.

UTG limps, I raise K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] K[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], everyone folds but UTG.

Flop comes A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 5[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 8[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]
UTG checks and we bet because we always cbet when HU as the preflop raiser in position, right? Right guys? (If you don't see a problem with this, talk to jonny, he loves this spot) The reason why these leaks never get fixed is because we're 'unaware of our own incompetence.' I cbet that flop and move on to the next hand, never giving it a second thought.

Well if we don't know we made a mistake, how do we fix it? Good question. If we are unaware of our own incompetence, maybe someone else will be. Get someone to sweat you every once in a while, you'll be surprised what they point out. Read other peoples hands, sometimes they do weird [censored] that doesn't make sense to you but really is correct. (This is especially true of hands in SSNL and MSNL) You can go over your own big hands, even if you think you played them well, and do a more detailed analysis, see what comes up.

In short, we're all going to make mistakes, no matter how long we play or good we get. Accept that some of your 'standard' plays are wrong, go out, find 'em, fix 'em, and profit.

Sorry about the length.

[derosnec]

[ QUOTE ]
Nice post, I have one to add.

They aren't bluffing as often as you think. You didn't put any strategic advice in your OP, so this goes against the grain a bit. But I know this was -- and is -- one of my own biggest hurdles. Everytime they bet or raised I questioned why they would be bluffing so much. It's like I flat refused to believe anyone but me could make a hand. Or maybe I just refused to acknowledge that my opponents might actually have a few functioning brain cells. As far as my own results go, I know that a major portion of all the large pots I've lost have been to me just not believing them. Worse yet, not even thinking about what thier bets might represent. I was only thinking about what bluffs they may be running.

When you get in to this pattern, do what I do. Stop and consciously think to yourself, "if they were betting straightforward for value here, what hand range they have?" I find a lot of times that when I come up with this range it fits perfectly with how they have played, and when I make the calls anyway and the hands show down, more often than not thier actual hand is in this range.

[/ QUOTE ]

very true. reviewing PT the other night (for my past gazillion hands), a huge % of my losing hands were when i was the caller postflop against a push/large raise (esp on the turn/river)

we can say it "depends" but the reality is that we are against a big hand way more often than we are against a semibluff/pure bluff. uNL just doesn't play that aggro really. so when someone gets aggro postflop, we need to be careful. looking back at my hands, i was trying to think what my was reason was for calling and i see that often i was getting 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 pot odds, so i justified the calls that way, but the fact is that against a big bet, i am often not good enough even 10% of the time without at least the 3rd nuts.

[wildzer0]

Very nice, I'll add one more if that's ok that's kind of a corollary to grunch's:

They won't fold
I see a lot of posts where people are trying to get fancy against very weak players and calling station types thinking "I've shown so much strength, they have to fold their TPWK". They won't. There are players you can get away with this, but at this level they're often the exception rather than the rule. If you focus on more fundamental concepts like betting for value, pot control, etc. instead of trying to pull off high variance often -EV bluffs you'll start to see the spots where these types of plays can work more naturally.