Thought process during a hand (basic flowchart):

[fracas]

Not to bogart your topic (which I think is brilliant in its simplicity), but what is "floating" anyway?

[runout_mick]

[ QUOTE ]
Not to bogart your topic (which I think is brilliant in its simplicity), but what is "floating" anyway?

[/ QUOTE ]

"Floating" is a fairly advanced play where you call a flop bet IN POSITION with no pair, no draw, expressly for the opportunity to take the pot away with a bet/raise on a later street (almost always the turn).

NOT a beginner play.

[SaErDnaW]

This is actually very good. This is the kind of things you should consider when playing a hand.

I agree. Let's make a t-shirt :-)

[DiamondDog]

I like this chart a lot.

Sure, there are things you could add, but the whole point is, it's for beginners, and as such it does a great job.

I'd be interested to know how your girlfriend fared when she used it.

Also like the t-shirt idea.

[lucky_mf]

You should leave some space for calling when you think you hand is the likely the best and you are being bet into (as the pre-flop raiser - often it is a bluff or a marginal hand turned into a bluff. Sometimes it is a monster.

Lucky

[Acein8ter]

Overall great job and good idea for beginning players.

[runout_mick]

[ QUOTE ]

You should leave some space for calling when you think you hand is the likely the best and you are being bet into (as the pre-flop raiser - often it is a bluff or a marginal hand turned into a bluff. Sometimes it is a monster.

Lucky

[/ QUOTE ]

Very good point. I strongly thought about incorporating that line of thinking, but discarded it for a few reasons:

1) I wanted to impress that raising or folding was usually better than calling.
2) I actually believe that calling in this situation is a more advanced play.
3) I couldn't figure out where in the thought process this might belong for a beginner.
4) I got the chart to this point and decided it was all that she, as an absolute novice, could digest.

I suppose you could mark the section "Do I have odds to call? (outs)" with an asterisk, and have a footnote explaining that "if you have a marginal hand that is likely to only beat a bluff/cont bet, are the odds villain is bluffing greater than the pot odds being offered?".



[ QUOTE ]
I'd be interested to know how your girlfriend fared when she used it.

[/ QUOTE ]

As soon as she had the concepts in the chart more or less understood (took a week or so of coaching) she was instantly a winning uNL player, and has only redeposited once on her initial Pokerstars deposit of $50. This was about a year ago and she still is a consistently winning ssnl player.

It's interesting to note that about 3 months into playing, she changed her style (without my knowledge) to a more passive one as the large bets/raises "scared" her. This also sparked a several month losing stretch. Luckily, her pokertracker graphs clearly allowed her to see that the moment she started playing with passive tendencies was also the same moment she started playing losing poker, so it was easy to get her turned back around.

[lucky_mf]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You should leave some space for calling when you think you hand is the likely the best and you are being bet into (as the pre-flop raiser) - often it is a bluff or a marginal hand turned into a bluff. Sometimes it is a monster.

[/ QUOTE ]

Very good point. I strongly thought about incorporating that line of thinking, but discarded it for a few reasons:

1) I wanted to impress that raising or folding was usually better than calling.
2) I actually believe that calling in this situation is a more advanced play.
3) I couldn't figure out where in the thought process this might belong for a beginner.
4) I got the chart to this point and decided it was all that she, as an absolute novice, could digest.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you should be calling most of the time you are bet into (in position) and think you have the best hand. If you always raise you will be building huge pots with marginal hands and blowing people off second best hands they they might bet or bluff with on a subsequent street. There are clearly exceptions, but raising most of the time is wrong.

Example (assume 100bb stacks): you raise (4bb) in late position with KJo. The bb calls (9bb pot). The flop comes J86 rainbow. The bb bets 7bb into you. You should probably call. If you raised the pot (23bb) you would need to raise his bet to 30bb which, assuming he called would leave you with 64bb remaining in a 68bb pot. This is a good situation to be in if you want to get it all in on the turn (as he is better than 2-1 and it will be hard to fold), but not a good situation when you have a hand like TPGK and your opponent called a pot sized raise on the flop (unless he is a total station or you are a total maniac - giving him justification to call with something that KJ beats).

Lucky

[gedanken]

huh.

now the turn comes a blank, and he bets 15-20BB at me?

turn completes some sort of draw, and he bets 15-20BB? If I call again, we've got much the same pot, with very little clue where we stand.

OTOH, his range is much wider now, so maybe we're ok going to showdown with TPGK?

My standard is to raise flop, and smile if he folds a 2nd best hand (I get 23bb for my top pair, fair enough). If he calls, I'm shutting down, maybe even folding to a big turn bet.

All of a sudden I feel like I don't know how to play postflop. Have I just forgotten basic pot control? Should I not be hijacking this thread?

[pernicus53]

I think the chart is absolutely outstanding. People who write books on poker should include such things--instead they give you all these different decisions spread out 100-200 pages and you have to essentially make your own chart.