Beginner Tips Needed - When to go all in PreFlop ?

[mstram]

Greetings,

I've just started playing poker of any kind ! .. and online the last couple of weeks. So far I've just been playing in freerolls and actually won a whopping $0.75 in my third or fourth tournament (You know what they say about "blind pigs" [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

From the little bit of material I've read, I've been trying to play "tight aggressive", and it's worked well enough to get me half way up, and sometimes in the top third of the field after the first few rounds of betting.

But inevitably when I start facing the stronger players at those levels, I'm getting knocked out, (which is no big surprise).

I think one of my main weaknesses is that I'm reluctant, or actually don't really know when I should go all-in or how much I should bet before the flop with strong cards like AA,KK,QQ,JJ. Whenever I get those hands, I'll bet 4 or 5 x BB, but I don't go all in if everybody else has at least the same or bigger stacks.

I guess??? with AA, KK, and everyone "equal stacked", that would be a pretty good all-in ?

I realize that I'm just in "pre-school" at the moment, and have tons to learn about the game, and it might even take more than a few weeks to learn it all [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img], but any tips would be welcome.

Mike

[brad2002tj]

http://members.cox.net/wastrel333/Pushbot%20Charts1.pdf

[EroTheMad]

First of all, don't play freerolls. If you're the best player on the field it's still so hard to be first. And if you beat 2-3k other players, prize like 15$, 20$ is tooo small.

You can go all in with AA,KK and AKs regardless of your or other players stack. At the low-end of smallstakes i wouldn't be afraid to go all in or call with QQ JJ TT and AQs too. If you're dealt AA, KK, AK raise to 3-4BB , if raised before you, raise to 3X of original raise, and don't be afraid to go all in anytime with these monsters.

Don't try bluff or other things at first. Learn to play tight-agg. but be sure you're tight AND AGGRESSIVE. A lot of players think they're TAG while they are only tight. Play few hands but play them aggressively.

I recommend HOH I-II-III. These books cover concepts of MTTs (but still i don't like the examples on I-II post-flop play). You'll learn a lot of things from them and click the sticky anthology forum at the top of the SSMTT forum and read what you find.

But i can say that there's a great world ahead of you and you need to study hard. Read,play,read,play,read,play,read,play and read and play. And then start to post your hands here.

And couple of last things. We all lost coinflips on bubble with AK too many times but we still think we did the right thing. We all had runner runner runner bad beats, rivered by 1 out and told other people. Then we understood that they don't care and decided not to talk about them and get used to it.

[mstram]

Thanks guys,

What's "HOH I-II-III." ?

Mike

[EroTheMad]

Harrington on Hold'em. Action Dan. Great guy. I love him [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[mstram]

Ero, thx I'll look for those books.

I just finished 61 / ~1000 at WPT's $250 Weekly Fr Sat (ID5887586) $0+$0 qualifier.

First 50 spots made it to the next round .. ARgh ... so close [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

I actually played a bit "looser" in this tourney.

I played a lot of hands with J(8-2) instead of folding anything that was below JT, like I did in a couple of other FR's I played earlier today.

It's hard to compare one tourney to another, but I obviously played more hands this time, and the field was much smaller 1K, instead of 10-20K ! I guess some people have to work during the day [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

I was up to 10K in chips at one point, but then by the time I got to ~round 20 or so I only had about 5K, and my stack quickly dribbled away with 1.6K BB's !

I just kept folding waiting for a big hand and trying to hold in there to try to scrape into 50th spot [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] But with my piddly 3k stack against others 10-20 times bigger it wasn't much of a contest, and I didn't catch anything.

Mike

[sharkscopeaholic]

Like the other person said read HOH 2 it has ALOT about when you need to be pushing or folding mode.