Adapting to different players 10NL

[deehell]

I have been playing 10NL at stars for several months now and over 11k hands and showing a steady profit. Most players in this section of the forum will of played there and have a general idea of the standard of play at the site.

My intention is move up to 25NL very soon. As a natural progression at the weekend I entered a 20$ buy in 0.10/0.20 at Tribeca, just to get used to the idea of playing with a bigger buy in.

Now the standard of pre flop play was way way weaker than anything at Stars. I mean very little pre-flop raising, limp limp limp all the way. A 9 handed table you would see at least 6 limpers. Every time you raised you would get at least 3 callers.
Pre flop action made post flop play very difficult. Some of the better players seemed to handle the post flop situations very well. After raising PF with a high pair one of the 2/3 callers would fancy taking a stab and representing the over card that landed. I found myself joining the limpfest in the end.

Basically I know this is a bad way to play but I found I was totally out of my depth, completely inexperienced to the table dynamics. Some of the better player’s stats were like in the region of 60/5. Now is this the best way to play these kinds of tables limp and try to flop a monster or at least a strong draw? Can give me some advice on how deal with these players or tables. I just don’t feel Im ready to move up to 25NL if I don’t know how to cope with these games.

Thanks in advance.

[Bowlboy]

I dont know how many hands you played at tribecca. If you play a decent amount of hands though, you will find that 60/5 just is'nt profitable. I mean seriously, think about how many hands 60% represents.

[deehell]

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I dont know how many hands you played at tribecca. If you play a decent amount of hands though, you will find that 60/5 just is'nt profitable. I mean seriously, think about how many hands 60% represents.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thats what I would of thought, but some of these guys were getting in for 1bb and dumping or playing the flop onwards pretty well. I suppose if you can get in with 5 or 6 other limpers there must be a lot of +ev situations if you know how to play them.

For the record I played around 800 hands in the last few days.

[Bowlboy]

800 hands is less than 2 hours of play for me, and sometimes I'll see somebody who limps 60% of his hands oop and he'll be up 3 buy-ins. This usually means that they have just been lucky. A good run of cards and lucky flops can last for 1k hands and you get bad runs just the same.

If these players were good and solid, they would realize that more than 5% of their hands are worth a raise, and would start punishing the table for limping with poor hands. Since they outplay their opponents after the flop in small multiway pots they should have no trouble outplaying 1 opponent in a raised pot for more monies. Let's say that 20% of the hands these players are dealt are actually considered playable. This means that 2/3 of their hands they are limping with are at best marginal, mostly junk in a multiway pot however because you basically have to hit 2pair or better. In the long run, hitting trips with hands like these is often unprofitable because you will usually have kicker problems and pay off big when you are beat and only rake a small pot when you win.

I'm no expert and I have less than 2K hands at 25NL on stars and I'm struggling. Part variance and part stupidity on my part but meh. 800 hands is nothing, 5k hands is nothing. The path to the monies is by playing tight aggressive poker.

[deehell]

It all sounds good what you say Bowlboy. I agree it's most probably best to play TAG, but the variance can be and must be a real killer on these tables. It's going to probably make it worse buying in for 200bb as opposed to 100 on other sites.
Its just the play was something I wasn’t used to and I didn’t handle the unfamiliar situation well. At time’s I felt myself starting to tilt out of frustration and had to come off for a bit to get myself together.
In fact I bet the variance can be nearly as bad as a 25$ buy at 0.10/0.25.

[deehell]

Sorry I made a mistake in the original post. It was a 0.05/0.10 table with a $20 buy in.