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Server Time: 2/13/2012 5:43:51 AM PACIFIC |
 HELP!! How to beat the low-limit game, blisterfoot, 27. Oct 2003 14:56 | ||
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| Hi, I am a fairly new player (3-4 months) but have read a few books and am a bright guy, so I feel like I should do well in the right games. My early experience online (and in one visit to Atlantic City) has been discouraging, however (down ~$800), and I'm trying to analyze what's going wrong. Although it feels like I've had some bad luck with the cards (e.g. I always get drawn out on, but none of my draws ever seem to work out), it seems too easy to blame bad luck alone, and I'm trying to analyze what I can do better. I think a big part of the problem is that in the low-limit games I'm playing in, I'm unable to put anyone on a hand because people will play any two cards, and I consistently get run down by people holding junk. I figured that the way to beat a loose game like that is to play extra-tight. So I wait for premium hands and then bet them aggressively to protect them, but there always seems to be some idiot who draws out on me with 4-7 offsuit, etc. Easy to beat one or two loose players, but how do you beat a whole table of them? Unfortunately, I don't have the bankroll to move to a higher-limit game where there are fewer chasers. Do I need to adjust my strategy, or should I just keep doing what I'm doing and eventually things will turn around? Thanks!! | ||
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| Re: HELP!! How to beat the low-limit game, Boftx, 27. Oct 2003 15:18 | ||
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| I'm going to stick my foot in my mouth probably, but here is how I have learned to deal with the problem. 1) Read Lee Jones. 2) Visit www.lowlimtholdem.com 3) repeat 1 and 2 as needed The biggest lessons I have learned are: 1) Understanding what hands play best with large numbers of callers and which NEED a small field and why this is so. 2) Be willing to get out of a "good" hand on the flop if I don't hit it hard and the table conditions are not favorable, and 3) Making effective use of a check-raise, whether flop or turn. Another adjustment for online was to start taking advantage of hand histories to see what people were mucking at the showdown. (NOT folding, those are not in the histories). I can gain a slight edge from this because I now have some *very* general guidelines to how a particular player might think. | ||
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| Re: HELP!! How to beat the low-limit game, MozMan, 27. Oct 2003 16:59 | ||
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| Boftx- I actually really like your post. I think it's excellent advice, and exactly what's kept me in LL games for so long. One thing I will add (to underscore the importance), every so often I stop beating th eLL games, and I have to read Jones again. That always puts me straight. The reason is this: as my skills improve, I naturally start expecting the LL tables to play at my level... but strategy is lost on people who don't think any further than the two cards in their hands. Jones helps me re-focus on the basics, and on the facts of how most LL players will play the game. oh, one other thing, now that I'm thinking of it. In LL games, play it straight. When you have a hand, bet and raise, when you don't have a hand, check and fold. Slow-playing and bluffing will not work. Check-raising is about the only effective deceptive tool you have. Don't slow down unless you've got the deck crippled (like quads or better). Anything less than quads and people will call you down anyway, so you may as well get as many bets in as you can. -Moz "Did you exchange a walk-on part in a war for the lead-role in a cage?" | ||
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| Re: HELP!! How to beat the low-limit game, Flatout_Mainiac, 27. Oct 2003 17:27 | ||
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| 1) learn how to pick the right tables!!!! you want passive table. A passive table isn't the table with the highest pot average. The ones I focus on first are the ones with slightly below average pot sizes. 2) make sure you play the right starting hands from the right position (you know what they are). Let others play Kxs or any suited. You will have the best of it most of the time because your kicker will be better. 3) Don't chase. If you think you got the worst of it fold and move on. They will deal other hand shortly. You might have the best of it then. 4) Bad beats are good. If you get more bad beats than you give (which should be rarely) then you know you are playing ok and you are at a table where you can make money. Bad players give bad beats....be patience with them, be nice to them, they are your customers. I also agree with the others that Lee Jones is a must read. I think the post flop play is essential....memorize it. | ||
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| Re: HELP!! How to beat the low-limit game, Boftx, 27. Oct 2003 23:25 | ||
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| on 27. Oct 2003 17:27 Flatout_Mainiac wrote: > 4) Bad beats are good. If you get more bad beats than you give (which should be > rarely) then you know you are playing ok and you are at a table where you can make > money. Bad players give bad beats....be patience with them, be nice to them, they are > your customers. > I don't entirely agree with this at LL. I think that when others see you get beat more than a couple of times, they will be insired to draw out on you too. And unless you play hands that like a lot of callers, you can take a beating on the high pairs, etc. | ||
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| Re: HELP!! How to beat the low-limit game, shorn, 28. Oct 2003 07:35 | ||
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| on 27. Oct 2003 23:25 Boftx wrote: I don't entirely agree with this at LL. I think that when others see you get beat more > than a couple of times, they will be insired to draw out on you too. And unless you play > hands that like a lot of callers, you can take a beating on the high pairs, etc. Not to be harsh, but this makes no sense. You WANT others to be "inspired" to try and draw out on you because their inspiration has nothing to do with the outcome. Taking a bad beat and having others try to take advantage of you because of it (provided that you don't go on tilt) is the best outcome you can hope for. Over time, it is simple math...better hands and better play will get the money. Period. | ||
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| Re: HELP!! How to beat the low-limit game, Boftx, 28. Oct 2003 09:30 | ||
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| I was thinking more along the lines that if you want your AA, KK, etc to stand up, you want few players against you. If you have more than a few, you better be ready to fold'em on the turn unless you have a very good idea what is out there. It has been my mistake in the past to get married to these big hands and not release them early when I have a full table against me. And it was my feeling that I was be seen as "unlucky" that kept them in even when I raised and caught a good flop, meaning a big set. And no, I don't think you were being harsh at all. | ||
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| Re: HELP!! How to beat the low-limit game, 4 POKER, 27. Oct 2003 19:01 | ||
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| Hi blisterfoot, The advice you received from Boftx and Moz will be very helpful to you indeed. (If it were me), I would want to try and find more passive games to play in. I agree with Flatout Maniac- look for passive tables and your fluctuations will be a lot less, too. Grant it, the pots may be smaller, but you might be able to have a little bit better control over your opponents, and right now, that may be in your best interest. Whatever style of game you chose to play in however.....just make sure that you're in your element being there, as well- you'll have more confidence because of it. Good luck :) 4P- | ||
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| Re: HELP!! How to beat the low-limit game, Guy F, 27. Oct 2003 21:57 | ||
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| I'm in a similar place as you developmentally, and since you mentioned online play I thought I'd toss out an option to consider. We'll see how many rocks people throw at it (marble or onyx only, please :-). I've been very discouraged at times in online LL games by having to fold hand after hand at a table full of what seems like wackos to me (then again, they're playing and I'm sitting on my hands, so.... not necessarily wacko). Everyone has a different comfort level, and I'm not (yet) comfortable with that amount of "gambling"; I'd like a little more balance on the "skill" side. What I've done sometimes is play online in micro-stakes NL games. I mean preflop pots of a couple bucks tops! I don't know if my experience is typical, but the people I've played with seem to ignore the fact that we're playing for stakes we'd be embarassed to hand out as a tip to a pizza delivery guy and play a lot less crazy. I think the "shock and awe" potential of NL makes people sober up, even at beer money stakes. I find I am getting better at putting people on hands, and get to experiment at playing a bit more aggressively myself without risking the mortgage money. I'm there to learn and get comfortable making what for me are still tricky decisions, not to make money. I want to develop a feel for what kind of play works in what kind of table environment. My hope is that by getting better at reading other people's hands from their play, I can eventually translate that experience to profitable stakes at both limit and NL games. My fear is that I may become dependent on the big bet weapon of NL and go back to folding too much in a limit game (OMG he called my raise on the turn - I better fold!). .... Rereading this I'm not sure I've made the point I thought I was going to make, but the nano stakes NL games online are at least making me more comfortable with my decision making. I'm getting better at figuring out what other people are likely to have (albeit at a glacial pace). If I get good enough I should be able to start playing the odds profitably. Just a thought. I could, as Dennis Miller might say, be wrong. | ||
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| Re: HELP!! How to beat the low-limit game, Denver, 28. Oct 2003 09:30 | ||
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| I tend to agree with this Guy. Where he has been playing micro stakes NL I have been using SnG's to accomplish the same thing. One gets to play a lot of hands with a guaranteed stop loss. Plus, you are forced to pay attention to others betting habits or you will be lost. You can't just mindlessly check/call all the way down when you get a marginal piece of the flop. You have to try to put people on hands based on the small amount of information you've been given. I also learned the true meaning of the phrase "tight/aggressive". What I thought was tight/aggressive was more weak/tight pre-flop and loose/passive post-flop (I still am fighting this). As mentioned above table selection cannot be stressed enough. I used to like to get on the tables with the highest flop% and pot-size, but now I look for a lot of callers with a propensity to fold after the flop to some heat. In these games they will call with sub-par hands and will only call you down with top pair or better. If you can show them the nuts a few times they will fold on the turn or the river consistently which can be very profitable. | ||
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| You become one of them, RonnieB, 28. Oct 2003 05:19 | ||
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| IMO, the key to winning at low limits is simple (in concept), play better poker. Discipline, discipline, discipline. I am a newbie as well. I got some great advise on this forum, read the recommended books, and practiced. I play micro low limits online. Initially, I was just holding my own in the micro low limits. This was very frustrating because the other players were so bad. I was an "enlightened player" so I should be killing these guys. I enrolled in poker school online and continued practicing in that forum. After a few weeks at PSO, I went back to my .05/.10 game and began to win consistently. The key to the difference was simple, I played better poker. If you are not careful, you become..... one of them. You loosen up preflop and/or chase bad hands. You are a better player so you can beat them post flop. Discipline is very difficult because the players are so undisciplined. You play the hand correctly and someone draws out on a hand they had no business flopping. You may also give up trying to put people on hands because the hands played are so wild. Discipline, Discipline, Discipline. | ||
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| Re: HELP!! How to beat the low-limit game, blisterfoot, 30. Oct 2003 18:54 | ||
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| THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR YOUR SUGGESTIONS! | ||
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| Re: HELP!! How to beat the low-limit game, bofund, 3. Nov 2003 05:40 | ||
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| Hi, I am a fairly new player myself. I started out in the play money tables, then in 10c rooms and now I'm playing in the 2/4 rooms regularly and I'm starting to beat them. Going on from what others have said, I brought Lee Jones a month ago. I have read it and re read it and I'm beginning to understand things like pot odds, implied odds and the concept of implicit collusion. Why you need certain amounts of players in certain hands. I'm also learning when to fold 'big' hands. For example, the other night I was dealt pocket queens which I raised with pre flop. The flop came AK7. I realised my queens were virtually worthless and folded. 2 pair aces and kings went on to win the pot. It's difficult but you have to know when to throw away beaten hands - 3 months ago I'd have played pocket queens to the river regardless! Buy this book!!! I've won $500 in the last month by using the principles explained in it. I'm starting to win $100 a session more times than I lose $100. In the long run, this is profit. You'll get beaten by bad hands catching a miracle on the river but they will be exceptions. You need to realise when you're on tilt. Personally, I play a lot tighter when I'm losing money. My statistics tell me that I fold around 80% of hands pre flop but when I do see a flop, I win about a third of the time. My advice to you would be to stick at it, read Lee Jones, study and understand what is being said. Apply it to the tables you play at. I'm no longer afraid of loose players at a table, they are the people I make money from. Hope this helps you. | ||
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