My name is Penguinfan........

[Penguinfan]

And I am the worst card player on the internet.



Whew, they're right, it does feel better when you admit it and come to terms with your problem.

Forget the facts, it must be me because so many people in the internet will swear on their childs life that you can't be cheated on the internet. I need help.

It doesn't matter that I have lost 8 straight times with AA (I MUST have played them wrong). Forget the fact that it is good to play with people who draw at redicualous odds, it's my fault that I keep finding the phsychic fish who know just when to play that 3-9 suited, man these guys are good.

Pot odds, shmot odds, dammit if a fish is dealt 4-4 he has the right, no, the obligation to stay till the river on a board af AK97 when you have AK so he can catch his two-outer, I know this and still I play AK in that spot, perhaps it was a head injury earlier in life that I have forgotten about.


I keep making the mistake of playing good cards and just never learn.

Aggresion, no good, they're gonna call.

Play tight, no good, they're gonna fish and catch.


TP, my financial state will be decided in the next 48 and it will be either REALLY good, or a complete disaster. If it turns out good I will pay you any price you ask to give me lessons. I'd like to start with defense if that's OK with you, I'm just letting too many soft draws get past me once the chips are in the pot and there must be a way to stop this from happening.

Thanks, my name is Penguinfan

[SirFWALGMan]

heh. I know how you feel. Last Night. I flop two pair. A6. Not a great hand to be in with, but pretty free flop. It was raised after me but not by much and multiple callers. So the flop comes A62. YES! I check-raise to 10 bucks (pot) trying to take down a nice sized pot right there. One guy cold calls. I then push in with the rest of my chips on the turn. Now obviously I like my hand here. I get called by my one companion. The river pairs the board and can you say counterfeited. How the hell can you think AJ, TP weak ass kicker is good when there is that much aggression on the pot. Did I make a mistake? Is Pussy play the only way? Keep it low until the draws are gone and then push.. I do not see way we can play any differently.. it just is what it is..

[Talking Poker]

Sounds like you've been having a pretty bad run.

No need to pay me for lessons... just post specific hands that you lost and think you might have played wrong, and we'll talk about them. No need to post a gazillion bad beats where you flop top two pair and the idito calls you down with his 44 and hits his two outer on the river though. If you bet at every opportunity (assuming this is limit), there's not much more you can do. And despite the results, you really do want these guys to call you down in that situation. Play enough hands and the math will work itself out.

[Penguinfan]

TP, you don't get it, I'm not on a bad run, I fucking stink. I make all the wrong moves and my opponents make all the right ones, every time. I need a complete overhaul of how I play the game.

Actually I think thats honestly it, I need a whole new view of how to play poker, especially on-line because whatever I am doing does not work in the long run, short run or any other kind of run you can think of.

If it were as simple as playing good hands and having them hold up the entire internet would be nothing but a rock garden because everyone, by now, would have figured it out.

I honestly have to be missing something. I flat out have no business being at the tables right now, none at all.

[nflchad]

[quote=Penguinfan]If it were as simple as playing good hands and having them hold up the entire internet would be nothing but a rock garden because everyone, by now, would have figured it out.[quote]

Being a rocks not fun, that won't change.

[ChipFish]

Have you read Small Stakes Holdem by Slansky?
Try that... It might help...
Not sure if it's in there or not, as I haven't read it yet, although it's on my list, but I love playing A-anything suited from any position when you know it's going to be 4-5+ callers to every flop.
You'll miss a whole bunch, but when you catch they still pay you with their 3-9off.

[Reel Deal]

^ Yeah, what Chip said... go find a good poker book and read it for a couple days and stay off-line.

[Talking Poker]

I'll third the advice above. Small Stakes Hold'Em is where you should start. Read it, process it, ask some questions here if you have any (especially if something seems completely wrong to you when you read it), and post some specific hand histories.... not just ones where you lost, but ones that maybe you won but think you misplayed.

Do you use Poker Tracker? If you post your stats, there may be some obvious things we can point out for you (ie, you are WAY too tight, or WAY too passive or whatever).

And please tell me if you are playing limit or NL, because they are completely different games...

[Penguinfan]

Limit cash games and NL tournaments like everyone else.

I see the same people time after time, including yourself, going deep in these games so there has to be at least as much skill involved as luck, right? It has become clear to me that it is much more than just bad luck, it has to be an overall strategy that keeps me from winning or at least cashing.

Getting your set of A's ruined on the river by a flush is, yes, bad luck and I understand it will happen from time to time and you can't do a damn thing about it.

What I do see is me being in the same spot, time after time in a tournament. That being with an average stack after the first break with the blinds now becoming a concern. Never am I in or near the chip lead or near the bottom of the pile, unless I have busted out because of an extremely bad beat.

I guess I am never near the top becasue I don't gamble with the bingo players early on, maybe that needs to change.

As far as cash games go I know I don't play at the limits where it is actually poker, in all honesty the cards may as well be dealt face up at the lower limits and we all know that.

Like I said, I need a whole new strategy and theory about the game.

[Talking Poker]

Without seeing PT stats or specific hand histories, I won't be able to give you specific advice, but I can give you a few things to think about...

In tourneys, what is your goal? Are you playing to win, or trying to sneak into the money? The latter is a losing strategy, IMO. If you are the first person out or if you finish on the bubble, you get paid the same - and even if you DO make it into the money, if you regularly sneak in, you'll be a losing MTT player in the long run. These tourneys are HEAVILY weighted towards the top 3 spots, so that should be your goal (IMO) - at least making the final table (depending on the size of these things).

I am NOT suggesting playing recklessly or garbage hands like Q4, but you may want to play more hands that can take down big pots early - ie, calling raises with suited connectors and that sort of thing. In limit cash games, this would be a terrible move, but in a NL tourney, you can end up taking down a HUGE pot when you flop a nut straight against AA. Sometimes playing like this will send you to the rail early, but from what you are saying, that means you're going to get paid exactly what you've been getting paid anyway - $0. So why not put yourself in a position to maybe get an early chip lead and then really be able to use your big stack to push people around as the money approaches and set yourself up to go deep?

Again, this isn't specific advice... just some stuff to think about.

I change gears a LOT when I play, but for these HUGE MTTs, I found I've had the most success by playing extra tight early on. I know this seems to contradict what I just said, and I guess it does, but one thing I want to suggest is that I try to avoid the "trouble hands." Yes, you can flop broadway with KJ, but more often than not, you're going to win a small pot or lose a big one with hands like that. So chuck em. I'd call a raise with 67s a LOT faster than I would with KJ...

When I do have a hand (after the flop, especially), I hammer it and try to win as much as possible. I try to bet the maximum amount I can that my opponent will call - this is a "feel" thing and very much depends on your opponent(s).

Once I double up and get myself a healthy stack, I crank up the aggression. As the table changes or players start to adapt to my game, I back off. I'll fold almost everything for a couple of orbits and then crank it up again. This is very hard to explain, as it's a lot more about feel and reacting to how your opponents are playing than anything else.

Especially as the tourney goes on, it's crucial to know who the good and bad players at your table are. Don't try to bluff the bad ones, and don't be afraid to make a big move on the good ones (like a check raise when a big scare card hits the board) - they are capable of making big laydowns if you play a hand like you have a monster, regardless of the two cards sitting in front of you.

"Starting requirements" are good to know, but they will only get you so far. Watch any of the top players and you'll realize they often throw these out the window. And post flop play is much more important than preflop play, so when you start with a good looking hand and get a bad looking flop, you need to know how to deal with this.

Again.... that's all just some general NL MTT stuff for you to think about. MTTs are very complicated, which is part of why I love them so much.

As for your limit cash games, those are cake. Where NL MTT play is about feel, limit cash games are about math. Once you tweak your game and learn to beat them regularly, they become very mechanical. Position and aggression are huge. I would rank your starting cards as the NEXT most important thing...

Oh, and a positive mental attitude is key too. You're going to have losing nights. The sooner you can accept that and not let them get to you, the better. I'm still trying to get myself to the point of being 100% accepting of losing big hands to ridiculous river suckouts, and I've come a long way, but I'm still not there yet..... Remember, when you are a 90% favorite with one card to come, you're still going to lose 1 in 10 hands. So when you do, accept it. "Ahhh, there it is."

I realize this is long, unedited, and all over the place, but I'm just trying to type some stuff up for you off the top of my head. Hopefully you (and maybe even others) will get something useful out of it.

[Penguinfan]

Thanks TP, it's actually very useful. It's just taken a while to accept that you can't simply be unlucky every time you play, it has to be an issue of skill and strategy eventually.

yes I realize that sometime you WILL in fact make the right play and get unlucky, but it can't be as often as I percieve it has been. Nobody is that unlucky, right?


As I was typing this I was playing a cash limit game and just cracked a guys AA when he limped to me in the BB with Q9 and I flopped two pair that filled up on the river. Expect him to start the nest thread I guess.

[ChipFish]

Without really reading TP's 9 volume reply above, and just taking the excerpt about your AA being cracked on the river, ask yourself this...

"Am I being aggressive enough?"
"Am I pricing them out of their draws?"

My goal is to never see a showdown in a tourney. (never happens, but you get the idea)
And When I do, I want to have something strong...

Also, keep pots small when you can until you know where you are.

[Reel Deal]

For NL MTTs you really should get your hands on Harrington on Hold Em... it helped me get to those back-to-back final tables on PR and nearly get to the final table last night on Stars.

[Reel Deal]

I don't know if this will help you any and I'm not professing to be an expert, but you might find this interesting... these are some of my stats last night from the Stars 20 table $20+2 where I finished 12th (at one point when we were down to 2 tables I was 7th in chips):

------------------------------------------
You finished in 12th place (eliminated at hand #2994510596).

186 hands played and saw flop:
- 3 times out of 25 while in small blind (12%)
- 7 times out of 23 while in big blind (30%)
- 16 times out of 138 in other positions (11%)
- a total of 26 times out of 186 (13%)

Pots won at showdown - 7 out of 11 (63%)
Pots won without showdown - 20
-------------------------------------------

What I found interesting is that I played extremely tight (saw only 13% of all flops), but you'll see I won 20 pots w/o a showdown and 7 of 11 showdowns. So, as you can see I didn't get involved in many pots, but when I did I aggressively went after them and/or made sure I had a hand that would hold up at showdown.

[humpty99]

I've never seen you play, but you sound an awful lot like the the kind of people I like to see at a NL tourney: very predictable! A guy who plays a lot of high cards is awesome to take chips from because he will raise, then I call. If the flop comes with low cards, unless he hit trips, he probably hit nothing. These players will most likely then take a healthy stab at the pot no matter whether they are first or last to act. Put in a healthy raise, and they almost always fold. If they call, they probably are drawing to one of their hole cards. If it hits get out. If they raise, they probably have a huge pair and you can ditch your hand. Although a tad risky early in a tourney, this simple yet effective move can net you MAJOR chips to get off to a good start which I think is critical. The last thing I want to do is wait three blind intervals for a premium hand, and already be fighting with people that have me quadrupled in chips.

Also, look at other peoples stacks. Try your hardest to get into hands with people that have less chips than you. Its not always possible if you get AA, and the leader is the only other one in the pot, but just do what you can. Like TP said, going into a pot with KJ against the chip leader can often be a death sentence. Play VERY safe when your opponent can send you home. Play VERY aggressive when you can send them home.

[Reel Deal]

Was that directed at me?

[Talking Poker]

I'm sure it was for Penguinfan.

[humpty99]

It was for Penguin fan. Like I said, I was only going on what he said. He sounded like he was frustrated about people with crappy cards winning, which is what a lot of "high card only" players get mad about. I have no problem with people winning or losing on low hole cards; however, when they are drawing to ridiculous odds against correct sized bets it is very un-nerving. When I'm in a game with very bad players (min. bets, raises, etc) I will often play junk because I know they will let me draw for next to nothing.