Lower buy-in NL ring game players

[Penguinfan]

Where, or should I say how do you find you make most of your profit from these games, mostly full ring?

Trying to outplay morons is all but hopeless and it seems the only time I do well is when I get paid off by someone elses horrible play, something like calling bets or even pushing when they flop top pair shit kicker and I have AK, stuff like that.

I always sit down with 2 or 3 tables open and after 100 hands or so I see I have won 2 or 3, thats it, is this comparable to your stats?

I never seem to "Chip up" along the way, it seems like one of three things happens:

1. All the money goes in and I either survive it or I don't

2. I double up off someone elses stupidity

3. I play a couple hundred hands and nothing spectacular happens and I leave down half a buy-in or so across all the tables.


On the other side of the coin where do you lose money during the bad sessions?

Cold-decked, chase draws, get sucked out on, play to many hands, play too many out of position?

So far the only thing I can say I am absolutly sure I have gotten better at and saved money is by not calling raises with even above average hands, especially out of position.

Laying down AQ suited to the third raise in EP may seem first grade level to a lot of you, but I know I used to spend a bunch of money on stuff like that.

Where do you make it, where do you lose it?

Edit to add: My first line looks like I am asking if you play full ring, I'm actually saying I play mostly full ring games, little/no 6-max.

[Aequitas58]

From my experience...

A few things came up at work, which is why I had to cut this short near the end, but you get the general idea, right?

[Penguinfan]

Thanks Lou, just to clarify, by "Cold-decked" I mean getting dealt KK when someone gets AA, hands like that where you really can't avoid getting the money in as a dog.

[Aequitas58]

"Nothing I could do there."

^ Those hands suck.

[melioris]

I have found, and continue to find, the micro tables to be quite profitable. I will break down my answer into two sections, full ring vs 6-max. But just to sum up at the beginning, as I stated in some other thread, micro-limits are all about ABC poker. I think it is the most profitable way to play $25 and $50NL. I have less experience at $100NL so I can’t speak for that.

In full ring I generally make money by being a nut-peddling nit. Early on I made a chart of starting hands that is position dependant. I can post it here or email it to you if you are interested. Post-flop I only CB with TP2K or better, a flush draw or a straight draw. Sometimes I get crazy and if isolated against one opponent I know is weak and I will CB with less. But I think of Full-ring as nut-peddling only. I push it hard when I have the goods and I lay down most everything else. I play all PP JJ and lower for set value only. My numbers are something like 17/7.5/45 (Boobie’s aggression factor which is basically a percentage of aggressive moves divided by passive moves with checking ignored). Yes, this is the most boring and predictable form of poker, but the players are so bad that they will payoff your nut flush with TPWK. I run into trouble in micro full ring when I try to do anything else but nut-peddle. The fools will not ever lay down when they catch a bit of the board, so it isn't worth attacking if you don’t have the goods. My profit looks like a few small pots punctuated by the 200BB pot every now and then. Yeah the suckouts are brutal, but I have found the full ring microtables to be profitable this way 7-15BB/100 hands.

I have jumped on the 6-max bandwagon as of late. My reasons are simple. I can get in more hands/hour and the players are worse (winning hand is significantly less in 6-max vs full ring and the villains are much more likely to play for stacks with much less). With 6-max games I have opened my game up considerably. I generally pfr or fold, and I CB just about everything. I assume I am ahead in 6-max unless I face resistance, and then I usually fold unless I have 2-pair or better, in which case I push. Against real maniacs 50 and higher, I will play for stacks with TP2+K. My numbers are 25/18/55 and my win-rate roughly the same 5-15BB/100 hands, but since I get more hands in it works out to more profit. So in 6-max I win a ton of small pots, probably lose 65% of medium pots (a CB of mine that gets raised or called and I don’t fire again on the turn-keep in mind that these hands are infrequent) and win over 55%+ of large pots, which are infrequent but nowhere near rare, and far more common than in full ring.

I hope that this is what info is the kind you are looking for. Also, if you don’t have it, I can not stress how important Pokertracker and a HUD are in table selection and opponent identification. Seriously, at the microlevels they are all the reads you need on a player.

[Talking Poker]

This is very interesting. I was shocked reading your first paragraph until I remembered that you were talking about full ring. I'm wondering how your strategy would work at higher levels. Maybe you should find out for us someday (hint hint).

Regarding your 6 max play, your PT numbers look very reasonable to me. You play a bit tighter than I do, but I think that is not only fine, but probably preferable at the levels you are playing. How does your play compare to what I've shown in my videos so far? The reason I am asking is because I intend to make some lower limit videos at some point. I assume my style will still produce winning results, but I think it may need to be tweaked a bit for optimal results. What I suspect is that things like firing that big bluff on the turn will become less profitable (I won't be able to get my opponents to fold as easily), and "fancy" plays (squeeze plays, for example) won't be as effective. So to adjust fot that, I think I'd need to tone down the aggression a bit and play just a little bit tighter... and doing that, I'd expect my PT numbers to look pretty similar to yours.

[melioris]

PF-sorry for the threadjack, I’ll just answer TP and then back on topic-

Thanks for the vote of confidence TP (at least that is how I read it )Last month my wife said something to the effect of “having poker pay for sitter and a nice dinner is good and all, but why not try to move up and make some real money”. I was psyched and promptly had my first losing month. This month is better and it is a good feeling to invest all my winning back into myself. It is slow going because I am a bankroll conservative, but hopefully I’ll get there soon. My goal is $100NL 6-max exclusively by January 1.

edit to add-TP at the micro levels, just about the only non-CB bluff I make is, with position, if a CB gets called, the turn checks through, and then the river comes a third suit or completes an obvious straight draw. The villian, who acts first, will often fire on the river since I checked behind on the turn, and I sometimes raise it up (1/2-3/4 pot) if I think the villian is any good and will lay down. Below every player's name I have PAHUD display %foldturn/%foldriver and only make this play against players that the numbers suggest can lay it down. Other than that, I fire a second barrel on the turn maybe 20% or so (I try to do it roughly the same % as the turn actually improving my hand) and this has moderate success.

[Talking Poker]

I like that you follow conservative bankroll guidelines and I'm confident you will be playing $100 NL by 1/1 if you stick to it and get a lot of hands in...

Good idea using the %foldturn and %foldriver numbers. I may need to add those to my display.

[Reel Deal]

melioris, where are you playing? Tilt?

Anyway, when you get to $100 NL get ready for more aggressive players, you'll see a lot more of people coming over the top of your PFRs and calling or coming over the top of your CBs. Definitely takes some getting used to. I had a bad run at $100 NL (bad beats mixed in w/some poor decisions) and played a little $50 NL and found I could run over that game with lots of PFRs in position and CBs, seemed like no one wanted to ever fold their blind preflop and then would fold to nearly every CB... that doesn't happen as much at $100 NL.

[Penguinfan]

Good stuff all, thanks.

Melioris, thanks for putting the time in to that post.

I guess I just wanted confiramtion that at low levels it is more about letting people donk off thier stack to you than any kind of fancy play.

My results for November have been better than any month I have ever had for cash games (keep that in perspective) because I have went back to a more "Nut-Peddling" style, and I really believe because of better pre-flop decisions. The only place I would disagree is with the continuation bet part, I have been finding more success with that than you guys it would seem, maybe just a coincidence though.