Striving to improve

[Sighmuns]

Hey all,

I'm reletively new to Blonde, but am thoroughly enjoying the experience so far. Despite being involved in poker for quite a long time, i've never been part of a poker forum community.

A bit of an introduction- those who play at Luton G casino might well know me already, but for the rest of you; I'm 23 yrs old, and started playing poker 6 years ago, largely teaching myself the game initially with play-money on the internet. I moved on to Micro cash on sites like Ladbrokes and William Hill, but only when bored. I was up and down in those games, definately not a long term winning player, but sporadically winning enough to keep me interested.

While at university I met some good players, and that spurred me on to try and improve my own game. I read a couple of books and became far more self-analytical. I phased out my cash game play, and have been focussing solely on tournaments for around a year now. After uni (and various travelling etc) I've settled into a job working for Betfair, as a sports betting broker. The hours that I work are very suited to a poker-player's life (earliest start 12PM) and I started to win regularly in smaller tournaments held on Betfair poker when I got home from work (generally very small field $44 buyin MTTs), and found myself with a regular side income. I'm sure i'll go back to Betfair poker soon, but at the moment i'm trying my hand at the huge field $24 tournaments on Full Tilt. I enjoy playing live poker perhaps more than online, but feel that any regular income I might make from poker in the future is more likely to come from online play, so plan to focus on improving that for a while.

I consider myself a winning player now, providing I stay to small games playing against people with less experience than me I am confident that I have an edge. The purpose of making this thread is to ask for advice from the community about the best ways to take my game to the next level.

I'm going to try and self-assess my game, starting with my percieved weaknesses, and I would really appreciate if anyone could offer specific advice about any way they can think of to improve or practice in these areas.
 

[Sighmuns]

Leaks/Things to improve upon:

• Maths: Maths has never been a particular strong point of mine, and while i've picked up basic pot odds (rough 'poker maths', you could say), I feel that my game would benefit from sharpening up. I'm fully aware that the answer to this may just be to practice maths problems etc, but wondered if anyone knew anyone who has had similar problems, and whether there was a more poker-related way to practice.
• Bet Sizing: Tied in with the maths, I feel that bet-sizing, especially live, is a large leak in my game. I've taken to raising 3x pre when blinds are small, and 2.6x when blinds get higher in online MTTs, and havent found any real problems with this system yet. I consider bet-sizing a real crucial skill to possess post flop, and i'm a bit rubbish at it. I too often find myself committed when i've meant to bet-fold, or lost value on streets not sizing bets to maximise profit in relation to opponant's stack sizes. Has anyone had similar problems? Hints/Tips?
• Poker Software: I am aware of software such as Poker Tracker, Hold Em manager and even Poker Stove, but have never used any of them. Pretty much every poker article offering advice to players that i've read has mentioned these progams, so i'm fully aware of what a crime it is that I haven't invested in them. The reason I haven't is not monitary... it's simply that I wasn't sure if any of them worked with Betfair, and while I have been playing quite a lot, the field's have been small, so i've relied on memory. The other point is that most of the few training videos i've watched have showed these programs being used in Cash play, and i'm not sure about their effectiveness in Tournament poker.
• Cash or Tournaments?: A smaller issue for me, because i'm enjoying learning MTT's at the moment, but a few of my friends who play professionally have made the decision to focus on cash games, presumably because they don't like the varience of tourns and regard cash games as a surer way of turning a profit. I'm interested to get some of your opinions on this- if I want to play poker professionally or semi-professionally I know it's possible to play either formats of the game- which is more advisable, or does it completely depend on the individual?

Now this post has become pretty huge; I feel confident that I could pick my game apart for significantly longer and find ways to improve, but maybe this will do for now.

I'm fully expecting some flaming about improving my dress sense etc from the Luton gang, but I felt comfortable posting this on blonde as opposed to some other forums I am aware of because of the culture of non flaming- I'm also really impressed by the hand analysis board, people seem to really go out of their way to help out people trying to improve, and I want to thank people in advance for any comments or advice they want to leave.

[thetank]

• Maths: Maths has never been a particular strong point of mine, and while i've picked up basic pot odds (rough 'poker maths', you could say), I feel that my game would benefit from sharpening up. I'm fully aware that the answer to this may just be to practice maths problems etc, but wondered if anyone knew anyone who has had similar problems, and whether there was a more poker-related way to practice.

Don't worry too much about this.

Most of the money in most online tournaments is made from your pre-flop desicions. A situation will be categorised on four things pretty much.

1. What hand you have
2. What position you're in
edit : and previous action
3. What point in the tournament it is.

You know all these things instantly just by looking.

The fourth thing is where your mental arithmitic comes in.

4. How many big blinds people have.

So you wanna get good at quickly knowing how many big blinds you have/opponents have. I'd just practice this. If you're not involved in a hand just go round the table and count how many bigs folk have.
Go for roughness and speed rather than precision. Being able to know that they have 12-15ish at a glance is what you want, it's not about being able to work out that they have 14.3 in about 4 seconds, fk that.

Once you know what situation you're in, while working out the correct stategy on what to do in this situation against a particular player (your strategy on how best to proceed in a situations will obv vary depending on what sort of player is being faced) can rely heavily on some heavy math, no-one really does much in the way of maths at the table. (I certainly don't, and I'm studying a maths degree)
Instead it's based on your strategic feel for what is the right thing to do, and this feel is developed by reading hand analysis boards on forums like 2+2 and in serious discussions with yer peers. (although maybe not so much if you're in Luton, word is they're all donks)
Running stuff through an ICM calc like SNGWiz is also pretty usefull even for MTTs, playing about with folks calling and shoving ranges to see what's best to do in what spot.

So in short you don't need to know a lot of math, but you do need to look at lots of hands away from the table.

[gatso]

tank's comments are all good, he knows stuff and is well worth listening to

• Poker Software: I am aware of software such as Poker Tracker, Hold Em manager and even Poker Stove, but have never used any of them. Pretty much every poker article offering advice to players that i've read has mentioned these progams, so i'm fully aware of what a crime it is that I haven't invested in them. The reason I haven't is not monitary... it's simply that I wasn't sure if any of them worked with Betfair, and while I have been playing quite a lot, the field's have been small, so i've relied on memory. The other point is that most of the few training videos i've watched have showed these programs being used in Cash play, and i'm not sure about their effectiveness in Tournament poker.

pt/hem work on betfair. 60day free trial available for pt, 15 day for hem so give them a try. not everyone uses the hud for tournament play (though I really think everyone should) but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use it to analyse your play afterwards

pokerstove- just download it now and have a play, it's great and dead simple to use

[Chili]

Hi Greg, excellent opening post. Particularly since playing with you in Vegas last month

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[GreekStein]

You just got a kiss from Chili, pretty much all your poker goals are accomplished now.

[Lucky]

Hi Greg, excellent opening post. Particularly since playing with you in Vegas last month

x

Or was it more than just a kiss?

[Sighmuns]

Hi Greg, excellent opening post. Particularly since playing with you in Vegas last month

x

I'll take that as an answer to the Tournaments/Cashgame question then as i'm sure you saw me play pretty terribly in the cash. I gave the mammoth fella who played so impressively against you a beating when I next saw him if that makes you feel any better.

I'm in Malta at the moment but mates who saw this post have berated me already for not having Pokerstove, so will download that as soon as i'm home.

Thanks for your advice Mr Tank, i'll be focussing on M far more from now on, see how I fare. I considered bringing a notepad along to the next casino tourn and updating chip stacks around the table just for practice... might try that once to see if it helps.

Basically all the interviews/articles I read with top players who are asked how they got to the top of the game include reference to how hard they've studied and worked towards getting to where they are. As I've been playing for quite a while now and feel like i've got the basics sorted, I think studying forums and hand histories is the next step for me.

Or, exactly what you say here:

this feel is developed by reading hand analysis boards on forums like 2+2 and in serious discussions with yer peers. (although maybe not so much if you're in Luton, word is they're all donks)