First off I'll say I hate ring games. In the first month I started playing poker I found myself in the position where I needed to pay off my £300 on my season book before I could buy my ticket for the UEFA cup game vrs Liverpool, I'd made about $100 from, initially, freerolls and then limit games and in true Jack Bauer style I had 24 hours to save day. I spent all-night playing $1/$2 limit and at about 6 in the morning it dawned on me that while I was up I wasn't making it in time so switched my $200 to a $1/$2 NL game.
I played this game for about 45min growing increasingly frustrated as every hand would pick up a 6-7 limpers and with that many people seeing the flop basically the first to show any real aggression would scare everyone off nobody wanted to play in 6 way pots when faced with a decent bet on a $6.50 pot. I realised that the only to win big was to make the pot significant before the flop, so I started raising any halfway decent hand and would generally followed through on the flop, turn and river with pot sized bets if I saw something I liked and didn't detect any strength at the table.
What I lost when someone did have a hand was pretty much evenly matched with all the pots I was picking up unchallenged. What I did notice was that I was starting to get called down by some increasingly dodgy hands for big pots from players who half an hour ago were wetting themselves at $5 bets when holding top pair. To cut a long story short (ish) a while later I got 2 callers holding 89s, hit a flop of 289 and tripled through (one caller had A8o). Voila and away to the game I went.
Any other time I've played ring games I've tried to play the same way but results vary 25% of the time I'll make a lot(comparitively), 25% I piss it away quickly and 50% of the time I make a lot and then piss it away. Now I realise that this is to be expected with a loose, aggressive approach but I suspect I'm pushing the boat out too far, too often and need to look at tightening back up when the table starts going mad. Either way while I'll occassionally have a shot at a ring game basically the swings are too wild and my bankroll to restrictive to be happy investing the cash to work on this.
Anyhoo, after BB2 cleaned me out till payday (tomorrrow woohoo BPL here I come) I found $2 I had left on sportingodds and started playing a
/10c ring game, after a bit of success I ended up multi-tabling 3, 4 & 5 tables (something I never do) eventually making enough to buy in for the $20 max on 5 12c/25c tables and was coining it in. over the space a couple of sessions I cleared $200 as well as unlocking an extra $100 bonus. The best of it was I can't remember a time where I faced any really difficult decisions. As I was playing 5 tables I found it easier that usual to stick to quality hands most of the time, I even found that I could get to see plenty of flops with speculative hands on the strength of the large numbers of limpers.
Before this I would have sworn blind that sit'n'gos were the best way to make steady low-risk money but now I not so sure. If I can make £100 a week multitabling then that would make my trips to Cincins self-funding which would be nice. One question I would like to ask those with more experience in multi-tabling ring games is up to what sort of limits will straight-forward ABC poker be enough to turn a profit?
Hmm this has run a touch longer than I'd intended but what the hell I just love the sound of my own keyboard.
As always any views, advice, questions or abuse welcomed.
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