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Ive been playing online poker for 8 years with over 3 million hands of experience, I want to share some game theory concepts i’ve developed after countless hours reviewing my 'pokertracker' database, pokertracker is a hand statistics HUD(heads up display) which you need to use where allowed to have any chance of winningbankroll management:-between 25 buyins and 100 buyins is considered good bankroll management, i recommend 100 buyins minimum, roughly 10-15 buyin variance swings should be expected at all timesNLHE preflop:-first i’ll start with the concept of table equity which i find to be a useful starting ‘VPIP’ to aim for, table equity being: 100% divided by the number of players at the table representing your share of mathematically 'winning equity’, for example at 6max your table equity would be 16.67% so you would want to be playing the top 16.67% of hands which for me is something like 22+A2s+ATo+KJo+KTs+QTs+JTs+, 9max would be the top 11.1%, keep in mind the only incentive to play more than AA preflop is because of the blinds which should put in perspective how small the edge is in poker-after youre familiar with table equity, you’ll want to know that mathematically you can steal in late position and defend the big blind(less so in the small blind) up to double table equity (example: 33.3% at 6max, something like 22+AT+KT+A2s-T2s+96s-76s+), if you fold in bb you’ll lose 100bb/100 hands and 50bb/100 in sb - fyi, but keep in mind this isnt always appropriate as you often wont get enough respect to justify stealing/defending vs certain opponents, in that case just stick with table equity VPIP-when it comes to 3betting i’d suggest sticking with 3betting for value (TT+AQ+) up to half table equity, or to make things easier only 3bet when you have a near sure-thing such as AA/KKNLHE postflop:-postflop mistakes you should avoid include overvaluing flush draws/OESD’s (play strictly for pot odds), overvaluing top pairs including TPTK, and overvaluing overpairs which are hands you actually want to fold surprisingly often when your opponent reraises you even if it seems very difficult, you need to understand that most of your winnings will come from having the sure-thing nuts OR outright bluffing your opponent off their hand via barreling-what i do to get opponents to fold is what i call “cbarrel” vs 1 caller postflop, that means i’ll cbet the flop about 2/3 pot size which needs to work 39% or more to profit, then cbet the turn ½-2/3 pot size which needs to work 33-39% to profit, and again cbet the river ½-2/3 pot size which usually gets them to fold enough to be profitable even if they didnt fold the turn, cbetting/cbarrelling should be done roughly 50-60% depending on the opponent and the board texture, the wetter the board the more likely your opponent has a piece of it-if you notice you arent getting very many folds/respect you can adjust by tightening up preflop or experiment with barreling less. i also like to occasionally reraise my opponent on the flop around 2x - 2.5x the size of their cbet in a sense “cbetting their cbet” in an attempt to bluff or 'balance my range'-if it helps try to imagine that the cards dont matter, youre only trying get your opponent to fold, otherwise you only want to showdown close to a sure-thing. realize that in a vacuum if you were all playing similar hand ranges preflop the most aggressive player postflop would usually come out on top-keep in mind your profit with each hand will exponentially lean towards the best starting hand which is AA followed by KK, the top 50% of preflop hands have many times more equity postflop than the bottom 50%, always play tighter when in doubt-the sooner you familiarize yourself with the range of hands your opponent may have in any situation the sooner youll be able to narrow down your decisions accurately, you should tend to give every opponent the benefit of doubt until given reason to believe otherwise and you should tend to pot control all but the nuts vs tight opponents, tight opponents tend to play tight both preflop and postflop-the longer you take to make a decision the longer you give your opponent to make a decision so time is always a factor, i strongly recommend learning to beat the game playing only one table before attempting to multitable-the most important piece of advice is to always target looser/weaker opponents which are usually those with a vpip above double table equity who you can loosen up against to roughly 40-50% of their preflop range, if there are no weaker opponents you need to leave the table immediately or you will be raked to the end of your bankrollPoker is intended to be entertainment with just enough complexity that you can never play perfectly, eventually youll find what i call the 'numerology' and psychology of the game closely reflects many aspects of life and im hoping to see the game legalized worldwide which will open the door to a larger skill-game/"mental sport" economy as an alternative to the female dominated service economy
Ive been playing online poker for 8 years with over 3 million hands of experience, I want to share some game theory concepts i’ve developed after countless hours reviewing my 'pokertracker' database, pokertracker is a hand statistics HUD(heads up display) which you need to use where allowed to have any chance of winning
bankroll management:-between 25 buyins and 100 buyins is considered good bankroll management, i recommend 100 buyins minimum, roughly 10-15 buyin variance swings should be expected at all times
NLHE preflop:-first i’ll start with the concept of table equity which i find to be a useful starting ‘VPIP’ to aim for, table equity being: 100% divided by the number of players at the table representing your share of mathematically 'winning equity’, for example at 6max your table equity would be 16.67% so you would want to be playing the top 16.67% of hands which for me is something like 22+A2s+ATo+KJo+KTs+QTs+JTs+, 9max would be the top 11.1%, keep in mind the only incentive to play more than AA preflop is because of the blinds which should put in perspective how small the edge is in poker-after youre familiar with table equity, you’ll want to know that mathematically you can steal in late position and defend the big blind(less so in the small blind) up to double table equity (example: 33.3% at 6max, something like 22+AT+KT+A2s-T2s+96s-76s+), if you fold in bb you’ll lose 100bb/100 hands and 50bb/100 in sb, but keep in mind this isnt always appropriate as you often wont get enough respect to justify stealing/defending vs certain opponents, in that case just stick with table equity VPIP-when it comes to 3betting i’d suggest you stick with 3betting for value (TT+AQ+) up to half table equity, or to make things easier only 3bet when you have a near sure-thing such as AA/KKNLHE postflop:-postflop mistakes you should avoid include overvaluing flush draws/OESD’s (play strictly for pot odds), overvaluing top pairs including TPTK, and overvaluing overpairs which are hands you actually want to fold surprisingly often when your opponent reraises you even if it seems very difficult, you need to understand that most of your winnings will come from having the sure-thing nuts OR outright bluffing your opponent off their hand via barreling-what i do to get opponents to fold is what i call “cbarrel” vs 1 caller postflop, that means i’ll cbet the flop about 2/3 pot size which needs to work 39% or more to profit, then cbet the turn ½-2/3 pot size which needs to work 33-39% to profit, and again cbet the river ½-2/3 pot size which usually gets them to fold enough to be profitable even if they didnt fold the turn, cbetting/cbarrelling should be done roughly 50-60% depending on the opponent and the board texture, the wetter the board the more likely your opponent has a piece of it-if you notice you arent getting very many folds/respect you can adjust by tightening up preflop or experiment with barreling less. i also like to occasionally reraise my opponent on the flop around 2x - 2.5x the size of their cbet in a sense “cbetting their cbet” in an attempt to bluff or 'balance my range'-if it helps try to imagine that the cards dont matter, youre only trying get your opponent to fold, otherwise you only want to showdown close to a sure-thing. realize that in a vacuum if you were all playing similar hand ranges preflop the most aggressive player postflop would usually come out on top-keep in mind your profit with each hand will exponentially lean towards the best starting hand which is AA followed by KK, the top 50% of preflop hands have many times more equity postflop than the bottom 50%, always play tighter when in doubt-the sooner you familiarize yourself with the range of hands your opponent may have in any situation the sooner youll be able to narrow down your decisions accurately, you should tend to give every opponent the benefit of doubt until given reason to believe otherwise and you should tend to pot control all but the nuts vs tight opponents, tight opponents tend to play tight both preflop and postflop-the longer you take to make a decision the longer you give your opponent to make a decision so time is always a factor, i strongly recommend learning to beat the game playing only one table before attempting to multitable-the most important piece of advice is to always target looser/weaker opponents which are usually those with a vpip above double table equity who you can loosen up against to roughly 40-50% of their preflop range, if there are no weaker opponents you need to leave the table immediately or you will be raked to the end of your bankrollPoker is intended to be entertainment with just enough complexity that you can never play perfectly, eventually youll find what i call the 'numerology' and psychology of the game closely reflects many aspects of life and im hoping to see the game legalized worldwide which will open the door to a larger skill-game/"mental sport" economy as an alternative to the female dominated service economy
Poker seems like a game where the players are given cards which have been shuffled and distributed at random.So if each player picks up a set of random cards, where does the skill come into it? I mean, what is the "skill" that makes a good poker player better than a bad one?
Interesting, according to thishttps://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081205174817AAMFiiYa hand of poker might take as much as 5 minutes.Let's guess that you have it down to a tenth of that- a hand in 30 seconds.You say you have played 3 million hands1.5 million minutes25000 hoursOr, playing 8 hrs a day, 3125 days or a little over 8 yearsYet you say you have been playing for 8 years.Have you been doing anything else?