Help finding up to date beginner advice +questions

The forum ate my last attempt to make this post, so here goes.

I decided to dive into poker about a week ago. I have been reading and absorbing as much information as I can and also trying to play a lot as well. I've read a lot a beginner guides and they all seem to give the same general information and advocate similar play styles. I have also noticed almost all guides I come across were posted years ago. Is this information still valid or are there more recent guides out there that I just haven't been able to find yet?



So far I have played about 2,000 hands in 1c/2c NLHE and am down a significant amount, mostly due to bad play that I'm trying to tighten up. However there are a few things causing me to lose money that I don't quite understand how to fix or deal with. I'd appreciate any advice

1. First just a question. Currently my statistics put me at about 14% of flops seen, 41% in BB, 11% in SB and 9% in other positions. I'm currently trying to stick to the suggestions from Jelle's guide on this site however I feel like I'm playing a really low number of hands. Is this just bad luck or are those the kind of numbers I should expect to see?


2. Playing strong hands aggressively. It's been my experience that the vast majority of the time betting 3-4BBs pre-flop will leave me just with the blinds. I can never get any action. When I finally do, or limp into the flop them come out with a big bet usually results in all other players folding. I've only had betting aggressively pay of a handful of times and it seems like I typically lose more waiting for strong hands that I make by playing them. Is aggressiveness not what it's cracked up to be, or am I just unlucky? I am always seeing players go all in with trash cards, but I can never seem to get them to do it against me.


3. Dealing with slow-play. This makes up the vast majority of my losings. The typical scenario is I come out of the flop with TPTK and they have a set. They will check or not-re-raise my bet. Then the turn comes and it's a throwaway, so I bet, they all in. I fold, but they still walk away with my bet. What is the proper way to deal with this? Should I just check on the flop if I can't beat the available sets and see what they come out with? What would I do if they just checked as well? I'm really just not understanding how to play this situation.

-double post deleted-

1) try to avoid playing out of position with marginal hands. I'm quite sure most of your difficult situations are coming from hands you played in the SB/BB where you flopped a weakish toppair or weakish draw. Hands like KTs and A6s are unplayable versus early or middle position raises as quite often you'll end up being dominated. Even if you hit a nice hand and you want to checkraise it, you might not be able to as the original raiser can check behind. This leads to the next point
2) try to play most of hands in position, which means especially on the Cutoff or button. Advantage of being on CO/BU is that you are, when you're last to act postflop, can decide if you want to increase the potsize or whether you're OK with one more card.
3) do not raise every smallblind in pots where UTG-BU folded. you'll own yourself playing out of position with marginal hands (it's not as bad at as point 1) though, considering you only have 1 person behind you. If he's folding 80%, feel free to raise any two and just checkfold flops if he calls your raise and you miss...
4) do not limp first in (in general) if you have no plan except limpcalling and hoping you hit a set or flushdraw. Again, you'll own yourself playing out of position playing marginal hands.
5) Having the initiative is nice, as you make them fold you can take the pot down without seeing more cards. Even more nice is that you can still win if you get called down and have the best hand, which means that you have 2 ways to win the pot.
In other words, less limping and calling raises, more raising preflop or folding

to answer your second question (assuming you're playing full ring), you're paying 1.5 blind to play 9 hands. if you can win those 1.5 blinds back by raising one hand every 9 hands and taking it down preflop, that makes you breakeven already (which is probably not the way you're looking at it, but this is basic math)

third: you're probably folding correctly as people rarely bluffraise turns, however question might be how you got to the flop. Don't limp A9s, flop toppair in a 5way pot and be super excited with it. If you can raise it preflop and take it down / have 1-2 opponents left you should be happier

Thanks for the reply.

I think I'm mostly playing my hands in decent position and trying to consider pot odds on drawing hands. The reason for such a high % of flops seen on BB is just people limping in and getting to see the flop for free. I need to tighten up my SB hand selection but I keep falling into the line of thinking that I can see cards for only 1/2BB and then get myself into a shitty situation with a marginal hand. Work in progress.
I suppose my question is am I hitting a normal % of hands? Should I accept ~10% of flops seen as normal, or expect to see that percentage creep higher as my sample size increases?

Writing this post I feel I may have just realized something, if I'm playing a marginal hand from the button/co pre-flop I should always raise for information? If I get called then I should fold out unless the flop dramatically improves my hand. After all they wouldn't/shouldn't call from mid position unless they have a very strong hand. Is this the correct way to look at this situation?

Now in a situation where I get some pre-flop action with AK and an A comes up on the flop... Should I come out playing strong and then just accept it as bad luck if the other player has pocket aces? If they represent pocket aces and try to take me all in, how should I respond to this? I'm not really clear how I should be playing when I have the second best hand possible. In theory the odds should be in my favor, and microstake players go all in with a wider rage on hands but it still doesn't feel right to go in when there is a hand that can beat mine.


I will try to save a few trouble hands from my play tonight and post them.

pick 5 hands and post them so we can evaluate your play.
It sounds like your getting somewhat unlucky over these 2000 hands.
playing aggressive with strong hands is still a good beginning strat for 1cent 2cent.

I played 250 hands tonight, but got pretty unlucky on the deals so played few hands and the ones that I did were straight forward and I felt confident in my decisions. The only one I have issues with an I'm not good enough to even know where to start here.


Submitted by : RippDrive

***** Hand History for Game 12676667671 *****
$2 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Sunday, February 17, 04:52:21 EST 2013
Table Limón Real Money
Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 9/9
Seat 9: Brio222 $3.23 USD
Seat 4: Migginspies $0.46 USD
Seat 3: Reni0824 $2.35 USD
Seat 8: RippDrive $1.93 USD
Seat 2: UniAnn $2.53 USD
Seat 5: eclipse1516 $2.45 USD
Seat 1: fikr $2.11 USD
Seat 6: kreuzer982 $1.11 USD
Seat 7: skyway2G $3.26 USD
skyway2G posts small blind [$0.01 USD].
RippDrive posts big blind [$0.02 USD].

Holecards
Dealt to RippDrive [ ]
Brio222 folds
fikr calls [$0.02 USD]
UniAnn folds
Reni0824 folds
Migginspies calls [$0.02 USD]
kreuzer982 folds
skyway2G folds
RippDrive checks

Flop (Pot : $0.07)

   
Your time bank will be activated in 6 secs . If you do not want it to be used, please act now.
RippDrive bets [$0.07 USD]
fikr calls [$0.07 USD]
Migginspies folds

Turn (Pot : $0.21)

   
Your time bank will be activated in 6 secs . If you do not want it to be used, please act now.
RippDrive bets [$0.20 USD]
fikr calls [$0.20 USD]

River (Pot : $0.61)

   
Your time bank will be activated in 6 secs . If you do not want it to be used, please act now.
RippDrive bets [$0.43 USD]
fikr is all-In [$1.82 USD]
RippDrive folds
fikr does not show cards .
fikr wins $2.79 USD

TT is a pretty strong hand, you can raise to 10cents preflop and limpers will call with a lot of worse hands.
flop/turn/river are well played. I would also recommend having a 100bb+ stack at all times so you can maximize your edge.

Hm, I think you may have misread the header. This is $2NL, so I had just shy of 100bbs and a 10c raise pre-flop with TT to someone who has position on me seems reckless. If you actually think I should raise to 10c in that situation would you care to elaborate?

I will knock out some marginal hands, but when the flop comes down I can see getting into a boat load of trouble with that kind of play. Either I hit my set and carry on strong, or I have to fold. I don't see being able to play TT strongly if I miss my set because once those cards are down there are just too many hands that dominate me. If I don't play strong and cbet I will definitely get called out if they have even a decent hand.

TT is far from a marginal hand; I'd rate it as strong as AQ roughly (top5% hand). more or less, it crushes lower suited connectors. Most likely, our opponents raise the high pairs so we have the best hand here 95%+ of the time preflop. Hence I'd also raise it pre, however I'd be more likely to make it a little bigger than 10c (like 12-14c) so that I'm more likely to get the pot headsup (I would like to avoid difficult spots out of position as much as possible)

Despite that we're not allin preflop it is not as irrelevant as you might think; ask yourself what the people in front of you limp in with. the big advantage of TT over let's say 66 is that most of the time you're flopping at max 1 overcard (which means that you take the pot down very often if you continuation bet). By raising preflop you do 2 things:
1) you get more money in the pot with the best hand
2)give yourself the opportunity to win the pot preflop, or to get out one of your opponents. (If they fold, they cannot outdraw versus your hand)


I think Stroggoz was referring to the auto-rebuy option in the options menu (if stack falls under 100bigblinds, refill)

Do you know 13 times world champion Phil Hellmuth?

TT is in one of his TOP10 Starting hands, you should definitely raise

http://www.onlinepokercenter.com/phil-helmuths-starting-hands

Thanks for all the advice guys, I've been giving it some thought and trying to incorporate into my play. Tonight felt a lot better, it's my first play session so far I have ended up with more than I started. I also felt more confident even on the hands I took bad beats on.

I started using auto-rebuy option and I'd like to say thanks for that suggestion too. It really makes it easier to ignore losses when I can't even see them when I dip below 100bbs. Not to mention just having extra chips when someone decides to call me all in.

As for posting hands, should I put them into topics or just post them publicly and ask any questions I might have in the comments? I have a few I'm interested in getting some feedback on. Also is it considered okay to post hands that I folded pre-flop but that played out in an interesting way?

Post them in low stakes, it's easier to find them there.

First off, welcome to LP!
Great to see some new blood in the water (hehe).
If you want to learn NL I am not qualified lol, but there is a great NL crashcourse by gripsed on youtube.

I found it helpful. If you want to learn limit holdem (I pose is easier for beginners) then I AM the one to talk to.
Read Sklansky first and learn to be ok with not seeing alot of hand or flops are my best advice.

^
note; it is a series of 8. this intro vid less helpful.

Sadly I can't watch videos right now, youtube doesn't believe there are people in the world with internet as slow as mine and refuses to buffer videos. Definitely not ideal for learning anything in today's high speed internet world where a lot of good information is only available in video form. Once I'm home and back to civilization in a week or two I'll definitely check out that series.

Honestly I have no reason behind choosing to start out playing full ring no-limit, it just seemed to be the most popular and the majority of what I read appears to be geared toward that game. Is there somewhere I can get a good overview of the actual differences in play between the games? I can find the rules easily enough, but it's hard to infer what the actual differences will be once I sit at the table.

I figure you can just afford to play a looser in 6 max than full ring. However how does limit compare to no-limit? Would you recommend limit to a beginner because it removes the possibly of devastating all-in beats? What about tournaments, is that something I should look into getting involved in this early in my journey?

All good beginner guides will be very similar and will never be out of date. The whole point of a beginner guide is to teach fundamentals which will never change. The only things that may have changed over the past few years could be the lower end of value ranges.

tierd, read the title as "help finding a date". So disappointed when I started reading lol