Tools to victory

Hello everyone !


(Short history about me, skip if you don't care)
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As you can see I'm new to this community. I'm an experienced SC/SC2 player at TL.net and a regular since 2006 and I've recently decided to play online poker. I've played poker IRL for about 4-5 years but never went online. Recently, the Rekrul story motivated me and I'm now ready to grind the tables. I'm not the kind of guy who will blindly start playing something like online poker. I've read alot of stuff on forums and I want to setup myself for some intelligent poker witch is the purpose of this thread.
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I would like you (awesome experienced TL members to help me get in the best conditions to play online poker. What I am looking for is general recommendations.

Here is some questions I'd like opinions/answers on

1. FTP or PS (both gives 600$ bonus but PS is not listed on TL rakeback)

2. Rakeback : is there anything to know more than make an account and link it to your PS/FTP account?

3. What initial amount should I put in? I could go up to 500$ but I'm planning to play
0.02$/0.04$ table for 20-25 hours to get uses to it so is there a point putting in more than 50$?

4. What other software or add-ons do you uses to calculate odds and track your game. Should I use one or it's only relevant in higher stakes ? I've also read that people buy hand history and such, should I care about this now or just wait to discover that later on?

5. How many tables at a time do you play? Is there a limitation/best way to optimize this?

Thanks for reading/hepling
This thread may belong to low stakes, sry if its the case.

1) ftp is better since you get rakeback.

3) mmmmmm put in however much you dont care about losing. neither ftp nor stars has .02/.04 tables though, either .01/.02 or .02/.05. i imagine youll have to play longer than 20-25 hours and will need much more than just 'to get used to it' at the smallest stakes. theres tons of fundamentals and stuff to learn.

4) holdem manager or pokertracker is the standard software used to keep track of your hand histories and stats/graphs and everything. pokertracker has a 2 or 3 month trial so you can go ahead and get that when you first start. theyre very useful programs bcuz of the HUD, which takes in your hand histories and provides stats on everyone you play with based on those hand histories. as for calculating odds, you should learn approximations of all the basic odds, such as the chance of hitting a flush draw if you have the draw on the flop, etc.

5) i would start by playing 1-3 tables or whatever you feel comfortable with. basically you should be able to keep up with all of the action on however many tables you choose to play. once you get used to the software and get better at keeping up with the pace of the game you can start to add more.

ftp has higher rake than ps

depends on how much you are willing to lose. if you think you'd feel bad losing more than 100 dollars then don't deposit more than a 100 dollars.

Thanks for the replys,

I'd alot like to know when can you cash in for the first time. Suppose that you put 100$ in with the bonus I goes up to 700$.

Then say you play for 1 month, you go up and down and manage to get to 1k. Can you cash it in?

the bonus is 100% of your deposit up to $600, you dont get a free $600 no matter what (you put in $300 you get a $300 bonus)

also you have to unlock the bonus in increments by playing (the amount you unlock is directly proportional to the rake you pay).

if you want a bonus instantly then you should look into 888 poker, they credit you 25% directly

Also bigbetpoker gives you 20% instantly if you deposit with moneybookers

Yeah, you have to rake to unlock your bonus, it will take quite a long time. You shouldn't worry about bonuses too much and just have them there as side profit if your goal is just to learn the game. Make sure you're aware what bonuses/rb is available to you but it shouldn't be your main aim.

Stars has its own VIP system which isnt just direct rakeback, it's not as good as 30% rakeback at ftp untill you reach much higher stakes and gain a high level VIP status, at which point it becomes superior to 30% rb - but once you reach this point you honestly don't care about rakeback unless you're a 24 table lamer dick cunt nit grinder (dogmeat).

I wouldn't play more than 3 tables in your first couple of months, this is one big mistake i made. If you do this you will pick up the fundamentals, be able to autopilot the game and probably grind out a very low winrate but you'll stop dead in improvement and its a very hard habit to break out of.

Get a free trial at www.deucescracked.com and watch all the microstakes vids relevant to whatever gametype youre playing - just like starcraft watch videos of othe rplayers explaining their thought processes and analyzing your own mistakes after you played a session is very important.

Also, when you go to sign up for rakeback, let one of the extraordinary gentlemen from this website refer you as they will get a little bit of money from you playing.

gl hf

dont bonus hunt if you are a micro stakes beginner. You'll never clear the bonus in time before it expires. I'd start with stars since they have the lowest bonus making it irrelevant, and the most players so you gain the most experience. Once you are playing NL50, then I'd join FTP to clear the $600 bonus in a few months.

On August 10 2010 11:05 fenner wrote: Get a free trial at www.deucescracked.com and watch all the microstakes vids relevant to whatever gametype youre playing - just like starcraft watch videos of othe rplayers explaining their thought processes and analyzing your own mistakes after you played a session is very important.

thats one of the advantages of FTP rakeback, when you rake $500,- per month you receive a free deucescracked subscription from us.

Ok cool, It will go with PS since I don't care about the bonus. I'll check out some video at www.deucescracked.com for sure.

Do you guys think I should bother with hold'em manager/pokertracker or i'm too much of a small fish for that ?

I'm planning on grinding the 0.01/0.02 for the next month maybe around 25h a week since I have a 9-5 job (FML), It's a good job and I make decent money (like 36k a year) but I'm planning on travelling in the near future and online poker could be a nice asset when i'll be far away

don't count on it

if I were you, I'd sign up with deuces cracked rakeback on ftp. You won't see too much of a benefit, but as soon as you move up to nl25, you'll really appreciate the rakeback.

HEM is the superior software imo, but pt3 gives a 60 day free trial. If you're going to play for 25 hours a week, I'd grab the pt3 free trial for 60 days, then when that runs out, go grab the HEM trial for 15 days then decide which you want to buy. This order also works better because then you know what to look for in HEM.



It also looks like you're planning on playing poker to make some money. Don't. Be incredibly happy if you're up $100 after your first 100 hours of nl2. Actually, considering not busting your first $25 or $50 in the first week at nl2 an achievement.

Well it might look like it but I know I won't make tons of money with online poker. (at least right now)

If I can play with 50$ on nl2 for 2 weeks and still have 40$ in after I'll be happy.

Anyone had some experience with pokerstrategy.com ?

I remembered this from tsl2 and still got my test passed, ready to start with the free 50$, is it legit/a good starter ?

I'm in a situation similar to the OP(I actually considered making an identical thread), but I'm also interested in the logistics of earning a living playing poker. Roughly how many hours would the average new player have to put in before they're good enough to start making money at it? Once they hit this point, how many hours a day would they have to put in to it in order to start making as much as a minimum wage job? How quickly and at what rate could this cash flow be expected to increase assuming decent patience and intelligence? I'm mainly interested because I too will be travelling with only the company of my trusty laptop. I have enough saved to keep me going for a while at least, but if I could transition into getting paid by pwning nubs, that'd be pretty damn sweet. Also, working for other people kinda sucks ass, don't it?

On August 10 2010 15:51 DeluX wrote: If I can play with 50$ on nl2 for 2 weeks and still have 40$ in after I'll be happy.

Being a "beginner" I'd say this goal is either way too pessimistic or way too optimistic.


strange.

all i can say is fuck pokerstars since the inception of the 50bb tables. fuck them to hell.

put in 50. start from the bottom

deposit any amount that you don't mind LOSING. That'll help you treat this whole experience as you treated SC, post here and read as much as you can, obviously listen to all green stars' advice (since they're probably the ones who give the most "correct" insight). read articles on variance and bankroll management here on LP, because those two things are probably gonna determine whether you will be a successful player making decent money or not long term. i wouldn't recommend playing anything lower than 25nl tbh, since anything below is really for students and people who can't really deposit money online, the time you spend on microstakes with the games nowadays, is probably gonna deter your interest in learning the game since the money is really not to be taken seriously if you have a steady income outside of poker. 4 years ago starting at 2nl would really be ok since ppl did not have any clue how to play and you could progress very quickly, now, even at those stakes, poker is a huge ass grind and you might belittle the stuff that you should be learning coz "its 2nl lol" and just simply not take learning seriously. just my 2cents tho.

the day i decided to play poker seriously, I knew thinking about bonuses and that shit is worthless. Getting good is all that matters. Good players will make tons of $ and people looking for the easy edge, the site with most donks or the bonus sites will be doing themselves a great disservice