I can't beat $10NL

must kill self now...

step 1: fold all but the best hands
step 2: play the best hands
step 3: profit

I think you and I have the same problem AG. And I think it is because we prefer tourney's. Perhaps we prefer tourneys because we have never had success at ring. Perhaps we never had success at ring because we never really studied ring.

Just a guess.

not sure what limits you're playing, but i guess the you're probably caught off guard by erratic bettings at the 10NL.

Used to play ring games myself. One day I would kick butt, next day I would lose 2 butts...Do better a tourneys.

i demand a graph!

can't you beat 10NL just by set mining and open shoving AA-TT/AK?

some days just suk but itll change for ya..keep at it

^^^^^^ This. How many hands is this over AG ?

I cant beat NL5.

I think I had/have the same problem, I would tilt and get stupid at times, although generally I played well. So far over 10,000 hands at partypoker I'm down almost 80 dollars. I think I am a tourney player, but I am down 80 there as well (Like 20 if you count my freeroll winnings), but I have made it into the 300k tourney from all the way from a freeroll.

The swings in 10 NL will be big because beginners will push with almost anything and sometimes draw out on you. I have been checking my stats with Pokertracker and my jacks have been quite unprofitable, because someone hit a straight and a straight flush against my set resulting a agregate loss of $25. That's already over a fourth of what I have lost. I would just say that you might have to hang in there with positive EV and wait for the results to settle in the long term.

Wow in the 300k from freeroll is good going. you must be on your game

4,258 hands overall, I'm down $131.18. I know that's not alot of hands. I was able to bet $10PL over 13K+ hands at the beginning of 2007 for 5.36BB/100, however.

Graph overall:

overall.JPG (http://www.cardschat.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=8592&d=1202302396)

Since start of Feb:

feb.JPG (http://www.cardschat.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=8593&d=1202302396)

Yesterday's 1k+ session:

yesterday.JPG (http://www.cardschat.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=8594&d=1202302396)

This ^^ could have easily been a win (not necessarily a big one), with a few hands going the other way (**bad beat storys start: I had AA vs AK, flop Q72 rainbow, yeah runner runner straight, and two pair hitting the boat on the river vs my nut flush twice*** end bad beat storys), but still, I feel like these games should be crushable.

I re-read the "How to beat $10NL" in the archive, but I really wasn't getting paid on any of my big hands. It was really bizarre not to be felting anyone with my sets. I wasn't getting the value I should have enough of the time that I was consciously aware-- "wow, no action again!".

I tried to be cognizant of game selection as well. Initially I tried to select tables with at least 30% seeing the flop, and with higher pot totals as well. But I found myself leaving a lot of tables because they were running at under 25%vp$ip w/ pf raise % 7+.

I did run across some really really fishy players on occasion, but there were not entire tables of them. Of course the uber fish would suck out on me and then give my money to some nit .

Anyway, I am going to try again today.

1. max buy-in $10 (I experimented yesterday with partially trying min/short stack play, which seemed to do ok as well).
2. just set mining and open shoving AA-TT/AK (although I have to say the open shove didn't work for me on tables where I was tight-- I just didn't get any action).

Suggestions?
Add limps in multiway pots otb and co w suited aces and "flush mine"?

I think a lot of people, no offense, have no clue how 10nl is and are trying to describe it. As someone who recently moved up from 10nl to 25nl, I get paid a lot more here at 25nl than I ever did at 10nl. I probably won the majority of my money from PF raises and taking it down on continuation bets. I found the play was mostly weak/tight, where a lot of people would call with for example an under pair all the way. This makes for a lot of weak hands showing down, but also mostly small pots.

I (and probably Tenbob, as well) won most of my profits at 10nl through big pairs aipf, sets, and straights/flushes. C-betting is generally a bad idea, because you rarely ever get a pot heads up, and c-betting against multiple opponents at that limit is recipe for at least one call.

I agree completely. It seems that your big hands at NL25 get paid off more often than at NL10. Not 100% sure why that is but I think it has to be that there are more aggressive players at NL25 trying to push you around and of course when they do this when you have a monster they lose all their $$.

Well I've won most of my profit currently at 10nl as well. I've been there the last few months (since before 1/22 back to about October) and won a total of about 800 (from 100 to 500, tilted like crazy and blew it in a day, then climbed back up to 500, currently on the way up to 1k). If a raise didn't outright steal the blinds, a lot of the time it was HU with a preflop raise.

update:

803 hands so far today, with a pathetic profit (but a profit!) of $2.70

half.JPG (http://www.cardschat.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=8612&d=1202323026)

Anyway, I have played most of these hands in shortstack situations, on the "cap" bet tables, so effectively everyone has $3 stacks.

I found that it was normal-ish poker for the most part, but you could identify who would call your shoves, so they were the targets. Unfortunately QQ doesn't always beat J9o .

Anyway, I did find that you could get HU post flop a decent amount of time. Then, it was a matter of knowing who you could c-bet and who you couldn't if you missed (not that I got all those decisions right, however).

Time for some lunch, then another 500 or so hands...

I wish I hadn't blown most of my pokerstars roll now lol

Hold on there folks. Playing no limit holdem is first and foremost about playing for stacks, winning the big pots and worrying about the smaller pots later on. Sets are my single biggest winning hand, big combo draws for stacks are also right up there. Things that you'd never do in tournament poker, like calling down light actually end up very profitable. This is a very delicate type of game, especially once the stack sizes are >100bb effective. Got a feeling that your winning in the capped games AG because you are a better tourney player than a ring player, and playing capped is almost akin to playing shallow stacked tourney poker.

Set miners are grinding out profit playing nl$200 on stars, I cant for the life of me see how on earth it could be unprofitable at nl$10. I was rolled for nl$25 after around 12,000 hands on $10nl.

Maybe this is a wild guess, but would I be right in thinking you are playing at Full Tilt, AG ? Trying to clear the recent FT bonus ?

Full Tilt is the only place in the known universe where I can`t beat the small stakes ring games. I have given up on this new bonus, after losing $15 to clear $7.50.

Yes FT and their damn bonus, lol.
Seriously, people are not calling all-in bets, so it's tough to aipf w/ big pair against most of the opposition (like I said, there ARE some who will call...).
Perhaps the FT ring games are not as fishy?!?

lol. I've lost $90 at Full Tilt $10 & $25 tables in the last 2 days trying to clear the bonus. This is multi tabling playing ONLY premium hands from late position (20/16/2). The nut flush losing to a FH, every flopped set losing to an over set or drawn out on. Pocket AA's beaten all-in PF by 22. The one that hurt the most was the all-in w/nut str8 vs the dumb str8 that got chopped on the river. PT says I'm -50BB/100 (those are Big Bets) over the last 1000 hands. This is why I'm dubious of these super high BB/100 claims I hear. When these bad streaks happen no amount of solid play will suffice. I'll post my graph when I get home.

ohhhhh, it's pretty clear now that the problem is obviously that the ft micros are full of nits bonus clearing at the moment.

One suggestion that may help you guys trying to clear the FTP bonus is to use tableratings.com for your table selection. It will help you find the loosest tables and the players that are giving away $$.

I second that. I've used the site and it does help,but if you're filtering for 6 max tables it will not distinguish between Cap tables and ring tables. And the best thing is it's a free site (so far).

I think that's part of it.

The other thing is that $10NL is the cheapest ring game at Tilt. Meaning there's more bad players at that level that can't play 0.01/0.02 like at Stars, but on the other hand someone depositing $50 has to start at $10NL and just play like a shortstacked nit.

move up to where they respect your raises !

My last 1000 at Full Tilt $10 & $25

Attached Images

last 1000 $10.JPG (68.1 KB, 185 views)

When I'm raising with AA-QQ, I don't want respect.

Ok, did well in my second session playing w the full $10 (100bbs) buy in.

Anyway, I am hearing some conflicting advice here:

Should we be set mining w/ deep stacks (nit type play), or calling down light with middle pair tk type hands?

In TB's archive thread he says to bet enough to pot commit with AA or KK, but also that you should fold AA on a KK2 board?

I developed kind of a style where I play big hands aggressively preflop, then somewhat passive post flop (kind of a pot size control style) depending on number and nature of opponents.

I have been playing big aces and suited broadway passively preflop in early position, aggressively late sometimes, then aggressive post flop when I hit, but fairly ready to check fold a miss.

Add in passive preflop set mining with small pairs.

Mix in some late position aggression with hands like suited connectors, where I will c-bet a miss also vs. one or two opponents.

I have also been limping w suited aces late in multiway (2+ limpers) pots.

I feel like a "tournament aggressive" style is giving up too much as far as implied odds.

Definite nit factor, as I noted, many tables were TAG, sans fish, so I left.

Pot control is a huge part of deepstacked play - something that you rarely need to think about when playing tourneys, but it's something that's crucial to ring play. I learned the hard way

I think I'm going to write an expansion to Liam's article because there are a few things that could be elaborated on if enough people are interested.

I'm interested

x 2

Im glad im not the only one having trouble with these stakes at Full Tilt etc.

Looking at AG's graph makes me feel a little better (in a funny way) cos thats exactly what my graph is looking like even though I have been trying to play very nit like.

I just seem to be coming up against other hands that either chase to hit and do or are better from the word go and when I hit it gets me in more trouble.

I would love to hear whether the whole set mining, AA-10 10 only strategy would work? Although looking at my 'luck hitting sets' report, i'm not getting my fair share there either at the moment lol.

Imo people are alienating 10nl far too much from "normal" poker. Zach knows exactly what's up: