Analyzing for a Beginner

I read through some of these threads and quickly realize that a lot of times I don't have the knowledge to delve so deeply into a specific hand like you guys do, but I know the best way to learn is to analyze my own playing. I'm still playing micro limit (as per FPau's Advice For New Player's).

So here's 2 questions--

1. As a beginner, I feel unsure about a decision at least once every 2 or 3 hands, and almost every time I see the flop, so how can I start picking and choosing ones to get really in depth with?

and 2. Do you guys ever open the hand history for a night and read through each hand and review the decisions over the course of the session (as opposed to debating a small number of hands)? Would you recommend that to a beginner?


Thanks!

1. Just post which ever ones you want, the more the merrier . You don't really know what kind of traffic your post will get until it gets the traffic

2. Not for a beginner, as your not really sure what you are looking, or what you did wrong yet if your only a beginner. Your best bet is to just post hands.

Yes just post hands. But only post the hand up to the point that you have to make a decision, don't post the entire hand. When posting include any 'reads' you might have had, any stats you were using from PT or PO and anything else that you were considering before making your decision.

(Moved thread to LP)

Random thought that popped into my head - feel free to heed or ignore as you wish.

Review a session or two and try separating your hands into three different categories.

1) "I'm certain I played this correctly"

2) "I think I played this correctly"

3) "I had no idea what to do at all here"

Post some hands in category 2 and explain your thought processes. If you get dozens of dissenting voices, take it on board. If you post a few category 2 hands and are consistently opposed by others analyzing the hand, it's likely there are fundamental flaws in your game. So next, take a step back and post some category 1 hands. If you are certain you made the right play in a hand and people are still disagreeing with you en masse, it's probably time to go study for a while.

As you get more and more 'agreement' with your category 2 hands, then move on and start posting category 3 hands. Don't be afraid of saying "I had no clue what to do here" - every single poker player has no clue what to do on occasion. Just provide all the information you can and let others (and yourself in absorbing and questioning the information given to you by others) take care of the rest.

Would it be appropriate to just start a thread of hands that I have questions on as opposed to starting a thread for ONE specific hand? How many hands do you think people would read before not wanting to reply hahaha

It's a common sense thing really. Nobody (well, few people) is/are going to want to trawl through 50 hands and comment on each.

For the best results I'd just stick to one thread/hand. Anything beyond half a dozen hands in a thread is probably starting to push it, and you will tend to get more brief replies the more hands you post.

But really, just post. We'll turn you onto the right path as you do - there's no need to worry too much about the preamble.

Besides PokerTracker, is there a better way to sort through my hand histories to see hands that I actually played in?

Since PT costs about a fifth of my bankroll, I just use notepad.

Open your hand histories and then use the "Edit---> Find" tool. Then I just type in my screen name & stack size to look for hands where I won or lost the most money. For example:

Find: "C9H13NO3 is at seat 0 with"

Then I just keep hitting ctrl + F to scroll through my hands and look at how my stack size changed for a session.

A little tedious, but its free :P

Since at this point, and possibly through much of the summer Poker Tracker 3 will be a free beta or in trial status, I HIGHLY SUGGEST YOU AVAIL YOURSELF OF THIS OPPORTUNITY! It may not come again for a very long time.

For me I go through my hands via Poker Tracker maybe once every 2 weeks. I look for position issues, and where I might be losing and with what hands.

Going through HH's is laborious. I believe I could not have endured it during my first 6 months of online play. However, along the line I got to where I could actually enjoy watching a game, and at the same time my ability to endure reading through a HH changed from laborious to something just a bit short of enjoyable.

The PT3 replay function will help this a bunch.

One of the functions of this forum is to get new members up to speed faster than they would have without the forum. There are many tools available, the most important one is peer review, like this. PT or other trackers are great helps, as are any books you might read, and the articles available. So, assuming you want to improve fast, using all the free tools you can will help set you free.

Yea PT3 has a 60 day? trial i think so there is no reason not to get it. If you intend to multitable cash games down the road it is a must.

There are a variety of articles out there describing the Texas Hold'em starting hands and how best to play them before seeing any cards on the board or pre-flop and how best to play them after seeing the first 3 cards on the board and after or post-flop. But I think what gets omitted or perhaps not emphasized as strongly as it should be is the concept of POSITION. Your position on the table dictates how you should bet a certain hand or even if you should bet a certain hand.

The table is divided into three basic postional categories. Early positon when you are generally one of the first to act. Most often the BigBlind and SmallBlind are included as part of early position. Here, the problem is if you limp in with a drawing hand such as 7-8 suited, there are still 6-7 people yet to bet after you. They also describe it as there being 7 people behind you waiting to bet.

If you get a large raise from one of these later players, you will be forced to fold your bet -- hence a net loss in chips.

In the middle position, a player can play little bit more loosely than when betting in early position, as the number of players to follow is decreasing.

Finally, from late position, particularly when you have the dealer button and are the last to act, you have the advantage of seing how everyone before you acted. You will always be near the last one to bet on every betting round. This allows you to play you drawing hands and others without fear of getting pre-empted by a large raise after you.

Give this concept a lot of attention. It is not particularly difficult to understand. However, it allows you to maximize your and also is instructional on how to bet them. Each chair on the poker table on a given hand is not equal.

Well I'll only have PT for 60 days before I have to pay for it. Besides I don't want to get reliant on the stats and stuff because I like live games too much. I'd use it primarily for the history stuff. I'm going to look into downloading it if I get reallllly tired of HH. I think as long as I go through my HHs regularly it won't be that bad sifting through hundreds and hundreds of hands.

Any advice on HOW to analyze once I've picked them out?

Oh and another question. I've read Ken Warren's "Winner's Guide to Texas Hold 'Em" and also Lee Jones' "Winning Low-Limit Hold 'Em" and I just bought "Small Stakes Hold 'em" by Sklansky, Malmuth and Miller. I'm only reading these Low Limit books because FPau thinks the best starting point is low-limit, which is what I'm doing. Would I still benefit from reading books that are focused on No-Limit (Harrington) or should I try to get real good at limit first?

Oh one more question.

I started with a $50 bankroll, and I'm down to 42.55. Should I focus on playing fewer hands smarter (by spending less playing time and more reading time) or should my main focus be on playing as many hands as possible with this $50?

So far I've been playing at minimum 100 hands a night. But I wish I could hit 2 or 3 hundred a night. How many should I be looking for to really see improvement?

To get any sort of real gauge on how well you're doing takes thousands of hands. 20,000 hands is usually a decent enough sample size to get some sort of bearing on your results, though not always.

Damn. Looks like i'll be hitting 4 or 5 hundred a night if I can hahaha

Hiya Shagbscoob,

I think limit hold 'em is ideal for getting your feet wet with poker. That's not to say that you can't play no-limit as well, but there are quite a few lessons that you will learn much faster playing limit than no-limit, because there are many more decisions per hand. In no-limit, you spend a lot of time folding. In limit, you spend a lot of time raising and calling. You learn more from raising and calling than you do from folding; seeing more showdowns gives you a better "feel" for the game. I find that people who've only played no-limit have a tendency to be a bit on the overly aggressive and/or overly paranoid side (you'll never hear a limit player say, "either raise or fold" or "he probably has a set").

Sometimes calling is the right move, as dictated by pot odds. No-limit doesn't usually concern itself with odds much as compared to limit; it's usually good enough to ask yourself "do I have the best hand?" Looking at the pot and figuring out if you have the best hand 16% of the time or 22% of the time is another beast altogether.

In my (perhaps not-so-humble) opinion.

Well I'll stick to this until I get real good at it, then we'll see what happens.

If I'm looking to get in 500 hands a night it's obviously going to take a long time. How hard is it to play 2 tables at this point? Is that something I should look into or wait until I get proficient at one?

My addvice whould be to keep grinding your 50$ a litle longer before start multitabling,cause u can expect a litle swing when u start adding tables.
But multitabling isint that hard just add one table at a time and when u get used to 2 u can get more and more going.
But thats just my thought and i can only manage 5 tables max at a time,far cry from the 16-24 that some of the cash rags at this site are doing.

Well I'm not exactly a winning player yet, the point would be to help me get more hands in experience wise. I guess that defeats the point, I'm going to see how far I can get with this $50, hopefully I won't lose it all hahaha

Ps I kick ass at 6max. I play about the same tightness (maybe very slightly less) and I'm doing much better. Either that or I've been on a heater. Or the Sklansky book is helping far more than I thought it would this soon.

Now that I'm reading through Sklansky I can see why I'm better at 6max. I don't play draws very well (I would say less than my fair share of my won hands have been from draws).

It was easier for me to just check the odds and and then decide instead of playing draws aggressively the way Sklansky recommends. I need to read more of it, but I feel like I'm going to be getting a lot better in the next week.

Okay here are some things I have questions about. On the most basic statistics:

There's my % seeing the flop, and % winning the showdown.

What are good ranges? I feel like in small stakes, % winning the showdown needs to be HIGH. I guess it should always be high huh... I was maintaining a good %30-50 until I started reading sklansky. I've got a %66 right now... My Flop% is usually around 25%

25% VPIP at 6-max is fine, at FR it's a little loose. If you're mixing the two, separate the stats and ideally concentrate on playing whichever you prefer until you feel grounded in it.

A common myth is the higher your W$SD% the better. It can be too high. Something in the 50-55% range is ideal, any less and you may be calling too loosely, any more and you may be folding the best hand too often.

How can I start being a math genius like Lederer?

And-- is PokerTracker worth it just for the self-analyzation?

Oh my god. I just sat at a loose table for an hour without getting a hand remotely playable even for a loose game. After about an hour...


Old Ollif: posts small blind $0.02
pembroke529: posts big blind $0.05
viniard: posts big blind $0.05
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to sh4gnscoob [Qs Js]
bklink2006: folds
angeltorres2: folds
Landshark815: calls $0.05
viniard: checks
DRAGON_WEED: calls $0.05
stephens3226: folds
gimblerdeux: calls $0.05
sh4gnscoob: raises $0.05 to $0.10
Old Ollif: folds
pembroke529: calls $0.05
Landshark815: calls $0.05
viniard: calls $0.05
DRAGON_WEED: calls $0.05
gimblerdeux: calls $0.05
*** FLOP *** [4s As Ah]
pembroke529: checks
Landshark815: checks
viniard: bets $0.05
DRAGON_WEED: raises $0.05 to $0.10
gimblerdeux: folds
sh4gnscoob: calls $0.10
pembroke529: folds
Landshark815: folds
viniard: raises $0.05 to $0.15
DRAGON_WEED: raises $0.05 to $0.20
Betting is capped
sh4gnscoob: calls $0.10
viniard: calls $0.05
*** TURN *** [4s As Ah] 3♠
viniard: bets $0.10
DRAGON_WEED: raises $0.10 to $0.20
sh4gnscoob: calls $0.20
viniard: raises $0.10 to $0.30
DRAGON_WEED: raises $0.10 to $0.40
Betting is capped
sh4gnscoob: calls $0.20
viniard: calls $0.10
*** RIVER *** [4s As Ah 3s] K♥
viniard: bets $0.05 and is all-in
DRAGON_WEED: calls $0.05
sh4gnscoob: calls $0.05
*** SHOW DOWN ***
viniard: shows [7s 6s] (a flush, Ace high)
DRAGON_WEED: shows [Ac 3h] (a full house, Aces full of Threes)
viniard is sitting out
sh4gnscoob: mucks hand
DRAGON_WEED collected $2.47 from pot


It hurts bad. I feel that on one hand I did the right thing by being patient and playing a big hand in a big pot. I had a draw to the 2nd highest flush getting 6 to 1, and then calling was giving me 10 to 1. My odds were basically amazing to hit my draw, my EV (I suspect) was very high. Then of course every time I hit a big hole hand the board is lays 3 to a flush/straight every time.

Tonight was a ridiculous cooler, or I got stupid today. Poker is tough

This thread has been really useful for me as a beginning player, to say the least. Thanks for all the input so far. I THINK tentatively that I'm starting to be a winning player in .05/.1 limit hold em. I've read through SSHE, some parts twice and more, as well as actually studied the concepts and I'm starting to see very consistent winnings over the same hand periods where I was losing before.

Last night after that upset I posted above I went on to end up $2 or $3 up from when I started, and tonight I've made another similar jump despite losing early on.

My bankroll started at $50, went to $51 for one day, then steadily dropped down to I think $35 at it's lowest (without any gain on any day since it started dropping). But in the past 3 days I've brought it back up to $41 over the span of maybe 4 or 5 hundred hands.

Obviously it's hard to say it's not dumb luck, but I think I'm getting the hang of this

So... Now that I've read most of SSHE 4 times through, should I look into getting another book to keep my progress going or should I keep thinking about getting more hands in with SSHE?

I don't think it's a bad idea to get more hands in before hitting up another book. Focus on the decisions the way Dorkus Malorkus suggests above.

Down the road, consider getting Winning in Tough Hold 'em Games by Nick "Stoxtrader" Grudzien and Geoff "Zobags" Herzog. Excellent read, but requires that you're used to - and comfortable with - playing limit hold 'em already.

What limit will I start wanting to be acquainted with HEPFAP?

And as a sidenote-- I've been playing a lot NLHE freerolls, and that's turning into a lot of fun... Hm...

It's not so much a matter of stakes as your ability to understand what you're reading. And to understand it, you need to have processed and deeply understood a lot of the previous concepts. Just sticking to SSHE and reading it and re-reading it and playing a lot will get you pretty far. Once you feel like you really own everything in that book, you can get Winning in Tough Hold 'em Games.

I don't recommend HEPFAP anymore. I used to, but there are simply better books to buy these days. WiTHG being one.

I lost $2.75 yesterday, facing some pretty rough beats. I'm up over $3 today after a couple beats and then a ridiculous heater.


How do you guys manage how much money you lose in a day? Do you have a certain amount that you can play with and if you lose that much then it's probably time to quit, or do you keep playing hoping your steady head and solid play will bring it back?

I just play for a set period of time. Usually 8PM when I get home from work til 11. I might play later if the game is particularly good, but setting a time limit is how control my play.

For begininers just concentrate on your own hand and less on your oppents. That will come with experience so until then concentrate on your own game.

Play tighter after the flop. Only play hands that you have essentially won or have a very good chance of winning after the flop.