Newbie strategy question

Rookie in the houese so watch out.

I have been reading for some weeks the forum to get some basic ideas and what strategy to follow and I am trying the following:

With a 100 $ BR I am playing 0.02 / 0.05 NLH cash with a 3 $ stack on four 9 table.

I am playing tight-agresive, premium hands without position and opening the range a bit in late ones, playing in chunks of 100 hands.


I would love to know what is your feedback about these and also I will like to ask how many hands aprox. will I have to take in consideration in order to know if the strategy I am using is correct/profitable.


Thank you all in advance for the help.

How many hands have you played? And how much are you up or down. If you're playing a solid TAG game, your variance will be lower than average. This means you can get an indication of whether you're +EV fairly quickly, say a few thousand hands, although the statistical level of confidence won't be as reliable as it will be after many more thousands of hands.

What do you mean by "playing in chunks of 100 hands"? If it means you leave a table after 100 hands, stop doing that. When you're at a table where you're +EV, you should stay there as long as you remain +EV and still feel like playing.

And if you're actually playing TAG, you will be profitable. At .02/.05, there are too many questionable and poor plays made for a solid player not to make money. Not every session of course, but a sizable majority of the time is definitely feasible.

You've made some good choices. You'll need about 10,000 hands to get a basic assessment of your progress.

But I do wonder - what are you considering tight? At one time I thought I was playing tight but it wasn't until I went much tighter that I started seeing a profit.

Wait...you are new to the game and are playing 4 tables at once? Ummm, if that's the case, stop that.

Play one table. ONE. Make notes on ever player at the table on every hand you can. Start to understand player tendencies, understand what your tendencies are, and how to adjust to what the table will give. One table may seem boring, but if you really focus on what is happening, make constant notes so you can start to understand the game, it will pay off huge for you in the long run.

Variance is a very terrible word and can make you question everything you do--both good and bad. If you have software running to keep track of your play, just about anyone that has played this game long enough will tell you that at around 100,000 hands can start to let you know where you are. Yes, that's 5 zeros. You can get a feel for it sooner, but to rule out variance, it takes a heck of a lot.

Good Luck

yeah, 4 tables is too much to start, way too much information that you are missing trying to keep up with all of them. If you can color code players with the note option then after a couple of weeks you should start to see 3 or 4 players at the tables that you can readily identify as fish, nits, regs, etc. then you can taylor your play to them. Once you can play a single table in profit then go to 2 tables, you will see that's it's much harder if you are concentrating. Then you can progress to more tables from there.

Don't play with a $3 stack. BI for 100BB at least. Also post HH as one thing that alot of new people seem to get terribly wrong is bet-sizing

Also I'd say numbers Vollycat posted are closer to accurate, about 100,000 hands needed

Sounds good but like blue nowhere said, always have a 5$ stack at all times

I think you should buyin for 100bb as has already been mentioned. 60bb is an awkward stack size which you will find very little poker literature or information on. 100bb is the perfect stack size to exercise your skill edge and use all 4 streets.

TAG is the best way to play in my opinion. As for number of hands before you should be evaluating your results. I would say as much as possible. I think winrates can be wildly off the mark at sample sizes less than 100k hands. I realize that this amount may take a very long time to play for somebody who only plays a few hours a week and doesn't multi-table. But unfortunately this is just the way it is.

This doesn't mean that you can't take something away from say a 20k sample. Just view it with a bit of a grain of salt. And if you see extremes after a smaller sample like this, such as a double digit big bet per hundred winrate or lossrate then you can take away a little bit more from that. gl!

Ultimately, to reach maximum profitability in poker, you need to embrace variance and play a high variance style. So treating variance like it's a dirty word is not the way to start out.

Woahhh, thanks a lot for the responses, great stuff.

@Arjonius I am now checking how to set up +ev data on HM and understanding the concept. Lots of study left to do I see so having a guideline is awesome, thank you very much.

@MediaBLITZ good point, these are my HM stats, all comments and feedback welcome:

2112 hands: VPIP - 18.2 / PFR - 14.8 / 3bet - 3.7 / WTSD% - 43.1 / Agg - 3.69

@Vollycat @PotluckXXI I have been playing for 3 months regulary each day to get a feel of the game. I started with one, moved to two and now staying for with 4. Just starting up using HM manager to track players and results. Maybe do, its too much tables at the same time. Ohhh, I swear reading 10,000 instead of 100,000. Thxs for the "5 zeros" clarification... what a shock ¡¡¡¡¡¡

@BlueNowhere @BlackRain79 @BlueNowhere 100 bb seems the way to go I see. That makes sense, I will try playing 2 tables with 5$ each and see how it goes. I was making that strange 60bb buy in because if I screw up ( happends a lot me, I am a slooooow learner ) the lost wassent that traumatic. Ill take a while, but a 10K hands sample seems to be my first step.

@baudib1 I am just surfing to forum to really understand variance and ev, appears to be a tricky subject so time for some study.


These forum is awesome, great work.

On the flip side you win just as much extra as you lose.

PFR seems a little high for full ring. Although I'm not 100% sure as I don't play full ring, so could be wrong.

Buying in for less than a full stack to limit your potential loss is a defensive approach that also means you aren't able to take maximum advantage of your opponents' poor plays. If you play TAG, you should make fewer such plays than most of them, in which case, you want to be full-stacked because you'll male more money in the long run.

Also, if you buy in thinking defensively, it's possible you may not be sufficiently aggressive in other parts of your game.

Wat.

wat?