Learning "Winning Poker"? serious help wanted

Alright Ladies and Gentlemen.

I do not know how many of you that will recognize this name or even realize that I belonged to this forum. I am starting this thread to introduce myself fully and ask for some serious help with my game. First off, I am a college student that is currently off for the summer. I do not work much and only rack in around 200 dollars a week while spending more than I should. I have gambled for the past couple years and I know that I am not addicted to poker. I have taken long breaks in between the last 3 or so years. I have a strong passion for poker and I am always reading through the forum and other sites trying to learn more and how I can win. I have never been able to start with a large enough bankroll to strictly follow the proper bankroll management techniques. I have deposited quite a bit on full tilt and I am struggling to win money and avoid losing my entire bankroll. I have recently lost my bankroll and I am looking to get better. With that said, I have personally excluded myself from poker online for the next 14 days. I am not quitting poker, I am strictly trying to regain a good understanding of the game. I want to spend the 14 days, studying the different aspects and approaches to poker. I am reaching out this great forum because I know that there is a great amount of knowledge that all of you hold. I am asking for your knowledge of poker and the information and resources you have accumulated over your poker life. I want to become a winning poker player. I am not sure exactly how much of winning poker player. Whether as a job or as a side hobby, I want to be playing poker in the future. I will go into detail in how I feel about different types of tables/tournaments. I will explain my approach to picking games and tables. What I am looking for here is how I can change everything I do so that I can stop losing and start winning. I will not be playing in the next 14 days, but I plan on spending the next 14 days studying the game. My problem areas:

Cash Games

For cash games, I usually play 6 max NLHE. I usually play in the shortstack tables because of my bankroll problems. In these types of games, I always tend to play as a TAG player(sometimes too aggressive). My problem is that when I go on the downswings, I just keep losing and feel like I can not win a hand. Just as any player, I go on long losing streaks, but my bankrolls were not large enough to withstand too many of these streaks. I have read a lot about the cash game area and I feel like I am a solid player. I just can not consistently put together winning sessions. I just recently started using Pokertracker and I haven't really been able to benefit too much from it. I could use some work on the way to properly manage a bankroll in this aspect of my game. I could also use some work on hand selection. Sometimes in the heat of a session, I randomly start playing hands that I would not in the beginning. I have read most of the cash game guides on here, but any links to resources would be appreciated.

Sit-n-Gos and tournaments

Here is one of my major problems. The sng category is where I believe I have lost a majority of my money. When I am picking these tournaments, I usually go for ones that are turbo or superturbo. I have lost a large amount of money playing in these superturbos due to the terrible plays/beats given out on those type of tables. For some reason I can not avoid playing at them to try and win more money quicker. I know this is a terrible way of going about winning money. In these tournaments, I play usually tight and only play good hands for a long period of a time. The superturbos usually force me to commit to hands that I would not otherwise. In the regular tournaments that I do play, I sometimes play too aggressive and bet/bluff in dumb positions. I need to learn the correct way to play in different positions in both my tournament play and cash games. In multi table tournaments that are not sngs, I can not really afford to play in too many and decide to avoid them usually. In my personal opinion, I feel like I am playing my best poker when I am in large mtts. My problem is when the cards go dead, I struggle to fold and fold again when my rare premium hands are missing on flop after flop. Also, when I am short-stacked, I push with below par hands trying to double up quicker than I need to. I could use a lot information on the sng and mtt aspects of poker. If anyone has any resources that found or any guides, I would appreciate that.

Overall poker problems

I am a very aggressive person and it shows in my play. I try to play only premium hands, but I find myself playing way more hands than I should. I get involved in pots that I should have no business in. By doing this, I consistently put myself in big holes in tournaments and plain out losing money in cash games. I am a good heads up player and I feel as if I can get reads on the players fairly easy, but in larger tables I do not gain reads easily and lose focus on all the other players. I like to play 6 max and I play fairly well at the table, but the streaks usually are my downfall. I tilt and my mind game is completely terrible. My bankroll management is pathetic and my bankroll is currently 0. I need to change my ways.

Questions

What is the smallest bankroll that I can have and still follow bankroll management so that I do not go broke again?
Are there any complete guides online to tournament and cash games?


Final thing, I am very serious about changing my game. I want to become a winning player. Please post any information, guides, etc. on poker that you feel will help or has helped. Any extra help would also be greatly appreciated. I am opening up to you(CC), I need help with my game and there is no better place to come. Help me become a winning long term player. Also, feel free to ask any questions that need in order to help me out.

Ok well I have just been called away so I will re-read later but one thing to consider is that you may learn a thing or three while studying but nothing makes you learn better than practice, its great you want to improve but your going to learn all these concepts and try to put them all in your game at the same time. This will probally cause you to loose alot of cash.

My advice is find a game you want to play study a little everyday play some of that game and that game only and when you have the thing that you are studying right in your head and you understand it look for another leak to fix and study that. 6 max player need to play more hands to beat the rake so I think you should forget them in ring games for now.

You've opened up a big can of worms...

https://www.cardschat.com/f49/ring-game-hand-analysis-required-reading-144488/

Read the comprehensive guides there. And stop short stacking, as it doesn't really lower your variance all that much. So if you're playing 2NL, it doesn't really matter if you are playing with 20bb stacks, or 100bb stacks. Your bankroll should be the same for both.

If I was going to play $2NL, I'd want at least $60-$70.

From my read of your essay, I'd say there is no minimum br that will serve you. You are too impulsive.

You will need to abandon all of your preconceived notions of the game and start fresh. It is not easy, you may fail, but unless you start fresh, your existing baggage will weigh you down and sink you.

And as weird as this may sound, you need to learn the patience that is taught and learned via freerolls and play money. The good thing there is it doesn't cost much, other than time, but you won't go broke relearning the game.

Turbo's and super turbo's eh? Highly suggests you are impatient and in a hurry.

I may be the only person here who will suggest the Play Money games, but in order to be successful at Play Money Poker one must have the fundamentals down tight.

Personally I set myself a goal of 1 million Play Chips before I deposited any real money. Another post around here suggests some other guy set his goal at 100 million playchips, and he still isn't sure. I punked out and deposited when I got to 900,000 play chips, and have been above even for a long time, but still wonder if that original goal might not have served me a tad better.

If you look at online poker, or even live poker as some get rich quick scheme, you got some seriously ugly surprises coming your way.

Thanks for the input so far. I would have to agree with most of what you all had to say. Im not saying that I havent been playing a long time. Practice has been there and I am not seeing too much improvement. I have learned a lot in the past couple months. I feel like I am more of a tournament player, but I am uninterested in the small 1 dollar huge tournaments. I want to play as both a cash and tournament player, but not tournament until my bankroll is large enough to afford the larger money pools. I guess what I am saying is that I want to start at the beginning of my cash game and reorganize the way I play. I want to become tight and aggressive without becoming too aggressive. c9h13no3, when you say 2NL is that 1c/2c tables. I am confused on what exactly I would do with a correct bankroll. I understand if I were at say 10NL then i would move down or up according to my wins/losses. But with a bankroll like 70 on the micro limits, what happens when I start to lose and cant follow bankroll management. I guess my plan is to read and learn as much as possible over the next 14 days. I want to gain a different amount of knowledge and try my luck again at the tables. I am asking for some serious advice on what exactly to read or do to improve. I understand that trying to apply all these aspects at once would be difficult and impossible, but I am trying to improve my game from the start. I want to change my think process and stop moving limits and playing in superturbos. I am ready to be patient and learn slowly.

jbatesm said:

c9h13no3, when you say 2NL is that 1c/2c tables.

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yep.

jbatesm said:

what happens when I start to lose and cant follow bankroll management.

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When you get below $40, reload bonus IMO.

jbatesm said:

stop moving limits and playing in superturbos.

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Nothing wrong with super turbos.

Pick 1 particular game type (NLHE cash, or 1 table SnG's) and focus on it.

I also wrote this a while back. Might be useful.

https://www.cardschat.com/forum/learning-poker-57/5-rules-beginners-who-want-make-155326/

I think taking 14 days off just to study the game is a bit too much. I think you would be much better off studying then playing. That way you will learn to use the concepts that you learned. Maybe split your time between 65% study (also include analayzing your game afterwards) and 45% playing. Also when when you use this method you can concentrate on making small, incremental changes as opposed to trying to overhaul your entire game at once. I think that is just too much to swallow.

Play money would be a good start. Forget about the results, just concentrate on your decision making according to the concepts that you learned.

I would also concentrate on one format of poker. Choose tournaments, SnG's, cash, heads up, etc. but pick ONE. Each format has its own unique twists and turns. Here is a list of stuff that learned, one at a time:
1) Learn not to be a donator in the SB
2) Learn what a 'tight and aggressive' player really is
3) Learn how to play in the early stages of an SnG
4) Learn how to play in the middle stages of an SnG
5) Learn how to play in the late stages of an SnG
6) Learn how to play on the bubble in an SnG
7) Learn how to steal when there is only 3 people left
8) Learn how to observe and identify the 2 players on my immediate left.
9) Learn how to observe and identify the immediate player on my right.
10) Learn to be patient
11) Learn how to control your tilt (still working on that one).

Point being, I focused my improvement on one small aspect at a time. Those eleven items took me quite a bit of time to learn and integrate into my game. Also, I think it would really help if you railed some high stakes players to see how they play. I followed around several high stakes players in 45 person SnG's for a few weeks and that really helped me develop into a tight and aggressive player. Also that showed me how to play hyper aggro when the blinds are sky high.

Good luck.

It seems like you need to make a hard choice. Do you want to continue to play impulsively, or do you want to improve your chances of becoming a winning player? While these two things aren't 100% mutually exclusive, you can pretty much treat them as if they were.

Another thing that might be hard is to assess your self-image. You say you think you're a solid player. If that means you think you're average or better, that self-evaluation doesn't correlate very well with a losing history over three years. If you've been playing that long and can't beat micro-stakes fairly consistently, maybe it's time to admit to yourself that you're mediocre or poor, especially if doing so will help motivate you to improve.

Also, as others have noted, you'd probably benefit from lowering your variance. Favoring turbos, 6max and short-stacking all work against you in this regard. So does playing in larger MTTs with larger fields.

And some players benefit more than others, but you may want to consider focusing on one type of game. Cash, SNG and MTT are different enough that you need to make adaptations to your game when you change. For many, it's easier to get comfortable with one before trying to add another form, and then the third.

Learn to be patient. I don't know how you can pick that up, but it sounds like your losing a lot trying to speed up the winning.

Learn to walk away. Some days you just don't win. When it looks like it's going to be one of those days - quit playing, try again tomorrow. This one took me a long time.

I'd lay off the superturbo games. I find that they don't give me enough chips or time to work with - for me it comes off as a one and done, and all-in luck is not my strong point.

Good luck.

Thanks everyone again. I think I have decided to go with cash games for now. If anyone has any guides or essays that they think would help me out then please include them. Also, I see the word variance quite a bit. What exactly is meant by variance in regards to poker context?

Look in the Golden Archives; I think there are threads there from TenBob, ChuckTS and others covering the basics of $10 tables and lower.

jbatesm said:

Also, I see the word variance quite a bit. What exactly is meant by variance in regards to poker context?

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If you flip a coin, you've got a 50% probability of hitting heads. But the coin can come up tails 5 times in a row a probability of 3% of the time. That's variance. Variance is the measure of the distribution of outcomes around the mean of a population of outcomes.