Need some advice on play style

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Malyck

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Hello everyone, I’m relatively new to this forum so please be gentle [emoji23]. I have played poker for a long time off and on with friends at home games and recently started at a casino 1/2 NL right before covid and had always done well enough at these events where i would net profit and rarely dip into my original buyin.

Since covid hit I decided to try my hand at online poker as I had done their briefly in 2009 with limited success. Right now I play on ignition mostly zone games 25nl (difficult to find time to sit in long tournaments due to family responsibilities etc at home). I have found that the limited times I’ve played in tournaments I’ve done surprisingly well having just gotten my first cash outs placing 11th and 28th out of over a thousand players.

Anyway, I’ve been losing a significant amount of money, although not being affected financially and have not been able to maintain a consistent gain over the course of several days. I broke down and picked up Iholdemindicator yesterday to try and assess my play style and the software has me listed as a “good player” tight aggressive and solid (will post ss of stats). I find that for the majority of plays I am making reasonably good decisions and start to make an upswing, but find that I consistently get sucked out more often than not when calling someone’s all in bet. I guess I was just looking for some wisdom regarding calling all in bets and how to approach these situations from a general viewpoint. Maybe even someone to coach me? I really love the game of poker and want to continue playing and improve. Thanks for your help

Here is my stat sheet:
Adjustments
 
tagece

tagece

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Hello everyone, I’m relatively new to this forum so please be gentle [emoji23]. I have played poker for a long time off and on with friends at home games and recently started at a casino 1/2 NL right before covid and had always done well enough at these events where i would net profit and rarely dip into my original buyin.

Since covid hit I decided to try my hand at online poker as I had done their briefly in 2009 with limited success. Right now I play on ignition mostly zone games 25nl (difficult to find time to sit in long tournaments due to family responsibilities etc at home). I have found that the limited times I’ve played in tournaments I’ve done surprisingly well having just gotten my first cash outs placing 11th and 28th out of over a thousand players.

Anyway, I’ve been losing a significant amount of money, although not being affected financially and have not been able to maintain a consistent gain over the course of several days. I broke down and picked up Iholdemindicator yesterday to try and assess my play style and the software has me listed as a “good player” tight aggressive and solid (will post ss of stats). I find that for the majority of plays I am making reasonably good decisions and start to make an upswing, but find that I consistently get sucked out more often than not when calling someone’s all in bet. I guess I was just looking for some wisdom regarding calling all in bets and how to approach these situations from a general viewpoint. Maybe even someone to coach me? I really love the game of poker and want to continue playing and improve. Thanks for your help

Here is my stat sheet:
View attachment 269328

I'm not the best expert in HUDs here, You will probably will get better answers, but one thing that caught my attention is that you are limping about half of the hands you decide to enter. I think you should raise more hands preflop. And your aggression factor is a little bit over passive. As I see it, you are calling more than you should be doing. In my opinion, you need to play more aggressively. Raising more preflop and 3beting more hands.
 
F

futureballoon

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From a general point of view... I stay away from calling all-ins especially early. I find the longer you can go without calling all-ins the better your chances are for making it to the final table and going the distance.

A lot of all-ins are crap shoots (aka coin flips) and it only takes one of them to knock you out of the tournament. I feel like a more consistent style of playing is basically slow and steady grinding away and taking chips from people slowly (instead of going for the quick double up AI).

I think you can reduce the random bad beats by doing it this way, but obviously it won't be as exciting and you will miss out on opportunities that you could have doubled up upon. In other words, be very conservative how often you go AI. That would be my best advice to you. Hopefully it helps.
 
Eric Salvador

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You’re too tight to have success online. At the tables you can pick off the maniacs quiet easily in live games. Online you’re going to experience much more aggression. Most execute in bad spots. With some additional knowledge of ranges and card removal you’ll have much more success. You need to have a small understanding of optimal poker and you’ll do well in micro stakes
 
Shrops

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Tight

I suggest a tight aggressive style for the best long term success.
 
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wildjoker68

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okay, here is the bottom line. you can not figure pot odds online, that's a no no", there is absolutely no way to figure pot odds when the boards are pairing 70 to 80% of the time.

so poker skill is out the window, you just play the best cards you can, play a little tighter than a Live game, and always know where the button is before calling the blinds.

Remember this, when it comes to online poker, sometimes you don't need the nuts to win, sometimes all it takes is big ball's
 
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JimTheBadger

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okay, here is the bottom line. you can not figure pot odds online, that's a no no", there is absolutely no way to figure pot odds when the boards are pairing 70 to 80% of the time.

so poker skill is out the window, you just play the best cards you can, play a little tighter than a Live game, and always know where the button is before calling the blinds.

Remember this, when it comes to online poker, sometimes you don't need the nuts to win, sometimes all it takes is big ball's



I disagree with this and add that much more skill is required to play the online game than live. Keep studying and reflecting on your play. You will get there eventually.
 
Phoenix Wright

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I suggest a tight aggressive style for the best long term success.

+1

Fundamentally, I think this style (TAG or even NIT) is the best for learning. It teaches you discipline to fold and also gets you in less pots, so you can observe and learn more of the game before you possibly decide to change your playing style and play more hands.

Game styles is one thing I love about poker, so many styles can be winning styles! I advise to start out pretty tight and with ABC poker and then getting a "little more creative" only after you've gained some more experience. At that point, I'd recommend a sort of trial and error to see what works for you. I'm not saying to test stuff out at your local casino, but you can even use freerolls or microstakes to experiment with different play styles and strategies. You'll have to discover what feels most comfortable for you and which style(s) you are winning with. I know it is tempting to play the style of your favorite poker pro, but you aren't them and they could never be as good of a you as you'll ever be :D

I don't know if you are a golfer or not, but I play golf and poker styles remind me of different golf swings. Some swings are so different, but all of the successful golfers share certain attributes in their swing. In poker, all successful styles feature the same elements in one form or another (like aggression for example: all winning poker styles have some form of aggression - even the most trappy styles that win have aggression. If you have too little aggression [limping often, never 3-betting etc.] then you'll seldom win and when you do win pots, they won't be that large).

When I first started messing around with poker (I say "messing around" because it was learning the game, but not even fully aware of the rules yet), I was a LAG or borderline maniac. Let me re-phrase that:

those are styles intentionally played - on the other hand, I wasn't thinking in the same mindset of "styles or strategy." I'd simply play way too many hands preflop (like 30-40% probably) and would rarely ever value bet because bluffing and trapping was fun - just like check-raising was.

Luckily, I quickly discovered this was not a way to win consistently long term - but the transition to a tighter, more ABC-style of poker to learn, was actually really easy for me. Literally as simple as: fold more? Okay. I didn't have years of bad habits reinforced like many others struggle to undo. I simply played that way because no one taught me how to play poker and so I played that way because I just played whatever I thought, but had really no direction at that time.

Shortly after this, I learned the rules of poker (yes, I didn't know the rules fully until later :D ) more formally and fully. Then created my CardsChat account and shortly after took the excellent free "30 Day Course" on CardsChat and the freeroll that went with it (the course content is still available in the Forum Threads on CardsChat; the "course" is just a bunch of videos, threads with each day and a pdf "book" to follow along with, but I highly recommend it for the beginner to intermediate player open-minded to a refresher, or learning a few new things.
 
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