OMGITSOVER9K
Cardschat Elite
Silver Level
as of late I've seen a fair few posts/threads asking the most basic questions.. and after seeing a thread asking how to play AA pre-flop, I decided to make a thread to lay out the basics.
player wise I'm nothing special and am not making myself out to be, I'm just trying my best to help out learning/recreational players and contribute to the forum.
so we're going to go through a list of things/leaks that bad players do and why they're unprofitable..
this post is assuming you know some of the basic terms for position etc..
feel free to ask questions or tell me anything I missed out on.
Open Limping:
Forget whatever you read/heard, limping is bad. Especially at the micros.
By open limping you lose all initiative in the hand, and leave it to the players behind you to decide your fate.
A lot of new players like to limp UTG with suited connectors and small pairs with the ideal that if they spike it they'll get paid off.
This is wrong. Even if you hit your set/miracle flop, it’s hard for you to get maximum value OOP and even if you pot it for every street you still won't get stacks in unless it’s a family pot.
On top of that, good players behind you will raise with a wide range of hands and you’ll either have to call OOP with a weak hand and check/fold flops we miss or just fold pre-flop.
Just raise, it gives you more ways to win the pot and gives you more options post-flop.
Min 3betting:
This is another thing I see a lot of, and the thought process behind it is ‘I’ve got AA/KK but I don’t want them to fold’.
Fair enough, but we need to think about the reasons why we are 3 betting.
When we 3 bet we are doing it for 2 reasons:
1 – we want a better hand to fold. (bluff)
2 – we want a worse hand to call. (value)
If we min 3 bet then we don’t really accomplish much. Yes we may get the guy with 87s to stay in the pot, but we don’t gain anything much by raising so small. Ideally, we want it make it 3x his opening raise IP, and 3.5x/4x OOP.
Min Raising (post-flop):
Major problem. The theory’s the same as the min 3 betting in all honesty. We don’t accomplish much.
Bet Sizing:
Post-flop newer players tend to make more mistakes, and the biggest of these (IMO) is in their bet sizing.
These normally end up on the opposite ends of the spectrum, firstly:
‘OMFG I’ve got AA, I bet $2!’ ..into a ¢50 pot.
or the other side:
‘I missed my draw, I bet the minimum’
Again we need to consider what our opponent has, and what he would logically call/fold to. By betting so much we get him to fold all his marginal strength hands, and continue with his strong hands.. a lot of which may be beating us.
Donk bet:
If you’re not the pre-flop aggressor, then don’t lead. At higher levels this may be used for specific purposes, but at the micro stakes this is normally the sign of a weak player. This point follows the same logic as the above paragraph; he folds all his weak hands and continues with hands that have us crushed.
Stack Sizes/Effective Stack Sizes:
When playing we always need to take our stack sizes into account. If we have 10bb, then we can’t call a raise because it represents too much of our stack. It’s either move all in or fold.
If we’re deeper stacked however then we can call and play post-flop, another mistake I see people making is over shoving big stacks.
e.g. Player A raises, Player B moves all in for 40bbs.
40bbs is still a good enough stack to take a flop with and play post-flop. In this spot you want to be shipping around a 20bb stack or less, this is optional though.. you can ship some bigger stacks depending on the tournament and stack size of the original raiser IMO.
Ranges:
this may be a little advanced for newer players but I feel it’s needed and you’ll have to learn it sooner or later.
In its simplest form:
Player A raises UTG. He’s likely to have a strong range in this spot, AA/KK/QQ/AK, hands of that nature. It’s folded round to you on the button, you look down at J10s. J10 does horribly against his range because we’re likely to either be dominated, or hit a flop just enough of the time to pay off his over pairs.
So to sum up: EP raises are strong/tight ranges, LP raises tend to be weaker/wider ranges.
Bad beats aren't bad beats if you play bad:
People always complain about how bad they run and how unlucky they are. Some players are generally unlucky, but they never consider the fact that they misplayed the hand.
An example of this came up in a tournament I played this morning.
Player A is UTG with A4o and limps in. Its folded round to the BB who checks.
The flop comes Ah/4h/Qs. BB checks, Player A bets half pot and the BB calls.
Turn 5c. BB checks again and Player A bet 3/4 pot, BB moves all in.
He hands are flipped, Player A shows A4o, BB shows.. 32h.
The river’s a brick and the BB doubles up.
Player A’s clearly annoyed and writes in the chat box ‘this is a joke’. But he never considered the fact that if he’d have raised the hand pre-flop, the BB would have folded.
Sorry about the wall of text.. hope it helped, and if it didn’t.. well I guess I’m worse than I thought I was
player wise I'm nothing special and am not making myself out to be, I'm just trying my best to help out learning/recreational players and contribute to the forum.
so we're going to go through a list of things/leaks that bad players do and why they're unprofitable..
this post is assuming you know some of the basic terms for position etc..
feel free to ask questions or tell me anything I missed out on.
Open Limping:
Forget whatever you read/heard, limping is bad. Especially at the micros.
By open limping you lose all initiative in the hand, and leave it to the players behind you to decide your fate.
A lot of new players like to limp UTG with suited connectors and small pairs with the ideal that if they spike it they'll get paid off.
This is wrong. Even if you hit your set/miracle flop, it’s hard for you to get maximum value OOP and even if you pot it for every street you still won't get stacks in unless it’s a family pot.
On top of that, good players behind you will raise with a wide range of hands and you’ll either have to call OOP with a weak hand and check/fold flops we miss or just fold pre-flop.
Just raise, it gives you more ways to win the pot and gives you more options post-flop.
Min 3betting:
This is another thing I see a lot of, and the thought process behind it is ‘I’ve got AA/KK but I don’t want them to fold’.
Fair enough, but we need to think about the reasons why we are 3 betting.
When we 3 bet we are doing it for 2 reasons:
1 – we want a better hand to fold. (bluff)
2 – we want a worse hand to call. (value)
If we min 3 bet then we don’t really accomplish much. Yes we may get the guy with 87s to stay in the pot, but we don’t gain anything much by raising so small. Ideally, we want it make it 3x his opening raise IP, and 3.5x/4x OOP.
Min Raising (post-flop):
Major problem. The theory’s the same as the min 3 betting in all honesty. We don’t accomplish much.
Bet Sizing:
Post-flop newer players tend to make more mistakes, and the biggest of these (IMO) is in their bet sizing.
These normally end up on the opposite ends of the spectrum, firstly:
‘OMFG I’ve got AA, I bet $2!’ ..into a ¢50 pot.
or the other side:
‘I missed my draw, I bet the minimum’
Again we need to consider what our opponent has, and what he would logically call/fold to. By betting so much we get him to fold all his marginal strength hands, and continue with his strong hands.. a lot of which may be beating us.
Donk bet:
If you’re not the pre-flop aggressor, then don’t lead. At higher levels this may be used for specific purposes, but at the micro stakes this is normally the sign of a weak player. This point follows the same logic as the above paragraph; he folds all his weak hands and continues with hands that have us crushed.
Stack Sizes/Effective Stack Sizes:
When playing we always need to take our stack sizes into account. If we have 10bb, then we can’t call a raise because it represents too much of our stack. It’s either move all in or fold.
If we’re deeper stacked however then we can call and play post-flop, another mistake I see people making is over shoving big stacks.
e.g. Player A raises, Player B moves all in for 40bbs.
40bbs is still a good enough stack to take a flop with and play post-flop. In this spot you want to be shipping around a 20bb stack or less, this is optional though.. you can ship some bigger stacks depending on the tournament and stack size of the original raiser IMO.
Ranges:
this may be a little advanced for newer players but I feel it’s needed and you’ll have to learn it sooner or later.
In its simplest form:
Player A raises UTG. He’s likely to have a strong range in this spot, AA/KK/QQ/AK, hands of that nature. It’s folded round to you on the button, you look down at J10s. J10 does horribly against his range because we’re likely to either be dominated, or hit a flop just enough of the time to pay off his over pairs.
So to sum up: EP raises are strong/tight ranges, LP raises tend to be weaker/wider ranges.
Bad beats aren't bad beats if you play bad:
People always complain about how bad they run and how unlucky they are. Some players are generally unlucky, but they never consider the fact that they misplayed the hand.
An example of this came up in a tournament I played this morning.
Player A is UTG with A4o and limps in. Its folded round to the BB who checks.
The flop comes Ah/4h/Qs. BB checks, Player A bets half pot and the BB calls.
Turn 5c. BB checks again and Player A bet 3/4 pot, BB moves all in.
He hands are flipped, Player A shows A4o, BB shows.. 32h.
The river’s a brick and the BB doubles up.
Player A’s clearly annoyed and writes in the chat box ‘this is a joke’. But he never considered the fact that if he’d have raised the hand pre-flop, the BB would have folded.
Sorry about the wall of text.. hope it helped, and if it didn’t.. well I guess I’m worse than I thought I was