Starting to study, but how?

[Berndsson90]

Hey everyone!

I freshly joined your community to learn from you guys and improve my poker game.

Info: I play on pokerstars, have been playing cashgames up to 16NL, but after a losing streak and a cashout I am now playing 5NL.

Now I feel like I'm on a bad run mixed with my leaks and I try to determine what is what.

I struggle a lot to determine whether I'm best or second best hand in common situations.
Example: I raise with KJo in LP, get a caller. I hit my Jack as top pair on the flop, I raise, villain calls. Turn shows a Q, I check, he raises and I'm not sure if he hit or if he bluffs.

At the moment it happens a lot that when I call, I lose. So I fold more often than I probably should atm.

How do you guys determine your handstrength in over card situations?


Second question:
How do I start learning equity and fold equity etc. I have Equilab and would like to practice how hands run against ranges and specific hands etc. But I don't know how to go about it efficiently to being able to remember it in situations at the tables.

What do you recommend for starters re that?

Thanks in advance,all help is greatly appreciated.

 

[MattRyder]

My rule of thumb is not to get too involved in hands where I'll be guessing all the way to the river. While KJ is not a bad hand to open with from LP (although it sounds like you were not on the btn), many players are routinely playing two broadways, always calling on a missed or hit flop and not going anywhere if they hit on the turn. If you show weakness out of position on the turn some players will always bet. So does he have it or not? Anybody's guess. If it's a tight table - YES. Is it a tight table?

In the end KJ is not a great hand to start in any position other than the btn, and top pair (JJ-K) without a lot of drawing odds on the flop is easily beat. The only question is how much are you willing to pay to find out. If you find you've been losing a lot then I'd recommend tightening up and really paying attention to how the other players are playing. Often my decision on how to continue in a hand is based solely on the notes that I have on the other player. If I have no notes then I have to rely more on hand strength. That's where tightening up comes in. I feel a whole lot more confident when playing AQ, AJ, KQ rather than KJ.

 

[Berndsson90]

Thanks Matt for the reply and sorry for taking so long to respond.

Yes I think I'm still adjusting back down from the stakes and need to tighten up more, fold more with uncertain hands again. According to my HM3 data I also lose too much money when calling 3bets, so I already adjusted to only call those with monsters for now to stop that leak.

Do you have any suggestions re my second part of my initial post?

 

[Bozovicdj]

Thanks Matt for the reply and sorry for taking so long to respond.

Yes I think I'm still adjusting back down from the stakes and need to tighten up more, fold more with uncertain hands again. According to my HM3 data I also lose too much money when calling 3bets, so I already adjusted to only call those with monsters for now to stop that leak.

Do you have any suggestions re my second part of my initial post?

IMO, it sounds like you lack the knowledge on hand ranges. If you had known more about the overall range that should be played from a spot your villain is, you would know more about whether he can have a Q in his range or not.

Also, you should be more observant about the entire board, not just the cards that you think might be scary. It all depends on whether there are flush draws, straight draws. If that flop you mentioned was 23J it is perhaps, less likely opponent has a set then on a 78J flop etc.

I would suggest you to post hands in the cash game hand analysis section and go from there. You will hear many player's opinions and thoughts. That is how I started using this forum and can say that I have far better knowledge of the theory of the game then before I used CC

 

[Berndsson90]

IMO, it sounds like you lack the knowledge on hand ranges. If you had known more about the overall range that should be played from a spot your villain is, you would know more about whether he can have a Q in his range or not.

Also, you should be more observant about the entire board, not just the cards that you think might be scary. It all depends on whether there are flush draws, straight draws. If that flop you mentioned was 23J it is perhaps, less likely opponent has a set then on a 78J flop etc.

I would suggest you to post hands in the cash game hand analysis section and go from there. You will hear many player's opinions and thoughts. That is how I started using this forum and can say that I have far better knowledge of the theory of the game then before I used CC

Thanks for the advice!

Yes I'm having trouble putting people on ranges. Yes I can estimate what they might have when they play only 16% of their hands, but still the hands they show sometimes don't fall into those ranges, so it only helps me in extreme cases like NITs and super losse fish.

I'm collecting hands I would like to get opinions on over the past days specifically by tagging them for later. So I plan on posting them here, or in the fitting thread.

I'm glad it helped you to do that, so I will follow that lead, too

 

[Alucard]

Youtube, Articles, subscriptions, books, twitch streams, Analysing Hand Histories
I do all above except for reading poker books. Can't get into it how much I try

If you are looking for specific content check out Doug Polk's youtube, Upswing poker, Run it once, splitsuit youtube & site, Blackrain79s microstakes content(He's also a member in CC)
https://www.cardschat.com/forum/cash-games-11/ask-blackrain79-anything-about-cash-games-443750/

Also
https://www.cardschat.com/forum/cash-games-11/polished-poker-vol-i-study-group-227214//

also check out Hand histories & comments but there's a lot of bad players & comments so you have to filter them out yourself

 

[Evan Jarvis]

Hey everyone!

I freshly joined your community to learn from you guys and improve my poker game.

Info: I play on Pokerstars, have been playing cashgames up to 16NL, but after a losing streak and a cashout I am now playing 5NL.

Now I feel like I'm on a bad run mixed with my leaks and I try to determine what is what.

I struggle a lot to determine whether I'm best or second best hand in common situations.
Example: I raise with KJo in LP, get a caller. I hit my Jack as top pair on the flop, I raise, villain calls. Turn shows a Q, I check, he raises and I'm not sure if he hit or if he bluffs.

At the moment it happens a lot that when I call, I lose. So I fold more often than I probably should atm.

How do you guys determine your handstrength in over card situations?


Second question:
How do I start learning equity and fold equity etc. I have Equilab and would like to practice how hands run against ranges and specific hands etc. But I don't know how to go about it efficiently to being able to remember it in situations at the tables.

What do you recommend for starters re that?

Thanks in advance,all help is greatly appreciated.

Welcome to the community!!!

We are so excited to have you joining us! :icon_king

A great place to start for free is at my youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/gripsed

Start with the 'how to win at poker' playlist near the top.

If you find that's a big too complicated skip down to the beginner, intermediate, and then advanced playlists.

Between all of it there are hundreds of hours of content you can learn from but it's organized in a beginner friendly step by step basis for learning.

If you're already talking about equity AND you joined this community, you are certainly on the right track!!!

 

[Berndsson90]

Thanks again for all the paths and suggestions to go for!

I can unfortunately not really relate to Doug Polks teaching style, but I love BlackRain79 and his book Crushing the Micros is what got my game up a big level in the first place. Thanks for that by the way, glad we are sharing the same community buddy 😃
And I will definitely use the hand history section and check out the study groups, thanks.

I also learned a lot from James aka SplitSuit, which is definitely more advanced and what got me into EV and SPR etc.

Here is where the question came up for me first, how to start using Equilab for example.
Do I just put in hands and learn how they run against the most common hands and ranges? Or is there a system to go about it that you suggest to start? I'm not the best in doing all the math yet, but try to get there, but it needs to click logically for me and it hasn't yet.

When my winnings are back up I will defi itely get Flopzilla next as a tool, it looks really good and helpful and a lot of people recommend it everywhere.

 

[Berndsson90]

Welcome to the community!!!

We are so excited to have you joining us! :icon_king

A great place to start for free is at my youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/gripsed

Start with the 'how to win at poker' playlist near the top.

If you find that's a big too complicated skip down to the beginner, intermediate, and then advanced playlists.

Between all of it there are hundreds of hours of content you can learn from but it's organized in a beginner friendly step by step basis for learning.

If you're already talking about equity AND you joined this community, you are certainly on the right track!!!

Thank you! I'm giving it a go later as well and see if it suits me. But I'm sure I will find a lot of helpful things there, great!

 

[Hearmeroar]

There's a YouTube playlist named 66 days of hand reading that may give you some helpful direction. I forget the name of the coach (apologies lol) but he basically takes you through constructing and narrowing ranges using the hand replayer in your database program (pt4 in his case). I've only watched a few of those personally but they gave me a guide of sorts to develop my own proccess for review. Something worth checking out at least.

 

[Evan Jarvis]

There's a YouTube playlist named 66 days of hand reading that may give you some helpful direction. I forget the name of the coach (apologies lol) but he basically takes you through constructing and narrowing ranges using the hand replayer in your database program (pt4 in his case). I've only watched a few of those personally but they gave me a guide of sorts to develop my own proccess for review. Something worth checking out at least.

sounds like something splitsuit or the guys at redchippoker would put together

very solid bunch that group! :icon_stud

 

[Berndsson90]

There's a YouTube playlist named 66 days of hand reading that may give you some helpful direction. I forget the name of the coach (apologies lol) but he basically takes you through constructing and narrowing ranges using the hand replayer in your database program (pt4 in his case). I've only watched a few of those personally but they gave me a guide of sorts to develop my own proccess for review. Something worth checking out at least.

That sounds exactly like what I'd need I guess right now, thank you! Will see if I can find it.

And Evan, thank you for your guideline with your videos, very helpful especially regarding poker mindset! Well done 😃

 

[pauloandre100]

Start by studying ranges by position. Open raise ranges, cold calling ranges, 3bet ranges, call vs. 3bet.