POKER

[LincsVilla]

I've had a look for any recent topics to do with poker and couldn't find any, so if there are apologies.

Anyway, how many people on here play poker, professionally or recreationallly? You had any big wins or bad beats, and how much will you play for?

I've been playing a few months now and just getting in to it, and have started playing for money a fair bit and been doing alright. So just wondering if anyone has any tips, and well as any stories etc.

Am i also right in thinking there was a VT poker thing going on a couple of years back?

[LancsVillan]

Yes there was. After a good uptake initially it died off.

I haven't played a hand for about 12 months

[Brumerican]

I am a pretty decent player but it bores the shit out of me now . A decent tournament can go on for hours and it just feels like work after playing them for a few years .

Nowadays I just play sit and go ring games. Double your money is my favourite as you can usually go away and make some tea, come back and you have won without playing a hand. 8)

[Stevo985]

Play with mates every now and then.

Used to play a lot at uni and then online after that.

Online makes me want to murder people now though. So just casual games with mates where the entertainment is in the banter rather than the game.

[TheDon]

Used to play poker full time, 6-8 tables at NL200, made a more than acceptable living out of it for a fair few years, I think I posted some of my monthly graphs on here before.

It just got too much of a grind for me, burnt myself out and it got to the stage where I'd sit down to play and just couldn't concentrate for longer than 10 minutes on the game.

Full Tilt getting shut down and me having a fair amount of money in there was the final nail in the coffin for me that made me go back to the normal world of 9-5.

I still play the occasional live tournament or cash game, but no where near as often as I did.

The biggest piece of advice I can give someone though is learn the odds. The easiest way to win at poker is to play the odds. Most people will chase all the time, you'll take bad beats from these, but you shouldn't get pissed off, because these people are where you make your money. The fish that case and put bad beats on you, are the same fish that are your bread and butter.

Also, read books, there's a ton of excellent books that will teach you some decent strategy that if you follow will make you profitable right up to NL50 with east. If you only read one, make it Theory of Poker by David Sklansky.

[LincsVilla]

Used to play poker full time, 6-8 tables at NL200, made a more than acceptable living out of it for a fair few years, I think I posted some of my monthly graphs on here before.

Also, read books, there's a ton of excellent books that will teach you some decent strategy that if you follow will make you profitable right up to NL50 with east. If you only read one, make it Theory of Poker by David Sklansky.

I'd quite like to get to the level where i would be able to make a decent sum of money, not necessarily play full-time but just to get a few more quid.

I haven't heard that, but i had heard another one to read was Super/System by Doyle Brunson.

I played tonight, bought in to a tournament (only £2.30) and promptly had a blazing row with the missus with her going on at me whilst trying to play. Made a bit and then lost it all pretty sharpish, and went all-in on top pair without thinking about it and is something i wouldn't have done so early on, especially as he went all in on the river as a second six came out. She is definitely getting the blame for that one.

[maqroll]

I used to play with some frequency, both online, local charity tournaments and casinos. I had mixed results. My best showing was winning a tournament with 75 players. I also had some good runs on cash tables at the casino. I came close to an $11K payout, but for a bad beat (online)....

I decided that online sites were too dodgy, and casinos are swarming with sharks who will work tables.

It's fun, addictive, maddening, and dangerous. My advice to you would be to have fun, but don't let yourself get sucked into a bad situation.

[TheDon]

I'd quite like to get to the level where i would be able to make a decent sum of money, not necessarily play full-time but just to get a few more quid.

I haven't heard that, but i had heard another one to read was Super/System by Doyle Brunson.

I played tonight, bought in to a tournament (only £2.30) and promptly had a blazing row with the missus with her going on at me whilst trying to play. Made a bit and then lost it all pretty sharpish, and went all-in on top pair without thinking about it and is something i wouldn't have done so early on, especially as he went all in on the river as a second six came out. She is definitely getting the blame for that one.

Super/System is great too, there's a Super/System 2 as well, but I don't really rate it as highly as the first one, it's too dripping with ego stroking.

Don't play unless you know you're going to have long enough with no distractions to stay focussed, you need to be able to maintain a clear head to make the right decisions.

Speaking of which, avoid playing when drunk, I dunno if I still have it but I had a winnings graph of one of my months playing where I was going out every friday night, coming back and playing poker, the graph had a nice slope upwards during the week, then a massive drop every friday where I pissed away more the weeks winnings in drunken sessions. It didn't take me too long to work out not to play when pissed!

I decided that online sites were too dodgy, and casinos are swarming with sharks who will work tables.

Online sites are not dodgy.

They don't care who wins or loses hands, they make their money from the rake regardless, it's simply not in their interest to rig hands.

I've got hand histories of millions of hands, and they show that they're not dodgy, everything happens around the amount of times you'd expect them to.

People think they see bad beats more frequently online, but that's not true. You see more of them sure, but you see more hands online too.

Live you're limited to around 30 hands per hour, online? well, single table you could push 90, multi tabling, a multiple of that. I'd easily push 600 hands an hour back in my grinding days, that's 20x as many hands as playing live, of course you're going to see more bad beats, but do they happen more frequently? No.

There are exceptions of course, there have been staff members using their positions to cheat (the absolute poker scandal being the main one) but they get found VERY quickly, because people who play this game for a living are also obsessed with stats and how people play, and it's pretty obvious to notice someone who is cheating if you know what to look for.

Then of course there's full tilt, which apparently was just a huge ponzi scheme with the company paying itself out of players money rather than having a seperation of funds like they should have, so they were spending the money that players had in their accounts. But that's another thing entirely.

As for casinos swarming with sharks, most casino sharks fall into two categories,

1) people with actually know how to play poker

2) rich people who try to bully hands

There's always enough fish, and enough of number 2 (who are the exact people you want at a table) in a live game to make money, and number 1 aren't that abundant so you can avoid playing hands with them if they are actually that good. But the secret is they generally aren't, because you don't have to be to play live poker.

Most live players are far worse than online. There's very few live games I wouldn't walk into and be profitable at, it's only when you get into the stupidly high stakes you start getting tables full of pros, because honestly, most live casino games just aren't profitable enough for people who can actually play poker to bother with most the time. Why would you want to play 30 hands an hour live, when you can do 600 online?

[Stevo985]

I've read supersytem.

I think if you studied that, like you would a textbook for an exam, you would get VERY good at poker. Especially against people who know how to play but aren't anything special.

I only read it once and applied it once, but I was absolutely nailing everyone when we started our game. Didn't end up winning through a combination of getting distracted (alcohol was being consumed) and assuming the fish at the table would act as a "normal" player would and losing a ton of money to him on one huge hand.

But you could tell it worked. There are so many little things that you stick to and work. Just small things like never letting anyone draw for free. If you think someone is waiting for a card, make them pay for it.

Maybe better players take that as a given, but for a casual player, little things like that I never really paid attention to before.

Might check out Theory of Poker too. Got a pretty big game on 3rd August

[fifa09don]

played a freeroll today, went out on trip aces! to a full house ofcourse. always seems to be the way.

i had a bad out yesterday, in the last 20 of a 350 players tourny. i was 1st place with 110k chips (av stack was around 30k)

then with 19 people left i called a 60k all in when i had a full house. he had pockets to take me down to 10th on 70k.

then i got pocket aces on the next hand. and the flop was something like K 8 J turn : 3 so at this point i alled in, someone calls it. he only has a pair of jacks! 130k pot! ! ! omg its mine surely its definatly mine!

river : J

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

[Stevo985]

Oh and regarding casinos, I played at one once in a "proper" tournament and it was full of absolute dickheads.

For example, there was one guy and whenever he had to show his cards he would stand up and cheer as if he'd won, regardless of if he had or not.

And therewere people there who just went all in on everything for the first few hands just hoping to hit something. And if they didn't, they'd just buy back in.

I was pretty much a total rookie and came 19th out of about 150 people.

Got the impression if you were a half decent player you could absolutely clean up at those kind of tournaments

[TheDon]

Got the impression if you were a half decent player you could absolutely clean up at those kind of tournaments

Ohhh yes.

I love rebuys because you just sit there and play tight, and the chips just come to you.

Rebuy after rebuy from the fish chasing everything.

Unfortunately though with those kind of tournaments table draw matters a lot. If you're stuck on a table with 8 other people who have decided they're only having the one buy in and an addon, you're going to have a bad time. If you get on a table with a couple of guys throwing it all in and rolling the dice all the time, you're going to have it pretty easy, you just pick your spots and they'll give you their money.

But you could tell it worked. There are so many little things that you stick to and work. Just small things like never letting anyone draw for free. If you think someone is waiting for a card, make them pay for it.

Definitely, there's so many absolute basics that so many people just fail to see.

I die a little inside every time I see people let someone see a flop for free. Every pot should be a raised pot, the last thing you want in a hand is to have to deal with whatever random junk hand the BB got dealt. If I'm on the button with a hand that looks like it's going to be a "community hand" I'm raising it up even if I have 7-2. If everyone has hands that are good enough to call but not to raise then I'm willing to bet they'll either fold to a raise pre-flop or to a continuation bet on the flop.

Along the same lines are people who feel compelled to see a "cheap hand" from the SB. Cheap hands are the ones that end up costing you the most, especially when you're out of position, first to act flopping top pair on a 7 high board, seen many a player get in trouble on hands like that.

I used to really piss people off playing live poker, because if I was in a pot 90% of the time it was a raised pot (suited connectors or small pocket pairs late position with multiple callers is my one exception to the "always raise" rule, as you get your value with those hands by being multi-handed).

People seem to think you should play to keep as many people in the pot as possible, but that's how you lose. You want 1 or 2 other callers, you don't want to be playing a full table. If you raise UTG with pocket aces (which you always should, slow playing from early position is a disaster) and everyone folds back round to you, well, at least you won the blinds, better that than losing your stack to the guy on the BB who you let in for free and hit two pair on a rainbow rag board.

The hands that cost you big are always the hands you didn't see coming, and if you didn't see them coming you did something wrong. I always hear people complain that they "win small, but lose big" and it's not because they don't know how to milk their big hands, it's because they don't know how to get away from a losing one. Money you don't lose is the same as money you won, yet people seem obsessed with building big pots that they aren't guaranteed to win. Pot control is something many players just completely ignore.

[Stevo985]

Yup. I used to play like that. Wait for the hand, then keep as many people in when you got it and win big, And sometimes that worked, but sometimes it didn't.

As you mentioned, now (although again I've only done it once since) I'll try and play more agressively. Never a free pot.

And during that game, whenever someone raised pre flop and then didn't bet after, all I thought was "that is **** weak". Whereas previously I'd think "Yes! free cards" and just wait to see the turn. Now I'll bet and win that pot before he can hit whatever it was he was waiting on pre flop.

The other reason I didn't win in that game was I didn't hit a single thing. I know if you're good enough you'll win anyway, but a pair of Jacks on the flop was literally the highest thing I hit all night. I eventually went out by going all in on pocket QQ and another guy had AA so beat me.

It takes balls though a lot of them time. In Supersystem, the way he puts it that worked with me is see the money you're betting as an investment. Yes, sometimes you'll lose. But if you stick to the system, you KNOW you'll win more often. So even if you take a bad beat, you know that money will come back to you given time. That gives you the confidence to bet.

[TheDon]

The other reason I didn't win in that game was I didn't hit a single thing. I know if you're good enough you'll win anyway

Well, you'd have to be playing some pretty poor players to win without hitting anything. Even the best players still need to hit some of the time! Luckily the times you run hot even out the times you run cold.

It takes balls though a lot of them time. In Supersystem, the way he puts it that worked with me is see the money you're betting as an investment. Yes, sometimes you'll lose. But if you stick to the system, you KNOW you'll win more often. So even if you take a bad beat, you know that money will come back to you given time. That gives you the confidence to bet.

Another way is to disassociate yourself with the money completely. You're not putting how ever many £ into the pot, you're just throwing in chips. If you start counting the money you start making bad decisions or chasing loses.

This is the reason so many pro poker players are degenerate gamblers, they don't value money at all. You get the biggest names winning a fortune on the poker tables, then losing it all on a -EV game like blackjack. So many poker players have gone broke multiple times because they can't limit the gambling to just poker. The amount of prop bets that occur between poker players is just ridiculous, betting on everything from living in a casino toilet for 30 days, to getting breast implants (Brian Zembic was bet $100,000 he wouldn't get them for a year back in the late 90's, he still has them... actually I think it was him that lived in the toilet as well, crazy SOB)

[The_Rev]

I havent played in quite some time, but in my (limited) experience the key to success in poker is that you've gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away and know when to run. You never count your money when you're sitting at the table there'll be time enough for counting when the dealing's done.

[Chindie]

I used to play all the time. I was a pretty active member of Pokersoc at uni (biggest poker society in the country don'tcherknow), never that successful, got a few final tables from a steady field of about 50-70 each week but rarely good enough to win anything. Won in the first week of my final year though, picked the absolute perfect night to have a game where nothing went wrong since it was the biggest pot they'd ever done in the society with a £250 first prize. Also made a fresher cry that night >_>...

I was never that good of player, I was too tight and when I started to try to play more aggressively I noticed that my game fell badly, I went from a competent but uninspiring player to a pretty ropey one fast and never had enough invested in the game to really alter that - in the end I just played as a pastime, something to do with a few friends on a Monday. Since I left, I've played... twice. I can't be bothered with it any more.

[Villaboy69]

The VT Poker tounaments were quite good fun to start with - shame the interest dwindled. Would be good to get it going again

[LincsVilla]

The VT Poker tounaments were quite good fun to start with - shame the interest dwindled. Would be good to get it going again

If they were to get going again i'd certainly be interested in playing in a weekly (if that's what it is?) tournament.

[fifa09don]

id be happy to join a vt poker league for sure

[Redditch_Villa]

Id also be interested in that!