Wow, this thread has grown a lot since I started replying yesterday.
First off, let me start by clearing some things: I never said you're not evolving as a poker player. You are. Just in a very narrow-minded way.
Secondly, I think you're one of the better contributors of the forum. I've always enjoyed reading your insights and your well structured and thought-out posts. It's just a pleasure.
Now, when I said narrow minded, I meant that you are trying to improve as a FR nit, but you're not trying to play as a TAG, for example.
You say you're winning as a nit or you're comfortable playing a nit style, and that's okay. What I'm trying to tell you is, in order to really grow as a poker player, you have to push your limits. Play with people you're not comfortable with, sit to the right of a maniac, exploit a nittier player by 3betting the shit out of them, play big pots with marginal hands vs maniacs, play more pots OOP and so on. All of those things help you evolve as a player in general. You become a much more rounded poker player and can deal with a myriad of situations correctly and profitably.
They will not necessarily make you more money right now, @ these stakes, but they will be a great practice for when the games get looser and more aggressive and you'll be playing more pots OOP and vs LAGs. And now is the time to learn those things. Not when you reach $50 NL.
And this is, I think, what you're having problems with. At the micros your main and number one goal is experience. Not money. Forget about all those people saying how they reached $5K NL after 6 months of play. They were reckless and were probably on the sickest heater of their lives. And are probably way better players than any of us are now, but I digress.
My point here being that you should get yourself in as much different situations as you can get your hands on. I already said what I mean by that, and I have suggested you numerous times to play 6-max, just because you learn to think quicker on your feet and your FR game will benefit immensely.
Think of your time in 6-max as an investment. You invest some of your time and money in order to get greater rewards in the future. You will lose money @ 6-max and you will feel frustrated and it will feel like it isn't your game. And it probably isn't. But that's besides the point. You should take that as an experience and find ways to apply it to your FR game, be it playing more pots OOP, playing vs maniacs, valuebetting OOP, 3bet shoving on AA9dxd board when you have the 9, and so on.
You just have to step out of your comfort zone and embrace the wild and unpredictable nature of poker. You have to be ready to combat all kinds of situations vs all kinds of villains. And you just can't learn that playing as a nit. Sure, you might become the best nit in the world, but you will be missing value in so many spots it's ridiculous. It's just -EV.
Nittines is expressed in the fact that you're uncomfortable with playing the situations a LAG will.
You might come up with stats and so on for why a hand is unprofitable, but remember, LAGs don't make all their money just from pushing people out of pots. When they go to SD and they have built a pretty huge pot, they usually have a pretty strong hand. People will tend to pay them off a lot lighter, and that's where the value of playing trash like 94o pays off. Not in the money you make from the hand itself, but from the advertising you make yourself with it. Poker is as much stats and math as is psychology. They just go hand in hand.
You'll find that, as you start getting comfortable with more and more situations, your game will naturally open up. First to a 11/10, then to a 12/11 or something, you may even get to 16 or 17 VPIP. And you will wonder why the hell you weren't playing those hands when clearly there's money to be made with them.
So, in conclusion:
1. Play more 6-max and don't quit early. I'll also be expecting a graph from you with at least 10,000 hands on it that were played between now and the foreseeable future. No old hand histories here. (You can even try some HUSNGs. I can't begin to explain how much my hand reading skills have improved since I started. There are HUSNGs for as low as $2. If you have some money over @FT you can try their deep stacked ones, because it's very different play than the 1500 chip ones. And play that you'll be somewhat more familiar with. @FT there are ones for $1 a piece. You may also find someone from CC to play HU cash with you. You just sit at a home table and play away. That's better than HUSNGs, imo, but only if you can find someone decent to play with.)
2. Play more pots OOP, vs maniacs, OOP vs maniacs and so on. When you feel you're not comfortable playing a hand on the flop, instead of folding it, raise. Instead of just calling, re-raise (don't do this vs maniacs, though).
P.S. How's the charting of profit/hourly/WR as a function of # of tables going?
fx20736 said:
First off, let me start by clearing some things: I never said you're not evolving as a poker player. You are. Just in a very narrow-minded way.
Secondly, I think you're one of the better contributors of the forum. I've always enjoyed reading your insights and your well structured and thought-out posts. It's just a pleasure.
Now, when I said narrow minded, I meant that you are trying to improve as a FR nit, but you're not trying to play as a TAG, for example.
You say you're winning as a nit or you're comfortable playing a nit style, and that's okay. What I'm trying to tell you is, in order to really grow as a poker player, you have to push your limits. Play with people you're not comfortable with, sit to the right of a maniac, exploit a nittier player by 3betting the shit out of them, play big pots with marginal hands vs maniacs, play more pots OOP and so on. All of those things help you evolve as a player in general. You become a much more rounded poker player and can deal with a myriad of situations correctly and profitably.
They will not necessarily make you more money right now, @ these stakes, but they will be a great practice for when the games get looser and more aggressive and you'll be playing more pots OOP and vs LAGs. And now is the time to learn those things. Not when you reach $50 NL.
And this is, I think, what you're having problems with. At the micros your main and number one goal is experience. Not money. Forget about all those people saying how they reached $5K NL after 6 months of play. They were reckless and were probably on the sickest heater of their lives. And are probably way better players than any of us are now, but I digress.
My point here being that you should get yourself in as much different situations as you can get your hands on. I already said what I mean by that, and I have suggested you numerous times to play 6-max, just because you learn to think quicker on your feet and your FR game will benefit immensely.
Think of your time in 6-max as an investment. You invest some of your time and money in order to get greater rewards in the future. You will lose money @ 6-max and you will feel frustrated and it will feel like it isn't your game. And it probably isn't. But that's besides the point. You should take that as an experience and find ways to apply it to your FR game, be it playing more pots OOP, playing vs maniacs, valuebetting OOP, 3bet shoving on AA9dxd board when you have the 9, and so on.
You just have to step out of your comfort zone and embrace the wild and unpredictable nature of poker. You have to be ready to combat all kinds of situations vs all kinds of villains. And you just can't learn that playing as a nit. Sure, you might become the best nit in the world, but you will be missing value in so many spots it's ridiculous. It's just -EV.
Nittines is expressed in the fact that you're uncomfortable with playing the situations a LAG will.
You might come up with stats and so on for why a hand is unprofitable, but remember, LAGs don't make all their money just from pushing people out of pots. When they go to SD and they have built a pretty huge pot, they usually have a pretty strong hand. People will tend to pay them off a lot lighter, and that's where the value of playing trash like 94o pays off. Not in the money you make from the hand itself, but from the advertising you make yourself with it. Poker is as much stats and math as is psychology. They just go hand in hand.
You'll find that, as you start getting comfortable with more and more situations, your game will naturally open up. First to a 11/10, then to a 12/11 or something, you may even get to 16 or 17 VPIP. And you will wonder why the hell you weren't playing those hands when clearly there's money to be made with them.
So, in conclusion:
1. Play more 6-max and don't quit early. I'll also be expecting a graph from you with at least 10,000 hands on it that were played between now and the foreseeable future. No old hand histories here. (You can even try some HUSNGs. I can't begin to explain how much my hand reading skills have improved since I started. There are HUSNGs for as low as $2. If you have some money over @FT you can try their deep stacked ones, because it's very different play than the 1500 chip ones. And play that you'll be somewhat more familiar with. @FT there are ones for $1 a piece. You may also find someone from CC to play HU cash with you. You just sit at a home table and play away. That's better than HUSNGs, imo, but only if you can find someone decent to play with.)
2. Play more pots OOP, vs maniacs, OOP vs maniacs and so on. When you feel you're not comfortable playing a hand on the flop, instead of folding it, raise. Instead of just calling, re-raise (don't do this vs maniacs, though).
P.S. How's the charting of profit/hourly/WR as a function of # of tables going?
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