What is "first-in vigorish and folding equity" and

What is "first-in vigorish and folding equity" and "M"? I read this in another post relating to NL SnG's. What are these?

Can someone please explain.

PS - I don't want to go out and buy a book to find out what these are.

Not to be harsh but search the forum or google it...

Originally Posted by pokerroomace

PS - I don't want to go out and buy a book to find out what these are.

that's unfortunate

Originally Posted by pokerroomace

What is "first-in vigorish and folding equity" and "M"? I read this in another post relating to NL SnG's. What are these?

...probably the two most important concepts in NL SnGs:

- First in vigorish - the value that you have from being the first player to raise (or push) in an unopened pot. Relates to Sklansky's Gap concept that you need a much stronger hand to call a raise than to open raise.
- M - the ratio of your chip stack to the blinds and antes. Eg. if your stack is 1500 and the blinds are 10/20, your M is 50. If the blinds are 100/200 then your M is 5. When your M is high (above 10) you can play normally with standard preflop raises, continuation bets etc. As your M drops, you end up having only one play - to push all in preflop. Most players say this point is when your stack is less than 10 big blinds (so M of 5-6 depending on antes).

I know you don't want to buy a book but these are all explained in HOH2. This book pays for itself 1236263715 times over.

Originally Posted by WildBobAA

Originally Posted by pokerroomace

PS - I don't want to go out and buy a book to find out what these are.

that's unfortunate

Agreed, you have no idea how much HoH2 helps. Why wouldn't you wanna buy it?

Exactly, the book is all of 29.95, will pay for itself very quickly if you use its principles.

Win a few 5.5s and you got 30$

OK. If all of you are saying its such a good book, I might go and buy it. But I wanted a quick answer first - thanks for that Taipan.

Is it really that good this book? Can I not read about the stuff in this book on the internet in the same amount of detail?

Also, is this the best book to get? I don't want to end up buying 5 different books at $30 each. I'd rather read about it on the net. Also, should I buy volumes 1 and 2? Or just one of them?

Thanks

From the sounds of it, you should buy HoH1 and read that, it teaches the fundamentals of tournament play. Read that, absorb it's content and apply it to your game.

Once you improve buy HoH2, and do the same thing.

If you want to be good, you need to learn from the best. The 60 bucks for both books is well worth it.

Is it really that good this book? Can I not read about the stuff in this book on the internet in the same amount of detail?

Nah, we just get a $5 kickback every time we tell someone to buy the book.

.
.
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We wouldn’t recommend HOH1 and HOH2 if they were not well worth the money.

As for how good they are...

Think about this...

You can’t even DISCUSS SnG/MTT strategy without talking about concepts from HOH1 and HOH2... Just that tells you how good they are

Originally Posted by Laeelin

Is it really that good this book? Can I not read about the stuff in this book on the internet in the same amount of detail?

Nah, we just get a $5 kickback every time we tell someone to buy the book.

LMAO .. I want my cut.


Pokerroomace .. Seriously ... Dude.. Its the bible - You cant be a follower without it. Buy it and see what happens.. Its magical.

OK. I'll go get it. You guys obviously really want your $5 so i'll give it to you. But I have exams atm, so if I do buy it, it will be in the next 1-3 months.

Just to say how good I am at SnG's atm:
In my time at ParadisePoker (only been here a week, but have played at pokerromm and holdempoker before), I've kept track of all my SnG results. Here they are:

$10+1: played: 20, 1st: 6, 2nd: 4, 3rd: 0, 4th+: 10
$20+1: played: 8, 1st: 1, 2nd: 0, 3rd: 2, 4th+: 5

So overall I'm doin quite well at SnG's and if anything, my level of play is better than those results (ie, loosing to a lack of patience - but overall the results are fair). Do I need to bother reading HOH1? Or should I only read HOH2?

Nice results, and you've probably read this before, but your sample size is way too small to judge whether you are a winning player or not. The consensus is you need 1000+ SNGs to say with a high degree of confidence that you can win.

You seem to have moved up to the $22s after only 20 $11s - I would recommend staying at the $11s for at least 100-200 SnGs so you know you can beat that level before moving up. Winning 30% of your $11s does not seem sustainable to me. It is entirely possible to play well and suffer 20+ tourneys out of the money.

Plus, how big is your bankroll? No doubt you've read elsewhere that the recommended bankroll for any given level is 30x the buyin - playing with anything less than that significantly increases your risk of ruin.

To answer your question, you should read both HOH1 and HOH2. They are both fantastic and address different aspects of the game.

Originally Posted by pokerroomace

OK. I'll go get it. You guys obviously really want your $5 so i'll give it to you. But I have exams atm, so if I do buy it, it will be in the next 1-3 months.

Just to say how good I am at SnG's atm:
In my time at ParadisePoker (only been here a week, but have played at pokerromm and holdempoker before), I've kept track of all my SnG results. Here they are:

$10+1: played: 20, 1st: 6, 2nd: 4, 3rd: 0, 4th+: 10
$20+1: played: 8, 1st: 1, 2nd: 0, 3rd: 2, 4th+: 5

So overall I'm doin quite well at SnG's and if anything, my level of play is better than those results (ie, loosing to a lack of patience - but overall the results are fair). Do I need to bother reading HOH1? Or should I only read HOH2?

I remember I asked a question open to this forum about 3 months ago. I asked... " How good of a poker player am I?" I regret asking that so much to this day. I posted stats like you did and I beleive they were almost the same size as you and then some. To answer your question . You havent even put in work . Poker is not short term. It has taken me , ( while following the proper guidelines in BR management) almost 4 months to even begin to play the 11's. I mixed ring, limit, and a whole bunch of SNG's in there. I am looking at 658 SNG's on my SNG tracker. There is a thing called a downswing, when it hits you it hits hard. You will break even for a long time.. You will take forever to clear a goal like 300 bucks. Pace yourself.. In the meantime... use the money you won playing outside your BR to learn the game more and be glad you have an advantage. Read the books, post hands, and read the forum. Take it from someone who posted something exactly like you ..
read and laugh .. I do all the time.

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...hlight=#249893

Wow Ryan, the student becomes the teacher! You've come a long way baby....

OK. I think you're completely right. I couldn't be bothered to read the whole post, but I get the general drift of it.

And although I have only been playing online poker for a couple of months. I do know about downswings. I started my online poker career with 20 dollars. I played a ring game and won 20 dollars. I cashed out the 20 dollars I had put in straight away and then from there, my stack kept on getting bigger and bigger. After my 7-10 days, I was already on $580 and $500 was already cashed out. From there I was thinking - I can't loose - I'm going to be on $1000 in no time and it will keep getting bigger and bigger. Anyway, I started loosing and my profit was going down to 500, then 400, etc. - it took a few months, but my stack finally hit 0. I was back to where I started. I then signed up to Paradise Poker with $40, entered a $11 ten-man SnG and won $50. Now, a week or so later I'm on $160 profit and I'm thinking that I'm the king of SnG. But in the last couple of days I've played 7 SnG's and I only won 1 and didn't come anywhere in the others - so I realize I'm not that good.

Anyway, that's my online poker life. But, the one thing I have got out of all of this is that I've definitely learnt a lot about the game and that kind of experience takes a few months to get and a lot of money spent - so overall it's not too bad. The problem is though, I play poker way too much and I have exams in 2/3 weeks that I need to be revising harder for.

Should I buy HOH1 first and then HOH2? I read somewhere on the internet that HOH2 has some bad examples in it. And there are a lot of bad examples. Is this true?

Also, where can I get a good, free, SnG tracker from? I'll google it now, but does anyone have a good one that they recommend?

Originally Posted by pokerroomace

OK. I think you're completely right. I couldn't be bothered to read the whole post, but I get the general drift of it.

Houston, we have a problem.

I couldn't be bothered to read the whole post, but I get the general drift of it.

mix that with "I don't want to spend money on education (books)" and "I don't want to spend money on good tools - what's free," leads me to believe you're not terribly serious. Or you're not interested in putting a lot of time and thought into making yourself a better player.

Why are you here, exactly?

Originally Posted by dzeanah

I couldn't be bothered to read the whole post, but I get the general drift of it.

mix that with "I don't want to spend money on education (books)" and "I don't want to spend money on good tools - what's free," leads me to believe you're not terribly serious. Or you're not interested in putting a lot of time and thought into making yourself a better player.

Why are you here, exactly?

Man, you are harsh. I'm 18 and don't have a job and I'm still at high school. I don't want to just throw my money around. I said that I would buy the books in the next few months.

About the software, I haven't looked at it at all and it seems like most of it is probably rubbish. But that's just from seeing adverts for a 2 seconds and then moving on. Also, I won't have access to software while I'm playing offline and I'd rather get free software than pay for it.

I'll read the other post now. I always intended to, but I didn't have time to read it a few hours ago. I just skimmed through it so that I could reply.

Originally Posted by pokerroomace

Man, you are harsh.

He wasn't being harsh, just seems like you meant, "eh all these people are replying to my post and I don't want to bother reading it." Even though of course that wasn't your intention but that's what it sounded like!

Think of it as an investment more than anything. The tools you learn will help improve your game to win more money. If your BR is high enough, cash out $30 and buy it with that. You will earn the $30 back fast enough.

Originally Posted by pokerroomace

About the software, I haven't looked at it at all and it seems like most of it is probably rubbish.

Nah, stuff like PokerTracker or PokerOffice definitely isn't rubbish. You'd be suprised how much a HUD / stat trackers will help your decisions and progress. I guess you could say they aren't really "necessary" rather than "rubbish."

Originally Posted by givememyleg

Originally Posted by pokerroomace

Man, you are harsh.

He wasn't being harsh, just seems like you meant, "eh all these people are replying to my post and I don't want to bother reading it." Even though of course that wasn't your intention but that's what it sounded like!

Think of it as an investment more than anything. The tools you learn will help improve your game to win more money. If your BR is high enough, cash out $30 and buy it with that. You will earn the $30 back fast enough.

Originally Posted by pokerroomace

About the software, I haven't looked at it at all and it seems like most of it is probably rubbish.

Nah, stuff like PokerTracker or PokerOffice definitely isn't rubbish. You'd be suprised how much a HUD / stat trackers will help your decisions and progress. I guess you could say they aren't really "necessary" rather than "rubbish."

I didn't say they were rubbish, I said they seemed to be rubbish, but I didn't look into it at all. Didn't ever think I needed it. Also, I have a Mac and most poker software doesn't work on a Mac. My brother recently got a PC laptop though so I've been playing at Paardise which works on a PC but not on a Mac.

The problem is that you keep saying things like:
"I don't want to"
"I couldn't be bothered to"
"Do I need to"
"I didn't look into it at all. "

Originally Posted by Laeelin

The problem is that you keep saying things like:
"I don't want to"
"I couldn't be bothered to"
"Do I need to"
"I didn't look into it at all. "

I'm a gambling man. I'm willing to bet "good" money this same thought process affects ace's academic marks in the classroom.

Look. What you're doing with playing poker for money, at least from this noob's perspective, is investing in yourself. You're tring to increase your performance, as better poker playing == better income. If you want to be a better poker player, then that means learning to be a better poker player (books play a key role here), and monitoring your play so you can evaluate and tweak it as required (this means software that tracks your online play, or a lot of manual note-taking that most here probably don't have the discipline for).

That's it. Spending a few hundred dollars on books and software seems insignificant in the long term. Hell, it seems absolutely stupid from a long term perspective if you think doing so will improve your performance more than a couple of percentage points.

But "I couldn't bother to read the responses...." stinks of "I'm too good to listen to y'all, and am here to hear myself speak." That's fine if poker is about entertainment, or arrogance, or proving that God loves you in his continual willingness to give you good cards, or whatever.

But if you want to learn, then you might find it takes a bit of humility. And a willingness to learn from the mistakes of others, by posting (and reading) on sites like this, and learning from folks like Harrington.

Here's how you might consider answering some of your questions.

Your friend

(gasp) not sure if I should do this...

My mentor's mentor

If using the principles that you learn from HoH2 turns a single $10+1 4th+ finish to a 1st, then the book has paid for itself. I think most people that have read HoH2 (and HoH1) will agree that it has changed their play for the better.

To give a detail, the HoH2 book taught me that I was being far too tight calling All-Ins/Re-raising opening bets when it got to heads up. My SnG numbers were fine before I read the books. Then I read the books. In the hundreds of SnGs since then I have reached the point that my 1st finishes exceed the total of my 2nd's and 3rd's. That has improved an ROI that I was already happy with.

From a sheer performance improvement standpoint, the HoH books were the best money I ever spent on poker education. The HoH3 workbook has been released and should be hitting the shelves this week (neither B&N or Borders had it this weekend). You can bet I will pick up a copy before the week is out.

Your mileage may vary.

dzeanah - you don't understand what I'm saying when I'm posting. You think I've been around for years and years and that only now do I want to improve my game and become a better player. you've got me completely wrong. I'm 18 and I started playing online poker less then 6 months ago. I came to FTR to read what others had to say and learn how to improve my game. The fact that I did not know how useful poker software and books are, does not show my arrogance and unwillingness to learn. It shows that I did not know about these possibilities. If I asked any of my friends (that play poker every few weeks) if I should buy a book or buy poker software - they'll probably tell me that I'm mad and that there's no point. That's because noone's ever told them to go do this stuff and the thought hasn't crossed their minds.

I'm definitely going to purchase HOH1 and HOH2, because everyone on FTR is saying that it is essential and that it is a great book to read. How could you blame me for not purchasing this book a month ago? I didn't know about it. And you're probably going to say that I should have found out about it. Well, the answer to that is that I have just found out about it. I'm sure someone also told you about HOH1 and 2. Or were you just born with the knowledge that it was a great book the second you were born?

I AM LEARNING!

"PS - I don't want to go out and buy a book to find out what these are." - When I said this (as I said before), I just wanted a quick reply so I could get a rough idea of what it is. It's like when you ask someone the time and they answer: "time to get a watch". Response: "OK, I'll get a watch, but I can't do it right now, so could you please tell me the time". Do you understand what I'm saying?