am I ready for real money?

hey everyone! 8)

first off, this site rocks. i've already gotten a ton of good information, and am happy that FTR basically got me playing $25 NL PL holdem (as opposed to always playing limit). it beats the grind of tight-aggressive limit.

i've been playing party poker play money 5/10 limit and $25 NL PL for the past few weeks, am up ~1500 play chips, and have done a lot of poker reading/studying. i play tight aggressive (a bit more on the tight side) and rarely bluff. if i ever play you in a game, you didn't hear that last part.

my typical stats for a session of $25 NL PL are:
Hands won: 11%
Showdowns won: 100%
Flops seen: 37%
win% of flops seen: 23%

so my two questions:

- am i ready for real money? do i have enough experience? (i'm pretty "even" and not prone to tilting.)
- i'll play pretty loose pre-flop (10,8s - 6,7o - but not crap, e.g. 7,2 - 10,3 etc.) for a .25 call, but get out if there's a raise. i like to see a many flops as i can on the cheap, then get out if i've got nothin'. is this bad pre-flop strategy?

thanks for the help, and keep up the good work.

From my experience, play money games and real money games are totally different. The reason to do the play money thing is just to get use to the software and the beeping if you take too long to play. Other than that, it's really no indication of playing poker with real money. As for the stats, showdowns won can be decpetive since you can be in the big blind, not have anyone raise thoughout the hand and loose the showdown because someone happend to have two better cards than you. Hands won is meaningless since I'd rather win fewer big hands with big pots than stealing blinds worth 75 cents.

The only stats that I'm concerned with are # of hands played or time I've been playing and how much I won (or occasionally lost.) I think comparing play with the stats offerered on PP tends to handicap, more than help, your outcome. At the risk of sounding philosophical, just like in life, setting short term goals tend to limit results. Always keep in mind the "big picture." In poker, it's all about making money, not how many flops you've seen.

As far as the "seeing as many flops as possible cheap strategy," I prefer to play against players that practice this. (See my post in the real casino section about Commerce Lake.) The reason is because I tend to play a very tight aggressive game. If someone stays in with an average hand against my strong hand, I'll definitely have the advantage when we start betting against each other.

I agree with J here, you're seeing too many flops, particularly for someone just off the play money tables.

Most players like that will either bust out fast or go on a big rush building up a nice stack before going down in flames. However, every now and then I see a player skilled enough to pull it off and it's a wonder to behold. I really learn a lot about potential profit left on the table.

Here are some issues with playing lots of hands:
o Many hands make very good second best hands, so knowing when to make a laydown becomes much more important.
o Playing lots of hands out of position makes this problem even worse since you have less information to work with.
o Limping from early and middle position often exposes you to raises from behind you either need to call or abandon your 50c. Often a lose/lose situation as very few hands have high enough implied odds to withstand the additional cost.
o Here is a big one I like to cash in on. Playing lots of hands gives away your playing style! I watch those players very closely knowing I'm likely to do battle with them soon. Usually within an orbit or two I can have them pegged pretty closely on a particular betting/calling strategy giving me a big edge over them. I have a better idea how they act with a legit hand and know how to get them to put the most chips in the center when I got them on the hook.
o PP cash NL has a max buy in of only 50x the BB. Other games have 100x BB giving even higher implied odds for limping with marginal hands.

thanks for the feedback. i think i need to try some real money play (.25 NL PL on party poker) to assess where my game needs work.

you're points are well taken on real money versus play money. it's kind of like "just hitting the tennis ball around" as opposed to playing a game where you keep score.

you're points on playing too many hands are also well taken. i think very tight (but aggessive with appropriate starters) is the way i'll get my feet wet. better too conservative than too loose.

thanks again for the comments. 8)

How's the move to real money treated you? *chuckle*

Originally Posted by Fnord

How's the move to real money treated you? *chuckle*

i'll get you for digging this oldie up, fnord!

my current VP$IP for NL is at about 17%, 14% for limit, and 19% for tournies. i guess i tightened up a bit.

and since you brought it up...

i keep bouncing around with games and limits. been up and been down, but i've never reloaded. break even for stud and up a little in omaha hi/lo. i think i do have a bit of a focus problem. my best run was june when i decided to play $20 SNG's on PP and nothing else - that specialization seemed to have paid off.

recently: can't get in the money in an SNG to save my life, running about 1.5 - 2 BBs/100 hands in limit, doing very well two tabling the $25 NL tables at party and the .10/.25 NL tables at stars.

with the SNG's, i can't tell if the player dynamic has changed, if i've changed, or a combination of the two (most likely). lately, i push at the wrong times, partially due to the SNG nature of "having to get something going."

limit, i'm really enjoying (after SSH, it's become much more of a chess game and i feel better about my play even when i catch a beat) and i want to start getting out into the local indian casinos to try my hand with real humans. i'd also (when i get the bankroll) like to multi-table the 2/4 and 3/6 games (hopefully, i won't see as many preflop cold calls with j4 suited preflop! ) online.

NL ring games - i'm going to try to spend the next month or two using these games to build my bankroll ala tanaka-style. with the new 24" monitor, 3-4 tables at a time is no problem. in this game, i'm definitely the TAg, but not quite a rock (the other night, someone complained that "these games would be a lot more fun if people didn't keep raising preflop" after i had a run of good cards and raised preflop 7 times in a row ).

historically, my strongest winners are the PP $20 SNG's and the NL ring games (pot limit still creeps me out!).

that's about it - i bet your sorry you asked!

Originally Posted by fishstick

recently: can't get in the money in an SNG to save my life, running about 1.5 - 2 BBs/100 hands in limit, doing very well two tabling the $25 NL tables at party and the .10/.25 NL tables at stars.

with the SNG's, i can't tell if the player dynamic has changed, if i've changed, or a combination of the two (most likely). lately, i push at the wrong times, partially due to the SNG nature of "having to get something going."

I have beating my head on SnG streakines for the last few months and 2 comments:
- Its never about player dynamics. Not placing ITM is more related to pushing or confronting to much and at the wrong times.... Agruably there will be some SnGs where theres more tight/passives than normal and all the mofos are still in after 60 hands. Contrastly you could have a bunch of loose/aggressives that are knocking 1/2 the table out after 20 hands (This is the only time where I drool when loose/agressives are playing at the same table as me). Each of these tables need to be played a bit differently.
- I have played the $5 now to $30 (soon $50 SnGs) and found play is roughly the same.

Currently I have been tracking around 60% ITM% (last few weeks) and last month (it was a bad month), I managed to keep 35-40% ITM%

Originally Posted by Krapp

Its never about player dynamics. Not placing ITM is more related to pushing or confronting to much and at the wrong times.... Agruably there will be some SnGs where theres more tight/passives than normal and all the mofos are still in after 60 hands. Contrastly you could have a bunch of loose/aggressives that are knocking 1/2 the table out after 20 hands (This is the only time where I drool when loose/agressives are playing at the same table as me). Each of these tables need to be played a bit differently.

- I have played the $5 now to $30 (soon $50 SnGs) and found play is roughly the same.

starting off at PP and playing most of my SNG's there, i got used to (and thrived) in wild/loose SNG's. these tables seem to have significantly tightened up, and i don't think i've adapted well to it. the main reason for the specialization in june on the $20 SNG was that they seemed to be the loosest (confirmed by many members here at the time). i was hitting ~55% in the money. i think playing SNG's on stars messed me up a bit because of the tighter play, and the slower format (1500 starting chips).

it was an adaptation problem on my part. i'll get back to it, i'm just more in ring mode right now. i haven't tried a PP $20 SNG in a while - i've missed the money in the last 12 or so $10 SNG's i've played. but, i'm about 50% ITM in the party poker $10 2 table SNG's.

go figure!

Do you think its more profitable to play the NL or the SnG? For what reasons?

Originally Posted by fishstick

hey everyone! 8)

first off, this site rocks. i've already gotten a ton of good information, and am happy that FTR basically got me playing $25 NL PL holdem (as opposed to always playing limit). it beats the grind of tight-aggressive limit.

i've been playing party poker play money 5/10 limit and $25 NL PL for the past few weeks, am up ~1500 play chips, and have done a lot of poker reading/studying. i play tight aggressive (a bit more on the tight side) and rarely bluff. if i ever play you in a game, you didn't hear that last part.

my typical stats for a session of $25 NL PL are:
Hands won: 11%
Showdowns won: 100%
Flops seen: 37%
win% of flops seen: 23%

so my two questions:

- am i ready for real money? do i have enough experience? (i'm pretty "even" and not prone to tilting.)
- i'll play pretty loose pre-flop (10,8s - 6,7o - but not crap, e.g. 7,2 - 10,3 etc.) for a .25 call, but get out if there's a raise. i like to see a many flops as i can on the cheap, then get out if i've got nothin'. is this bad pre-flop strategy?

thanks for the help, and keep up the good work.

LOL! What a newbie!! :P And just think this was pre-thong!!

Fnord. You are an evil genius sometimes.

Originally Posted by FyrFytr998

LOL! What a newbie!! :P And just think this was pre-thong!!

Fnord. You are an evil genius sometimes.

yeah - i hadn't attained nearly the pro status that i hold now. i guess it was the thong that "tightened" up my play.

i think fnord dug this up because he's still bitter about the night i punked him playing 2/4 limit. :P {geez - i know i'm going to pay for that}

Originally Posted by Ragingg

Do you think its more profitable to play the NL or the SnG? For what reasons?

i think it depends on the player. and it would depend on how you define profit. you can play for an hour in a $20 sng, get knocked out on the bubble, and have nothing to show for your hours work. or you can do the same thing, come in first, and you've profited $78 in an hour. i've also had runs of up to 12 sng's not in the money, as well as 9 sng's in a row in the money.

the consensus seems to be sng's are fairly stable - not too much variance. there are a lot of people at this site that average 40 - 60% ITM on sngs, which is profitable.

limit ring can be very "swingy" and you need a larger bankroll to handle these swings, but over many hands, you can hit an acceptable earn rate (in BB per 100 hands).

NL ring seems to be less swingy than limit. i'm trying the multi-table NL ring approach, and so far, i've seen good profits with not too much variance. still to early to really say, but this approach has worked very well for tyson.