Robb's Newbies first 5K post

I was reading through some of the posts in the bloga forum and came across this post by robb http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...20hands%20nl10.

I posted my stats in another thread and I think that I'm playing two loosely.However some of the points made in robb's post have struck home and I've been giving them serious thought.
First thing is that Robb suggested starting with $300 at 10NL and using rakeback. Currently I'm on 152$ at pokerstars and since limited cash experience I was playing at 2NL.To exercise bankroll management I'm thinking of moving up to 5NL and following robbs guide.
Initially i was planning on getting more experience at 2NL before moving up , however there are a couple of downsides.I'm not getting any rakeback and not getting any FPP's as the pot never gets big enough. By getting to 5NL at least when I stack off I should be getting FPPs and then hopefully start clearing the first deposit bonus which is effectively going to be my rakeback.
By playing less hands I'll probably start playing more tables as well. Also thinking of doing a operation and keeping track of how it goes.
Does anyone know if FPPs are for people who contribute to the rake or are they for people who are dealt in the qualifying rake hands

just finished my first session at 5NL and played 70 hands with final stats at 14/11/7. Was slightly up til the last hand .Followed the guide with regards to bet sizing up to the river . I'm wondering whether i should have called his river raise,have checked on the riverand folded to a significant bet from him as he may have made the straight or just raised him enough to put him all in if he called.
villain was 32/3/.13 over 28 hands and i'd seen him showdown with 77 and 55

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.05 BB (9 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP2 ($5)
MP3 ($3.13)
CO ($6.32)
Button ($10.17)
SB ($20.79)
BB ($1.54)
UTG ($10.44)
Hero (UTG+1) ($5.09)
MP1 ($5)

Preflop: Hero is UTG+1 with K, A
UTG calls $0.05, Hero raises to $0.20, 2 folds, MP3 calls $0.20, 4 folds, UTG calls $0.15

Flop: ($0.67) K, 6, 8 (3 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $0.40, MP3 calls $0.40, 1 fold

Turn: ($1.47) 10 (2 players)
Hero bets $1.05, MP3 calls $1.05

River: ($3.57) 7 (2 players)
Hero bets $1.10, MP3 raises to $1.48 (All-In), Hero calls $0.38

Total pot: $6.53 | Rake: $0.30

I like to raise 4xbb+1bb per limper, but 4x is fine too PF. On the flop, its a mildly drawy board, id like a bet of 45-50, but again, 40 is fine. Tun bet is fine. On the river, I like just betting enough to put him all in, I mean you've sized your bets great to get so his remaining stack is less than a pot sized bet. $1.10 is just pointless. You are gonna get called by worse Kings here a lot, and the flush draw didn't come in anyways. If he has a 9, then nh, and move on.

Well played at the least. Just put him all in on river.

I would go for 0.25 pre-flop, and then nearer pot on the flop then a turn shove is only a slight overbet.

I just purchased PT3. What does the 3rd number $VPIP/PF/x mean?

Is this generally Aggression Factor?

Originally Posted by Airles™

I just purchased PT3. What does the 3rd number $VPIP/PF/x mean?

Is this generally Aggression Factor?

Yep.

Originally Posted by kb coolman

Originally Posted by Airles™

I just purchased PT3. What does the 3rd number $VPIP/PF/x mean?

Is this generally Aggression Factor?

Yep.

Sorry. I'm a real PT noob.

Originally Posted by Airles™

I just purchased PT3. What does the 3rd number $VPIP/PF/x mean?

Is this generally Aggression Factor?

Yes, though AF seems less "cool" than it used to be now that sooooo many more stats are available in PT3 and HEM. But regs still use it is as a shorthand for aggression.

FWIW, I display both overall AF and Flop Agg. Frequency% on my HUD. Wish I looked at them more often

Originally Posted by Keith_MM

First thing is that Robb suggested starting with $300 at 10NL and using rakeback. Currently I'm on 152$ at pokerstars and since limited cash experience I was playing at 2NL.To exercise bankroll management I'm thinking of moving up to 5NL and following robbs guide.

You'll progress a lot faster by going somewhere with rakeback. You in the US? If so, it's probably Full Tilt - get rakeback there right away 'cuz they can be real dicks about it if you don't activate your account and get it linked to your rakeback affiliate. Non-US you have a ton of good options where your HUD will work and you can get good rakeback.

Full Tilt has a $600 initial deposit bonus, but you probably can't clear the whole thing at 10nl within your 90 days. Gotta know a bit more before I could recommend anything specific. It's just hard bonus whoring before you get to 25nl 'cuz they take forever to clear and you usually "time out" before you get 'er done. You might put, say, $400 on FT w/ rakeback and bonus, and at 10nl you can probably clear that in 90 days, depending on how many hands you play each week.

Well, not to high-jack OP's thread, but I'm going to follow your 5K hand plan at $10NL. I feel I'm working on too many things at once which is hindering my ability to really improve long-term. Starting over from ground zero may be the best thing for me. I have 25 BI for $10NL, not quite $300 but it's enough to get me started. Arghhh... it's going to suck to be a 10/8 super-nit but meh, it's only a couple sessions. Go go go...

Originally Posted by Airles™

Well, not to high-jack OP's thread, but I'm going to follow your 5K hand plan at $10NL. I feel I'm working on too many things at once which is hindering my ability to really improve long-term. Starting over from ground zero may be the best thing for me. I have 25 BI for $10NL, not quite $300 but it's enough to get me started. Arghhh... it's going to suck to be a 10/8 super-nit but meh, it's only a couple sessions. Go go go...

Life is certainly easier when you tend to play high quality hands. And trust me - the money at 10nl isn't coming from great plays with 76s or A9o. Find the guys who will stack off w/ less than TPTK and value town them over and over and over and over.

Your operation thread is probably the best in that particular forum. I've only skimmed through a handful but yours is aimed to assist micro-stakers improve and get over the hump. Looks like you've put a ton of work into it. So for what it's worth, thanks for all helpful advice.

Have you moved up to $50NL yet?

Robb, I wouldn't suggest to bonus grind FTP below 50NL... 25NL, if You can put in at least 30k hands / month.
Anyway... @ 5NL /10NL most of your money isn't coming from rakeback either. Bet your good hands hard, and don't even bother with any fancy plays, and you should be well above 5ptpp/100. Rake is definitely beatable.
If you stop calling and reraisin

Originally Posted by Robb

You'll progress a lot faster by going somewhere with rakeback. You in the US? If so, it's probably Full Tilt - get rakeback there right away 'cuz they can be real dicks about it if you don't activate your account and get it linked to your rakeback affiliate. Non-US you have a ton of good options where your HUD will work and you can get good rakeback.

Luckily I'm in the UK so I have a whole host of sites available to me except that rakeback isn't available to me on some of them due to my freerolling past.Have an account with Full tilt with 29$ on it and no affiliate link and a friend who is the same is trying to get rakeback through the affiliate/rakeback group posted about in the 2+2 thread.If it works I'll try it, but even so at the micro levels their rake rate even with rakeback would be worse than Pokerstars.
My problem is that I started playing poker when my son was born as wife ended up in hospital for 3 weeks before hand and about 10 days after so it was a pasttime in the evenings playing with play money.When the motherinlaw found out about it she made me promise not to put any money onto the sites so I didnt end up a gambling bum.(here I am playing cash )eventually started playing freerolls and started building up stakes at sites.I saw the first deposit freerolls advertised on Poker stars and thought whatthe hell , cashed out 50$ from my William Hill account and deposited it on stars which together with the 90$ i won in 2 invitational freerolls last summer and about $7$ from the first deposit freerolls made up the starting bankroll at Pstars.

Full Tilt has a $600 initial deposit bonus, but you probably can't clear the whole thing at 10nl within your 90 days. Gotta know a bit more before I could recommend anything specific. It's just hard bonus whoring before you get to 25nl 'cuz they take forever to clear and you usually "time out" before you get 'er done. You might put, say, $400 on FT w/ rakeback and bonus, and at 10nl you can probably clear that in 90 days, depending on how many hands you play each week.

At least I got 1 fpp in last night session.Just 485 more to go in order to get the 50$ bonus.At poker stars , the 1$+0.1 double or nothing SNG's seem to be the best at earning FPPs as they pay 1 each but they play so tight that when it gets to the bubble its an all in situation before you get blinded in.I roughly broke even on the 14 of those that I played.

Well, not to high-jack OP's thread, but I'm going to follow your 5K hand plan at $10NL. I feel I'm working on too many things at once which is hindering my ability to really improve long-term. Starting over from ground zero may be the best thing for me. I have 25 BI for $10NL, not quite $300 but it's enough to get me started. Arghhh... it's going to suck to be a 10/8 super-nit but meh, it's only a couple sessions. Go go go...

glad that its helped you,it certainly tightened up how i was playing the session to my previous hands.I'd read AOKrongly system in the strategy forum and it didn't feel right taking no account of position and I only came across this system by reading the blogs and then following a link to it in Robbs operation thread.

Yeah, too tight is a problem, and no positional awareness is much worse. But I was WAAAYYYYYYYY too loose and needed a coupla thousand hands of nittiness to get my poker discipline under control. If you're OK with that, do a few hundred hands really tight and start adding in the extra hands on the BTN/CO right away. The goal is to get to Renton's 169-hand post, but I think it's hard to play some of the marginal hands well and believe it's important to start VERY tight and practice specifically with certain types of hands as you learn to expand your range PROFITABLY.

Yeah, too tight is a problem, and no positional awareness is much worse. But I was WAAAYYYYYYYY too loose and needed a coupla thousand hands of nittiness to get my poker discipline under control. If you're OK with that, do a few hundred hands really tight and start adding in the extra hands on the BTN/CO right away. The goal is to get to Renton's 169-hand post, but I think it's hard to play some of the marginal hands well and believe it's important to start VERY tight and practice specifically with certain types of hands as you learn to expand your range PROFITABLY.

I've done my second session last night , I think it was about 89 hands single table this time at 6 max. First hand is in the blogs forum having posted the blind and getting AT but ended up losing with a full house against quads. Ended the session down 6$ half of which was on that first hand and didn't really get many decent cards that I could play and was running 7/6 for quite a lot of the session finishing up roughly 9 7 from memory.
I started to wonder a few things about whether the guide is fully applicable at 5NL and lower ? Part of the continuation bet/value betting in the guide is designed to get the poorer hands to fold and get heads up against hopefully a stronger but still inferior hand. My experience so far is that when we do hit the Aces and Kings on the flop which form a strong part of the guides range these guys all disappear as generally they won't have Aces and kings , so that you cant get any value out of them and if it checks round a lot will call the bet with their icky bottom pairs and either hit trips or two pair with crap hands.
I chose a high players per flop table with players typically having 50 VPIP in their stats,which may have been a mistake, maybe I should have been playing a tighter table where they would have been more likely to carry onto later streets with hopefully an inferior range still going against this tighter range.

9/7 is almost spot on from what Robb described in his guide. I'm doing it in FR and I'm at 7/4/3.5 after around 400 hands at $10NL. I've ran into some real donkeys when I've hit some big hands so I'm running around 33/100ptbb. Anyway, there are way worse things than stacking off when you fill up only to lose to quads. Don't sweat it. Just continue to be Tighty McNitt and you should be fine.

One thing though... you're playing 6-max. If you play FR its much easier to "hide" when you're playing really tight, at least at the small stakes. It's much more noticeable if you're playing shorthanded. Of course if villains have a HUD running they'll be able to tell either way. Me, I don't use it at $10NL. These players are exploitable enough if I just pay attention.

Robb can I suggest a slight alteration to your guide with regards to the way pocket pairs are played to align it more with Rentons guide from the start. This might be because I'm playing using it at 5NL instead of 10NL and as such getting a lot more callers and reraisers than at 10NL.
I found that if I was getting small pocket pairs in early position and raising them preflop as per the guide, very often I was raising them and then being reraised which ended up with a larger pot and with several people acting behind there was always quite heavy betting behind me causing me to fold.The only time I hit the set was with AA an half pot bet just folded everyone.
I'm now playing the pocket pairs 22-JJ limping in and calling a raise especially in early positions as its cheaper to get to see the flop, the pot is smaller ,so less people at this level are thinking its worth calling with crap and hope to hit a monster or steal the pot . It seems to be working better so far.
I'm now 500 hands in on 5NL and 1000 hands in altogether on cash with the rest at 2NL.I'm now planning to spend the next 500 hands incorporating both the guides 1000-2000 and 2000- 3000 sections still on 1 table. Then 500 at two tables, and then if that goes ok 1000 at 3 tables and if still ok 1000 at 4 tables. Then once im used to playing the number of tables to continue adding in the extra hands.
Is this the best approach ? or is it better to increase the number of hands played at each stage and then increase the number of tables .

I think you're losing a lot of value limping JJ-99 from EP at full ring, especially as overpairs. Sometimes you'll win and sometimes you'll lose but the key is to know when to lay it down and cut your losses when you sense you're beat. Robb?

The JJ-99 I would probably be positionally and opponent dependant. However,I was more concerned with 88 down, I was getting lots of callers when I raised from early positionand once there were a couple of callers its was pricing other people in with speculative hands. A reraise and the pot would be massive with still the same chance of hitting the set , and still the same maximum ceiling to the amount won since the speculative hands folded to the reraise.

I'll lay off the strategy for 5nl and 10nl, except to say that aggression isn't always the best way to go. Like Robb said, it's all about value-towning really bad players who don't understand hand value.

There have been a bunch of guides written about building up a roll in the early stages, and I think the accepted means is to start at PS. There's almost no rake in the micros because they don't rake a pot until it reaches $1. When you reach $500-$600 you can take advantage of the deposit bonus AND rakeback at FT. That way you are playing limits that will allow you to clear the full bonus in time.

Originally Posted by Keith_MM

The JJ-99 I would probably be positionally and opponent dependant. However,I was more concerned with 88 down, I was getting lots of callers when I raised from early positionand once there were a couple of callers its was pricing other people in with speculative hands. A reraise and the pot would be massive with still the same chance of hitting the set , and still the same maximum ceiling to the amount won since the speculative hands folded to the reraise.

I would think limping small pp would become blatantly obvious to any good regs, especially as you move up stakes. If you're going to limp small pp from EP wouldn't it beneficial to limp other holdings as well to widen your range?

I wrote the guide for 6m, where I think you HAVE to raise small pp's to be successful. At FR, there's just more good hands out against you, so doing something else with 22 - 66 in EP would be fine. I think limp/call preflop screams small pp, so I never liked it much myself. But at 5nl and 10nl, who notices? They'll still stack off with junk to that line.

I will caution you, however, that somewhere around 25nl and definitely by 50nl, the TAGG regs WON'T stack off to limp/called small pp's that obviously picked up a set (say, A 7 4 rainbow flop). So be wary of who's noticing. The thing that helps at 10nl is that tons of donks limp/call in EP w/ A-rag-sooted and sc's -- I hope no one on FTR is advocating that! -- so the feesh "disguise" your hand for you.

FWIW, at 50nl FR I fold half my pp's 22 - 66 in EP, and open raise the other half. I didn't like how often I was getting 3bet off my hand, but I didn't wanna limp/call or fold 'em all. I select them at random.

So my opening range UTG and UTG + 1 is half 22 - 66, all the other pp's 100% and AQ+. I raise all of them. That's a planned PFR of about 7.5%. I'm running about 8.6/7.8 right now. There's a reason why those are slightly higher. First, I VERY rarely (but not never) play AJs or KQs from EP, and I flat pretty much ALL pp's from UTG+1. But, with those minor exceptions, I have found that an extremely tight EP range is ++EV for me.

My overall stats right now are 18.5/14 (last 10k hands), so I open up a ton in LP. Ah, hell, lemme just paste that sumbitch in here:



You can see for yourself. I'm nitty tight UTG, TAGGy from MP, and LAGGy from LP. LoL, I'm borderline maniac from the BTN. I hadn't looked at those stats in a while: 36/28. Probably need to tighten up a bit there since the winning percentage from CO to BTN drops off precipitously. Anyway, I'll analyze a larger sample and make the decision later. Hope that helps. I just noticed a couple of things I'd like to work on in those stats, but the VP$P/PFR seems OK to show to noobies. Maybe don't get quite so maniac OTB.

I'll just say one final thing: I don't open limp ever. I tried it with small pp's and ended up with a lower win rate than with open raising (fairly scientific experiment over 150 total small pp's, about half limped and half open raised, all from UTG or UTG+1). Oddly, MORE variance with the open limp than the open raise.

For anyone considering what to do in EP, I would suggest either just open folding 22 - 55 or choosing some way to randomize and play a half or a third of them for a raise. Like I said above, limp/call will work at 10nl, but loses its effectiveness sooner or later (unless you play some other hands that way, and mix in limp/3betting, which is FPS on steroids, imo).

Update on how using the guide has changed the way I play by tightening up the hands I play.Still a small sample though .