To all on FTR ...
I started playing online in Oct of '05 primarily because my college age son was playing and winning and I saw this as a way for us to communicate (if you don't have teenage or college age kids ... you can ignore my first reason for playing) and because I love to compete at stuff. Anyways, I started at $2.50 SnGs at Pacific. My first $50 lasted about a month as I was really new to poker, especially Hold 'em. Then I moved to Hollywood and switched to mostly 10PL ring games. Put in $50 there twice ... moved up to $25PL and got that to $200 along with doing some $5 SnGs. Ended up losing all again, mostly in the SnGs. In December another $100 goes in ... gone by the end of the month. The new year brought another $100 again lost by the end of the month.
Fortunately, I discovered FTR about the end of December. I must say I tried to read everything, slogging thru the hand histories and looking at the various strategies people were using. In early February, my son gave me a copy of PT for my birthday. So between PT and FTR, things finally and miraclously started to change. It was bizarre in a way. I began using the stuff I learned here and put in $200 in early February. Before you know it, that was up to $400 in 10 days. Cashed out $200 in mid month and today I'm at $600. Whoopee.
So my many thanks to the contributors on this site. Sure I have lots to learn but I feel that, while I still am probably a fish, there are other fish who are fishier than me that I have learned to feed on. My wins are better, my losses are much smaller.
In a nutshell, I have learned the following (FWIW):
1) Patience, patience, patience (went almost 500+ hands without AA or JJ but I waited it out). I have 25K hands now and have learned that some days just plain suck and that better days are coming.
2) Discipline to play the hands I want (have a notepad in front of me with those hands listed along with some notes). This means no tilting after getting destacked by some yahoo calling my AA PFR with J3o and flopping 2 pair. Stay on course.
3) Position (never really understood this until FTR when I started using position to win more). This has helped immensely with #2 because I won't play crap if for no other reason than I have poor position.
4) Stay fully stacked (initially I would buy in at 60% but now it's always 100% and replenished if it gets below 75% during a game). Now when I hit the nuts, I have the wherewithal to destack someone good and proper.
5) Proper betting (learning when, how much, raise/call/fold ... all the basics). Amazing what doubling my PFR% has done (now around 4.5%) along with informational bets, and using AOK's betting conversations have done to my winning %.
Sorry for the long post but I just wanted to let you guys know that your site has helped me to enjoy and more importantly win consistently at online poker.
Thanks again to all.
