Hello, from WinnerWinner

WinnerWinner here! Hello everyone. I'm in my early forties. I first started learning the finer points about NLHE about 7 years ago, but have not been around it for a few years and I just started feeling the bug again, so I just got back into things. I'm rusty at things, so I'm starting back at the beginning to refresh my memory of all the stuff that I forgot.

I mostly play full ring freerolls, 6max SnG's (micros), and HU SnG's (micros). All in all, I guess I've been playing about 3 or 4 years (... First started learning, then took a break, then got back into it, then took another break, now here I am after another break). I mostly play online because it's the fastest and cheapest way to practice various techniques, but sometimes I'll play low stakes cash games if I find some loose tables. I came to FTR because I know from before that it's a decent site with a lot of knowledgeable NLHE players. I don't have any goals that are written in stone; I mostly want to just get a little better than before (at least). I guess one goal would be to make the shift, & start thinking in terms of ranges. I tried the last time, but what little I learned, I couldn't seem to take that info & quickly utilize it on the fly at the tables.

Hi WinnerWinner, welcome to FTR.

I would recommend you ditch the freerolls and focus more on your SNGs. We'll learn very little playing freerolls, we'll spend hours to win 10 cents, we'll be playing heads up on a full table because everyone else is sitting out, and if villain is to our left we're positionally crushed 8/9 hands per orbit. And when we do have a full table, it's wild and crazy poker because there's nothing at stake. It only gets half decent once we're down to the last few tables, which can take all night. Even if we win the tourney, we're doing well if we made $20 an hour.

Freerolls are a waste of time and effort. You'll learn a lot more firing up $50 and playing cash tables at $0.01/$0.02 blinds, patiently grinding up a bankroll.

Ranges seem complicated but they're really not. The most complicated aspect of ranges is estimating how often villain bluffs a given spot. The "air" in his range is often a guess, and we'll make that guess based on his tendencies and showdows. The rest is just paying attention to what villains do with certain holdings, for example do they limp pocket pairs or raise them, or do they bet flush draws or check/call them, which allows us to refine their ranges as they give information away. If we know villain always makes a small bet with a flush draw (some people definitely have this habit), well if he checks the flop we know he hasn't got a flush draw. This is a very simple example and obviously it's never quite this simple, but that's the gist of what we're doing. We're paying attention to villains, and refining their ranges based on their actions. It's very difficult to be accurate with this method, but thankfully we just need to be more accurate than average to make money, which is a much easier task at the micros because the bar is set so low.

Pay attention to villains and how they play common spots, what they limp with, what they don't like to fold, if they overplay top pair, all of this information is gold and we'll use this info to adjust ranges.