A few noob questions

[Boellemis]

Hi everyone, I only just started playing poker a little time ago, and I have a few questions. I currently play 6.5$ sng with a 115$ roll on FT.

What is the single most important skill that a beginner must develope? (here im not thinking hand rankings, BR management etc, but some a bit more higher level)

Also what would be a good goal to begin with?

Michael

[xptboy]

for sng's I'd say, understanding of ICM (which I got no idea wtf it is haha, think it has sth to do with risk vs reward thing though)

[oskar]

You say you're not thinking about BR here, but if you play sng's with less than 20 buy-ins in your bankroll, you'll go broke no matter what you do, so this thread is pretty pointless.

So the answer is: BR may not be considered a skill, and it takes no skill to follow it, but you have to obay it. I won't talk about why this is so important, there are enough threads on this here.

[oskar]

I just came back because I thought my comment was a little too harsh. If your plan is to play until you build up to a reasonable bankroll, and then start to apply BR management, and you won't start playing the 10$ buy-ins when you hit 200$ - then that's fine, but be prepared to reload 2 or 3 times in the process.

[Thunder]

Hi everyone, I only just started playing poker a little time ago, and I have a few questions. I currently play 6.5$ sng with a 115$ roll on FT.

What is the single most important skill that a beginner must develope? (here im not thinking hand rankings, BR management etc, but some a bit more higher level)

Also what would be a good goal to begin with?

Michael

Beginning players and advanced concepts is a contradiction in terms.
Everythign you said, as well as other apsects of basic play, is the most important.

Without BR you won't even get beyond the beginner phase. If you somehow score an uber win without BR management, and rack up $$$$, you will always be at risk of losing it all through non adherence to BR management.

If you insist otherwise, I reccomment you read http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...0k-t73871.html

[Boellemis]

Thx for the replies, will take them into consideration...But just to get me started with some kind of goal:

Play 100 6,5$ sngs

[bjsaust]

In the sit'n'go forum theres a sticky post of Tactics. Read every thread in there.

I also made a video which is available in the Poker Videos section aimed primarily at beginner sng players where I discuss a bunch of concepts you should know as you get going.

[Erpel]

Couple of things you could work on:

1) Remember and pay attention.
When you analyze a hand history on a forum to determine whether the right decision is made on the turn or river you will take into consideration what the action and bet sizes on earlier street indicate - if when you are playing a hand you do not memorise these actions when they occur you will be missing key information on the turn or river when it comes time to make a decision. Similarly you need to observe the board and always know what the best possible hands are that can be made on the board. If you bet, someone calls and he turns over a flush or straight when you hadn't noticed that flush or straight was possible on the board - you've made a mistake. I'm not saying betting was a mistake necessarily, but you should have considered the possibility of flush or straight before deciding to bet (and maybe sized the bet differently or not bet at all). There are two ways you can be lost in a hand - one is when the opponent does something which you do not know how to interpret - this is fine and you need to just post the hand on the forum for discussion. The other way you can be lost is if you do not know what the previous actions in the hand were and do not know what hands you beat and what hands beat you. This is very basic and something you need to get right every time.

2) Reads and getting the best of it
Play against players who play worse than you. You will only win money in the long term from people who play worse than you, so you need to be able to analyze someone elses game and determine if they play worse or better than you. You need to seek out games with weak players and avoid games with strong players (or within a game, prioritise playing hands against people that are easy for you to read and control). At any table you play at you need to know where your money is going to be coming from.

And of course read all the digest threads in the forums, post questions and hand histories for comments and devote as much time to studying the game as to playing