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Texas Hold 'em

Grayscale

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Metamorphosis

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I just started playing. No where even approaching that ^ :D

It's awesome, though...but I'm a total noob and the more I learn the more stupid I feel.
 

kyuuei

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I enjoy casually playing. I don't have a good poker face, and I pretty much always assume everyone else has awesome hands in comparison to mine so I'm not very good either I suppose! But it is a great game I played a lot in Iraq.
 

Kyrielle

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anyone else play this? whats your style, what blinds do you usually play, etc?

I've played it. Dunno what a "blind" is though. Mostly I just play with my family on our card nights. I try to play it safe and I try to get a read on people to guess what they have. To someone who is an astute facial expression observer, I do not have a very good poker face. There will always be a millisecond-long flash of triumph or caution depending on the hand I get, and if someone is quick enough to catch it, they can get me in trouble.

Sometimes, and I picked this up from my brother, I'll do something outrageous and try to throw people off by suddenly being aggressive when I have a crappy hand.

It's a fun game. I usually come off second best.
 

Metamorphosis

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I was pleasantly surprised to find this: http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/popular-culture-type/9914-phil-hellmuth-entj.html

and thought this awesome game deserved a thread here :cheese:


ive been playing ~9 months and 200,000 hands, and about 16k black, although ive been running about 50/50 bad nights the past couple months... totally addicted!


anyone else play this? whats your style, what blinds do you usually play, etc?

What type of games & blinds do you play?
 

Neo Genesis

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I haven't played in a few years, but I was always a rather tight player. I'd play anything connected, or if I just had good feeling on my hole cards. Queen 8 off suit has done wonders for me in the past.
 

Grayscale

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I've played it. Dunno what a "blind" is though. Mostly I just play with my family on our card nights. I try to play it safe and I try to get a read on people to guess what they have. To someone who is an astute facial expression observer, I do not have a very good poker face. There will always be a millisecond-long flash of triumph or caution depending on the hand I get, and if someone is quick enough to catch it, they can get me in trouble.

a blind is like a scaled, rotating, partial-handed ante. while in many games of poker, and at higher levels of hold 'em tournaments, there is an 'ante' which is a set amount each player contributes to the pot to get the action started, a blind is only put in by two players... one large, and one small (usually half as big). each hand the order of play rotates clockwise, which means the player who puts in the blinds moves over one.

over time everyone has to put in the same blinds, and just like ante it is used to instigate action. if there was nothing in the pot to fight over, then people would only wait for the best hand.

in advanced play, there are multiple levels of thinking... what you think they think you have, what you think they think you think they have, etc. there are tells and sells (fake tell), bluffs and semi-bluffs, represented bluffs, represented big hands... and math behind everything from your cards vs your opponents, the board, the cards to come and the betting that will ensue.

What type of games & blinds do you play?

anywhere between 4-8 to 10-20, but quite a bit of 1-2 because it's less mentally exhausting. at the higher blinds i play, i am on an even skill level with my opponents and it's far more difficult. i play the low blinds when i want to relax with a soft game.

i play mostly cash, although i have placed in most of the tournaments ive played.
 

pippi

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I play tournaments because then the idiots who play Q-8 off are knocked out early and you don't have to deal with them sucking out on you. :threaten:

Just winning money isn't much of a thrill for me. The middle stages of a tournament are the best for strategic play so I enjoy that.
 

tenINsFJ

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Playing Limit $3-6 is easy way to make money at a casino... play a lot more drawing hands for cheap $$, and when you hit, they all throw in a measly $3 that profits you pots of $60+

No limit $1-2 is good if you have like $1,000 to drop on the table. Countless times I see guys drop $1400 just to lose... on purpose. Raise $20 bucks preflop with like 9-4 off suit.
Oh yeah, these are all cash games.. tourneys are tough to win...but I'd only play $50 buy in tourneys if they have Bounty for $5 per.

And hellmuth is a jerk.... a big one.. lol who watched him get penalized for chewing off dragomir for playing 10d-4d against Hellmuths AdKd?? Hahhahahahhaha called him "an idiot" i think 6 times...
then called some other "stupid northern european players!!!'

hahahah priceless WSOPs...
 

Kyrielle

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a blind is like a scaled, rotating, partial-handed ante. while in many games of poker, and at higher levels of hold 'em tournaments, there is an 'ante' which is a set amount each player contributes to the pot to get the action started, a blind is only put in by two players... one large, and one small (usually half as big). each hand the order of play rotates clockwise, which means the player who puts in the blinds moves over one.

over time everyone has to put in the same blinds, and just like ante it is used to instigate action. if there was nothing in the pot to fight over, then people would only wait for the best hand.

I think I partially understood that. I get the idea, but I'd have to play a few times with a blind to truly understand. Something I'll propose the next time I play Hold'em, thanks for the explanation.
 

simulatedworld

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I play tournaments because then the idiots who play Q-8 off are knocked out early and you don't have to deal with them sucking out on you. :threaten:

Just winning money isn't much of a thrill for me. The middle stages of a tournament are the best for strategic play so I enjoy that.

The middle stages of a tournament have a lot of interesting decisions as to when to steal blinds, etc. but as tournaments force the game into increasingly smaller-stack decisions, they lack the psychological depth of a deep stack cash game.

As Ivey says, many of the "big tournament stars" these days would not be able to walk into a professional level cash game and make any money. Now don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that tournaments don't require skill--they definitely do, it's just a different kind of skill because stacks are so much shorter and the variance is HUGE.

Tournaments are essentially maximizing fold equity and building your stack so that you, by virtue of a larger stack, are more likely to win the inevitable battle of coin flips that ends the tournament as stacks get smaller relative to the blinds and the game degrades further and further into an all in or fold battle. In this sense, you could say that tournaments are about "talking other players down"--you don't want to get into a big confrontation very often because if you lose, you're done, even if you got your money in on a +EV situation.

Cash games, on the other hand, are more about actually learning to win when you have to go to war. The level of play intricacy possible with stacks of 100 blinds, 200 blinds, or even more just dwarfs the relatively simple "do I shove or fold?" tournament decisions. You have to go out there and actively create your own edge--no blind raise is ever going to force your opponents to put money in bad.

The larger your stack, the more options you have for how to play various hands. Implied odds become so vitally important in deep stack poker that preflop hand standards are much more relaxed and that opens the door for all kinds of different creative plays. There isn't much room for getting creative when the blind is 500 and you're sitting on a 3000 stack. Your only decision each round is to shove or fold and hope for the best--that's not all that interesting to me, even if there is a fair amount of strategy in deciding when the best time to shove is.

And I'll play against Q8 all day long, with a wide variety of hands, if I have position. If my cash opponents are playing bad hands in bad position, I'd rather encourage them to keep doing so--more money for me!
 

simulatedworld

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I think I partially understood that. I get the idea, but I'd have to play a few times with a blind to truly understand. Something I'll propose the next time I play Hold'em, thanks for the explanation.


I've never actually heard of anyone playing holdem without blinds. But a more simplified explanation:

The person immediately left of the dealer is "small blind." The person on his left is "big blind." Each of them starts the hand by posting a mandatory minimum bet (in a 1/2 NL holdem cash game, for instance, this would be $1 for the SB and $2 for the BB) before seeing any cards.

The first round of betting opens with the guy on the BB's left (he is three spots left of the dealer) and then proceeds clockwise, allowing the blinds the last preflop actions.

Postflop, however, being in the blinds becomes a big positional disadvantage as you are always forced to act first (before seeing your opponents' reactions to the new information) on each betting round for the remainder of the hand--this is a HUGE disadvantage in any form of poker.
 

563 740

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Cash games, on the other hand, are more about actually learning to win when you have to go to war. The level of play intricacy possible with stacks of 100 blinds, 200 blinds, or even more just dwarfs the relatively simple "do I shove or fold?" tournament decisions. You have to go out there and actively create your own edge--no blind raise is ever going to force your opponents to put money in bad.

The larger your stack, the more options you have for how to play various hands. Implied odds become so vitally important in deep stack poker that preflop hand standards are much more relaxed and that opens the door for all kinds of different creative plays. There isn't much room for getting creative when the blind is 500 and you're sitting on a 3000 stack. Your only decision each round is to shove or fold and hope for the best--that's not all that interesting to me, even if there is a fair amount of strategy in deciding when the best time to shove is.

:heart:Cash games:heart:

Unfortunately poker for me goes like all ENTP interests; completely engrossing for a few months and then dropped when the next new & exciting thing comes along. :blush:
 

ptgatsby

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No limit $1-2 is good if you have like $1,000 to drop on the table. Countless times I see guys drop $1400 just to lose... on purpose. Raise $20 bucks preflop with like 9-4 off suit.

o_O

I played 1-2 quite a few times in the B&M and can't imagine this state. I mean, sure, bring that much if you want to lose, but the deviation in playing with those guys really shouldn't be that high. You still gotta beat out those at the table that aren't! Even then I was multi-tabling (up to 4) online with a lower bankroll than that. Granted, it should probably of been higher, but not at a single table!

Then again, there are some really aweome periods where things just go bad for people. I remember playing at one table where the guy busted about $150 with a dominant hand and rebought. I was sitting next to him and got AA to KK, and I busted him the next hand, again. He went home, but that stuff happens.

I strongly prefer tournaments though. People make a lot more mistakes when they don't just need to calculate the table, but the price pay-outs, shifting blinds, bubble odds and such. Most also play way too conservative, underestimating the effects of rising blinds, giving an additional edge. Need to play a lot of them, though, for it to be profitable.
 

NoahFence

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Love it love it love it. Typically do fairly well, until my interest flags...then I become very rash. Only played in "friendly" games and online so far...I dislike online play, I can't see the faces. I had a lot more 7-stud and 5-draw experience before WSOP started playing Hold 'em on prime-time and spread the game to the four corners of the earth.

Where are you finding tournaments?
 

pippi

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Where are you finding tournaments?
There are lots online (although problematic for Americans to deposit money). My local casino runs 2 a day as well for $45-90 buy-in including rebuys (they aren't very large so only take 3-4 hours to play).
 

ptgatsby

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There are lots online (although problematic for Americans to deposit money). My local casino runs 2 a day as well for $45-90 buy-in including rebuys (they aren't very large so only take 3-4 hours to play).

Yup, similar here, except I have 3 that are within easy driving distance. Most run early bird tournaments and evening tournaments at the least.
 

simulatedworld

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I strongly prefer tournaments though. People make a lot more mistakes when they don't just need to calculate the table, but the price pay-outs, shifting blinds, bubble odds and such. Most also play way too conservative, underestimating the effects of rising blinds, giving an additional edge. Need to play a lot of them, though, for it to be profitable.

All of those are parts of tournament strategy, yes, but it's not really accurate to say that tournament players in general make more mistakes than cash players. And when they do, you can only punish them for a relatively small number of chips compared to the blind, and those chips aren't even real cash value, so your victories are all for naught if you run into a bad streak toward the end.

There may be more opportunities to exploit smaller stacks in tournaments, but in cash (especially NL cash) you can punish someone so brutally when they melt down and make a big mistake that cash is still the most profitable game for highly skilled players.

If the WSOP consisted of players sitting around playing 10 hours of cash games a day for a week and rotating to various tables with various opponents, and the winner were the one with the highest return at the end of the week, we wouldn't keep seeing random donkeys (Jerry Yang??) declared the "World Champion of Poker." It was painful to watch Krevchenko outplay Yang hand after hand and just keep picking up the shittiest cards!
 
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