Getting back to basics - No.1 - Worth taking a flop here?

silentbob

First off let me start with a brief bit of history behind this.

Yet again I've recently hit a monster bad run on the tables so over the last few days I decided to take a few steps back & look into my game. I'd love to say that I'd been really unlucky with the cards but it seems quite apparent to me that the majority of these losses are pretty much down to my own stupid play cos I'm either getting involved where I shouldn't or just generally making stupid plays.

To combat this I've decided not to take a break from playing as I've done in the past, but to go back to basics again. I usually play NL20 cash but have dropped back down to NL8 to start over (I would've gone to NL10 but I refuse to play that level whilst people can buy in for 200 BB! If I want to sit down with £20 then I'd stay at NL20). Nothing but straight forward ABC poker & trying to find good spots to get my money in.

I started putting this plan into action when this hand came up. I've only been at the table about 15/20 minutes & so far it's all been pretty passive really. Lots of limping from anywhere & everywhere with the occasional small (usually min) pre flop raise. I'm in the SB with K6 sooted when it's limped round to me.

I've really got 2 questions here:

1 - Given that I'm getting 9/1 on my money here, long term, is making up the blind to go flush hunting +EV? (given how the table has been playing so far I'm pretty certain I won't be facing a raise from the BB if I do make up here)
2 - If we do make up to see a cheap flop & we miss our flush draw, how do we feel if the board comes king high with a weak kicker? Obviously if we miss altogether then it's a standard check/fold.

Like I said, I'm trying to go right back to basics here so all advice is greatly appreciated.

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
silentbob	Small blind		£0.04	£0.04	£9.37
Player 1	Big blind		£0.08	£0.12	£19.25
	Your hole cards	K 6
Player 2	Call		£0.08	£0.20	£1.35
Player 3	Fold
Player 4	Call		£0.08	£0.28	£1.18
Player 5	Call		£0.08	£0.36	£7.26
silentbob	???

DOHHHHHHH

Hey Jay !

Not gonna give my account of my bad runs in the past and my current 1 step forward/2 steps back sorta progress....

But I too am looking at changing my game completely, but rather than going back to basics, Im trying to take it on a few levels.

Im pretty sure that the basics thing is all to build your confidence and before long you will be back where you were again....

Im reading a book, that I picked up 3 hours ago to read the introduction, and 3 hours later, Im on page 71. lol.
Anyway, what it says is that you need to try ur best to get into pots with fish/weak players.

With 4 limpers in front of you, and as you said in your notes, a passive big blind behind, this is a great chance to enter a pot for almost nothing, with big implied odds, and a hand which is easy peasy to play post flop.

Its a no brainer call in my opinion.....

If the board comes king high, its a check fold on the flop, and same again on the turn unless you improve...

I think....

See I'd lead out on a king high board normally, and thats probably 1 think i've learnt already which will save me a few bb's per hour!

harvey23

my thoughts are that its fine to limp along with K6s with this many players, because you will get paid when you flop  your FD with this many players in the pot.

a big leak for a lot of new players is that when they limp thinking about going flush hunting, when the flop comes K29r, they end up c-c away for two or 3 streets. OOP this will be ev- in the long run and take a big hit too your win rate. I would flat call here only with the intention of putting more money in if we flop a fd/two pair+.

and c-fold if the flop comes K29r.

If there was only 1 limper in the pot, i would muck this hand fwiw.

silentbob

Cheers JJ & Harvey

So pretty much unless we either flop 2 pair/trips/FD I should always just forget about finding out if my top pair is any good then?

See, this is obviously one place where I've probably been going wrong then. If I make the call & miss my draw but hit my king then I always considered it being worth a shot to see if I'm any good but what you're saying does make sense. If I fire out here & get resistance then I'm either only really liking a 6 on the turn or I'm throwing away money.

yb

I would fold pre. We might be getting 9/1 now but chances are we'll lose more money along the way if we hit a piece of the flop and have to play the hand oop against multi opponents. I'd much rather play a hand like 75s if you want to limp along from the sb. If you want to play ABC poker just play tag and multi-table so you dont start getting bored, that's all you need to do to win regularly at 8NL.

If you want to play a hand like K6s then just raise with it in late position (ie. in CO/Btn) so you can win some dead monies from the limpers and also have more than 1 way of winning the hand.

N1CK

you say your going back to basics, my advice would be you should start every game you play at basics ie you should have a default game your ABC game, you start off playing ABC tag poker with default hand ranges for every position and then as the game unfolds you can adjust your play to different players and situations