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ive put some hands on, see what u think? i appriciate you all helping with your advice cause i love playing and would really like to up my game
i think i worry to much about losing, with the AJ i shud of gone all in and been like its a fair hand to go out with but im always thinking is there a better hand or position to wait for so i'll just call
with the A10 i seen his stack so thought if i raise it just below his stack he'll call, all in might scare him off??
There's a theme in some of these hands: You raise with your big hands - AK, JJ, TT - and limp with your weaker hands - AJ, A8, 89. Limping is almost always bad as we don't give ourselves a chance of winning the pot pre-flop. It's also very important that we balance our range. This means that we need to raise with weak hands as well as strong hands; otherwise our opponents will be able to know when we have strong hands and when we don't.
I see what you say about the hand with the AT. You need to understand, though, that the ideal situation for you in that hand is for the opponent to fold. What we want in tournament poker is to win as many chips without going to showdown as possible. We can never lose when our opponents fold. On this particular hand there are 500 chips in the middle that we'd be happy to win - they represent a potential 16.7% increase to your stack. That's dead money and it's important to understand its value. The benefit of shoving here is that some of the time we take that dead money down without a showdown. In fact, AT is not such a strong hand that we want to be called very often. It's not a long way ahead of many hands - We're about 60/40 against any King high hand and 70/30 against any Ace below A9, but pocket pairs below TT are flipping with us.
So don't be worried about scaring our opponent off with a shove; That's a good thing. (Although, in this case, as I say, there wasn't much chance of forcing him to fold since he'd put such a big proportion of his stack in already)
I'll go over some of the hands you posted individually in a little more detail shortly. Bear with me.
On the JJ hand: You played it by the book. Not a single thing wrong there. 3x pre-flop and you don't fall into the trap of checking your hand on the J,T,A flop.. You figure to get value if someone has called with an Ace here so there was no reason to slow-play and by betting now you avoid the risk of a scare card - a King or Queen - coming to kill either your action or your hand on the turn. Betting half-pot is perfect, as long as it's the same bet that you make as a bluff when you miss.
With the AK: I think you raised too little pre-flop. In tournaments there's a standard model for opening raises that is pretty reliable: Make it 3x if you are the first to enter the pot or 3x plus 1x for every limper that's entered the pot in front of you. So in this hand you should be making it 5x because of the two limpers. So you'd make it 300. This is because it's much easier, and therefore better, to play heads-up on a flop than multi-way. So we need to bet enough to try to get at least one of our opponents to fold. Even the more experienced players that would make a 2.2x opening raise would use this model. They'd add an extra blind for each limper onto their raise, so if it's good enough for them...
On the flop you lead for a full-pot bet. I'd prefer a half-pot bet here because a full-pot bet looks like you're trying to get it all-in on this flop. It looks strong and it is strong but that's not good. We don't want to make ourselves so easily predictable. In fact, by making this pot-sized bet we're guaranteeing that weak hands like Jacks and weaker draws don't carry on in the hand. That means we lose value from weak hands while making sure that only strong hands continue in the hand with us. (Even though the short stack chooses to go all-in with bottom pair here. This player shouldn't have been in the hand at all and we can't base our long-term decisions on the basis of this one player's mistake)
The A8 hand: I think this is the hand you played worst of all. We're under the gun with a raggy Ace and 7BB. With so few blinds left we have to make a simple decision: Do we shove or do we fold? We can't limp for the reasons I detailed in my earlier post. As it plays we limped, flopped top-pair and got the double-up from 77 but with unpaired cards we'll miss the flop 2/3 times, we'll have just Ace high and will usually be forced to fold. We'll have frittered away 1/7 of our stack without ever raising and therefore without ever giving ourselves a chance to win the pot.
With this hand and only 7BB left, this should have been a shove pre-flop. When the raise gets through we add 1.5BB to our stack and if we get called we're a 30% chance, at worst, against any hand other than AA. 30% isn't great but it's not terrible either and more often that not we won't be called.
On the TT: I can't see stack sizes or bet sizes so I can't say much, but it looks like you played it fine and your opponent is a bit mad playing 95.
On the 89: Again we limp into the pot. This time we're in late position and if we raise, most of the time the blinds just fold and we add them to our stack. We never really need to play 89 but there's no reason not to in the early stages of the tournament, as long as we're not calling raises with them or limping in. If we look at what our opponent shows down in this hand, we can see that we could have just taken the pot down with a raise pre-flop. That's usually the case when we're in late position as, with only three players to act behind us, there's not a great chance that they will have a strong or even moderately strong hand.
It's important that we not be results orientated when we play poker. On this ocassion we limped in and ended up winning a big pot, but in the long run we will lose more than we win by limping.
The interesting thing about this hand is what happens on the flop. The flop is 3,6,5 and it's checked to us. The interesting thing about it is that this is when we choose to bet. We've missed the flop and now we're betting. Our opponents have shown weakness by checking it to us but we only have a gutshot and two over-cards. Right now we figure to not be holding the best hand since Ten-high is beating us. So if we're willing to bet with no hand on the flop, why not raise it pre-flop? Besides that, we've bet full-pot again here and that's more than we need to. If neither opponent has anything they'll fold for a half-pot bet just as often as they'll fold for full-pot, but the full-pot bet costs us more on the ocassions when they don't fold. The turn is just an incredibly lucky card for our hand since it makes us the nuts at the same time as making a really strong hand for our opponent.
Basically I think it's really important that you start raising more often pre-flop. Every time you think about limping in, try raising instead. I can practically guarantee that you'll see better results. Raising pre-flop makes it easier for us to play through the streets - we can raise with any hand but our opponents need a real hand to call, meaning we can define our opponents' ranges more easily - as well as giving us a chance to win the pot pre-flop.
It will be interesting to see what other people think. I'm pretty knackered now though. Hope I've been of some help.
You've hit upon one of the big pitfalls of varying your raise size with position: Your opponents can misread it as being due to the strength of your hand. This can make it impossible to make reliable decisions through the streets since your perception of their reasoning has been off from the very start of the hand...
The second major pitfall behind making bigger raises from early positions is that it inevitably means that when you play through later streets, you'll be playing big pots when you're in a poor position and smaller pots when you're in good position. That's absolutely the opposite to how we should be playing. It's much easier to play this game when we can see what our opponent does before we act.
The idea of varying your raise size for position is a pretty common mistake that beginners make. It doesn't help that some more-experienced, but poor players also advocate it. Basically you're right to think that you should make the same raise regardless of your position. The thing that should change with position is the strength of the hands you play. For example:
JT on the button is a good hand to open the betting with. JT under the gun is a hand we should almost always be folding. (At a full-ring table - 9 or 10 handed - assuming we're playing a standard tight-aggressive range)
Ive listened to everyones advide and tried to use it in my games but im still losing badly lol
I probably sound like a moaning basterd (which i am haha) i know everyone loses and has bad streaks but mine at the moment is sick!! I dont think im doing much wrong tho? that might be the problem? im a begginer so im sticking mainly to the good hands (unless im bb, which i'll fold if raised and i have nothing) im folding 90% of the time i dont hit the flop! im getting hands like AA vs 99 rainbow flop of 249 being put all in and seeing they have a set of 9's! Had the dreaded AK in the bb which was 8p, got raised to 20p and i raised him all in which was £2 and he called with 33! obviously i didnt hit a A or K!
I just feel whatever advice you all give me and i try to use i just keep coming up against players who like the gambling side of the game to much and will call your raise with any 2 cards! had A7 in the bb which i checked, flop come 723 raised all in which he called Q5, come on the turn haha asked him what he was doing and he said you never know whats coming do you!? how can you play that??
Think because im playing begginer level size tournaments & cash games im playing theses kind of players but i cant step up to higher standard level because i'll get ownd! its catch 22 for me at the moment
You need to play hundreds of these, or thousands of cash hands, to establish whether you're a long-term winning or losing player though. Getting hung up on individual hands is going to make you feel like you can't win. Forget the few and look at the many.
Harrington will give you a sound grounding to build your game on. We all begin somewhere and these books are a great place to start.
IMO why call with 97o but after that its just unlucky. Probably fold BB was the play for me but once in i'd have done the same mate. Cheers
IMO..no needfoe all=in bet why not reraise and see what comes from him or Turn. Seems a lot to bet when he may have set or flush draw. Cheers
1) Limping pre-flop. It's actually very, very rare that you should be limping in pre-flop, if ever. As BorinLoner said, limping only gives you one way to win the pot - by having the best hand. However, raising gives you 2 ways of winning the pot - By having the best hand, and by making everyone else fold.
Tbh, I've probably open folded AA more times than I've limped into a pot on Sky Poker.
2) Short stack play. This is massively important - You need to know what size stack means your only moves are all in or fold. As a general rule, when you have 10 big blinds or less (on Sky - If there's antes, this goes up slightly but there's no antes on Sky yet), the only 2 buttons that you have in front of you are "All in" or "Fold". Forget the call button, and no min raising, just put the lot in or throw your hand away. Doing anything else when you have a short stack is just bad play.
10 Big Blinds is only a rough guideline, it's a good place to start though. There are a lot of other factors which should influence your decision whether to shove or fold (For example, Satellites and DYM's you might allow yourself to get blinded down to less big blinds as the prize for 1st and the lowest placed cash are the same).
PS: BorinLoner has hit the nail on the head in pretty much every post on here - +1.
I'll be honest i do tend to limp alot unless i have 2 picture cards or a pocket pair. if i have a hand thats suited that i like, like J9, in position i couldnt seem to make myself raise it and id tend to just call the blind which i know is wrong and ive been working on that and it seems to be paying off
The 10 bb when short stacked, obviously i'll push with any pair or 2 picture cards but what do i do if i dont get any? Just push with any 2 cards?
Play good hands
raise & raise more bigggggggggggggggggger
& win
do nothing else
ty
Re: 10bb - Having a hand obviously helps, but you're looking for situations as well - For example, if it's folded around to you in the small blind, and you have 7 big blinds, then the right move will often be to go all in with any two cards, as your opponent needs a hand to call, if he doesn't, you add 1.5bb to your stack and even if he does have a hand, you're probably still going to have 30-35% equity anyway.
In Response to Re: this happens alot and is so annoying...: Bit harsh, and out of order TBH.
Thanks for the advice
All about playing and learning isnt it and not dwelling on the bad beats which im understanding more now.
Again thanks for the advice
Ps. me and Wayne have had some banter the last week but i think he's taken it to heart...lol
IMO.Yes a bit of a pain but you all-in his reraise at your own peril with Ace high, don't you. Did you really think you were ahead or just trying to push him off the pot? He could have had a small pair, couldn't he? Cheers
The original raiser folded and i still think JJ should of been folded so i think i played it right?