Texas Holdem Poker

safesoundz · Member Joined: May 24, 2005 Posts: 27

I won my first Sit and Go (10 players - $5 buy in - 1st prize $25) game yesterday. Played tight-aggressive. In the first hour i think i only won one pot. Wasnt getting much luck with the cards. Just watching how the table was playing and people getting knocked out.

Then after the hour i won a large pot so got my stack up to the 2nd highest. When the blinds started getting bigger and there were 4 players left, i began to loosen up, I felt everyone else tighten up. I was playing cards like K5 and J9 and raising hard. They were all folding. Heads up i was the SB, i called with my JJ (i read somewhere that when heads up you should never call, only fold or raise. If i had raised i thought he might have folded, hence why i called) and he went over me and all in, which was something i hope he was going to do as just calling may be interperated as a sign of weakness. I thought i would trap him as i was quite confident with my JJ. He had 22.

This is the first sit and go i played and really enjoyed it. I normally have been playing the cash games but found that i am not really making any profit. Some days i do well and other i lose the money i have made.

With this sit and go's i find it easier to read people as with the cash games people come and go.

I was thinking of stop playing cash games and concentrate on sit and go's. As if i can win or come at least 2nd or 3rd on some SnG's every week then this will increase my bank role more than the cash games.

Is sit and go's a good way to increase your bank role?

webmaster · Site Admin Joined: Nov 26, 2003 Posts: 668

Cash games are a better training ground because if you can succeed at cash you will win tourneys. In my opinion Sit and go and for that matter major tournaments are easier. They are good value ($5 can last an hour or so) so they do attract more fish.

I think as a former cash player almost breaking even you'll do well at $5 or $10 Sit and Go's. You won't find any sharks like ahhyea playing a $5 tourney because it's just not worth his but as you've already heard you will see him from time to time in low limit cash.

Switch and see how you get on. I'm sure it'll be profitable for you because you'll be the only $5 tourney player who even knows what table position, odds and a range of other things are!

If you review you're game you'll see that the first hour you established the table presence of a rock. When you opened out (even with rubbish) everyone had to have you on some quality hands because they've watched you fold for an hour. Then when they realise that you've stepped up a gear and start to challenge you its when you've actually gone back to playing quality hands such as JJ.

Heads up play is a subject in itself - I've written a number of articles on tournament play an one specifically on heads up. Check out the scrolling news on my homepage and take a read.

Good to hear of your win safesound.

ahhyeaa · Junior Member Joined: Feb 16, 2006 Posts: 7

Good win safesoundz.

Good luck on making money. The competition has greatly improved in the past 2 or 3 years since the game has gotten so popular. I don't know if you know what your really getting yourself into if you plan on making money. I'm not saying you want and I really hope you do but there are a couple things I can let you know from personel experience.

1)I would atleast put a $1000 into your play account starting off. You don't want to be worried about your bankroll by putting a $100 or $200 at a time. It will only add unwanted pressure when things aren't going well. It's also easier to keep track of how well your doing by making one big deposit than a bunch of little one's.

2)Playing poker for profit may not be as much fun as you think. It's very hard with the increased competition over the past few years. It can aslo be very stressful.(try to take breaks and keep yourself fresh) I don't know how much money I lost because I played to long at one time and lost focus on what I was doing. Plus I would get into ruts where I was playing a certian style for too long. Playing to make money actually made me quit playing for quite a while. I never hit rock bottom or anything but the stress and the fact I was actually losing more than I was winning finally drove me away. It just wasn't fun anymore because of the pressure I was putting on myself. When I quit I honestly didn't think I would ever start playing again and I was hooked about as bad as you can get. This might be due to just my personality and I was never as good as I thought I was and you may not encounter any of this.

3)If you want to really make money you want to play against people you know you can beat, period. As I mentioned before I would purposely seek out lower limit buy in cash games and waited for beginners that I knew that I was better than. It use to be funny, I would see the same people time and time again doing what I was doing and we would end up driving one or the other away from the table. It got to be an ego thing to see who could make who leave first. It just wasn't good business to have 2 better players at one table. Doing this made the game very boring and not much fun to me and It hurt my game also. The only way to get better is by playing people as good or better than you.

I always liked the sit and go's but they were not the way to make money. To me the buy-in cash games was definetly the only way to go to really make money. It's harder to make money because the blinds are getting bigger and bigger and you may be forced to play more hands than you normally would as where in a cash game you don't have to do anything you don't want and you can always just fold. If your playing a cash buy-in and your not getting cards you can just fold and take your money and leave the table if you want. In these sit and go's your commited to play no matter what. If you go through a period of not getting cards especially when the blinds get up there your in trouble or vice versa where someone else is getting all the cards. Also one or two bad hands can be hard to recover from. If you get short stacked then your even more at a disadvantage. Your now might be forced to take a risk you normally wouldn't. Where as a cash buy-in game you can always buy back in to the table limit if you want and you can play for as long as you like to recover from a couple of bad hands.

webmaster · Site Admin Joined: Nov 26, 2003 Posts: 668

Interesting perspective ahhyea,

I've always found it easier making money from sit and go's and multi-table tourneys than cash. I do well in tourneys and have made $9090 from $450 of buyins since Nov last year. Not huge money but a good return on the hours put in. I don't believe I would have done as well at cash tables.

Tournament play challenges all aspects of your game. Blinds going up is great because it forces aggression and bluffs at appropriate times. It also rules you out from winning if you are a rock or a calling station by style.

Best of all from safesounds perspective is that sharks like you Twisted Evil

won't be in the pool looking to pick him off. As you and I have said you just won't be interested in a $5 buyin for the prospect of winning $25 or whatever first place gets. The competition is by definition light, and light players don't know how to play different styles or stages of the game.

I find light competition up to $30 tournament buyins in Texas Holdem games. Above that and you find skill, and people like yourself who may be interested in spending an hour to try to make $500 or so in a higher wager sit and go.

ahhyeaa · Junior Member Joined: Feb 16, 2006 Posts: 7

I really never caught on to multi-table tourney play as a way to make money. I hardly ever played muli-table tourneys because I thought there was just to many people to have a chance. Yea, I agree tourneys do challenge all aspects of your game. I played sit and go's and I would get on good streaks but I also got on bad ones. My routine was to play the sit and go's after I made my money at the cash tables because I usually lost money in the sit and go's or broke even but they were funner to play. I just felt I could make more money at cash tables with the time I was spending at the sit and go's. Maybe I didn't play enough of the sit and go's over a long enough term to see how I would do and I really never played many multi-player tourneys at all.

I actually quit the $5 sit and go's and moved to the $10 and $20 sit and go's not because it wasn't worth my time playing but I felt I did better. I mean I can play the $5 tables but I can't get a read on what there doing half the time on them tables. I started out doing real well on them when I first started but I got worse it felt like at the $5 tables the more I played. Then I moved up and started playing much better again.

I have a friend who comes over and gives me money to play. He dosen't own a computer right now and he burns the $5 tables up. He has only been playing for a year and he use to come over and watch me play all the time and we would drink a few on the weekends, so he started playing for money about 4 months ago. I tried to teach him everything I could about pot odd's, hand percentages and table position. He just makes calls on these tables that leave me scratching a hole in my head and he's right. He use to ask me all the time what to do alot. I finally quit doing it because he was making reads I just couldn't see. I finally told him to just play his own game. I swear you could ask him about the percentages of a hand or the pot odd's and I swear he wouldn't have a clue. I doubt he really even cares even after I've tried to explain this stuff to him. He just has a very good instinct for the game, but now you put him on a $10 or $20 table he dosen't do well at all.

I just play for fun and as a hobby now mostly on the weekends when my buddy comes over. I still play for money but I'm not bent on making money and I just don't have the time right now to play as much as I used too. I'm not saying I some card shark either. I mean I am at a level that is better than average and probably could be considered pretty good. I just like answering some of these questions from safesoundz because I've been there.

webmaster · Site Admin Joined: Nov 26, 2003 Posts: 668

Definitely want your input aahyea - makes for a fascinating read.

safesoundz · Member Joined: May 24, 2005 Posts: 27

Its good to hear your perspectives/experiences.

I played my 2nd SnG yesterday. ($10 - 10 players). Finished 5th. Made a few mistakes which cost me. However i was a little bit unlucky to lose after going all in as the odds were with me until the river card came out- but its a learning curve.

I enjoy playing poker and for me winning a 'few' $'s is sufficient. Theres no way i could ever have the commitment or skill to make serious money from poker. Winning a few dollars satisfies my expectations.

As its a hobby its fun to try and be good at something while maybe earning a few bucks along the way.

To win major money at poker you gotta (a) have the skill and (b) the time and commitment. And like you say Ahhyeaa i guess you kind of lose the 'fun' when your take the game too seriously.

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