Message Board : Don't know what to do anymore, can somebody give some advice?

ive been playing poker for a couple of years. I started out playing with friends and we where all complete donkeys. We played for dun, without much understanding of even the most basic fundamentals (things like pot odds etc) of the game. Things changed about 6 months ago. When we discovered casino poker and started playing there. Our local casino only offers limit games, so we began playing the 2/4 limit game.
Most of the players there where and still are complete idiots. It was during this time i started to read small stakes hold em. It helped my limit game alot and i was staring to beat the game at a pretty good clip. About 10 BB/100. Now in our casino, especially at the 2/4 table hands are played slowly. Max 25 hands an hour. So i was averaging 10 euro’s per hour for 4 consecutive months with a lot of playing time. Given the fact that the casino we play in takes a 10% rake with a maximum cap of 10 euro (5 small bets) i tought i was doing pretty well. But the high rake was and still is bugging me, so i started playing at a higher table, 5/10 limit where the rake is 5% with cap of 3 small bets (we only have a 2/4, 5/10 and 10/20 table)

This post went unanswered for nearly a week. I don’t feel I have a lot of great insight, but I’ll take a stab, based on personal experience.  Be forewarned I generally play much more NL than limit, so most of these are generic type suggestions, and not specific to one game or the other.  These are the ways I found myself improving.

First off, I read somewhere, Lord help me, I can’t remember where, that it is extremely difficult to consistantly beat any casino limit games at the 2/4 level or lower based on the rake percentage.

The one book you chose was a good one, I would also suggest Lee Jones "Winning Low Limit Hold Em". There is also a book by Byron Jacobs which writes a series of Limit "challenge puzzles" and grades you based on your responses, much like Harrington’s third book.  I think its called "How Good is your Limit" or something close to that.

As far as generic ways to improve…

1.  Self Evaluate - Track your winning and losing, and more importantly evaluate why you won, or why you lost, every single time.  What were your key hands?  What mistakes did you make?  Why?  Try and identify the holes in your game and plug them.  For me, it was things like playing iffy hands out of position, assigning incorrect ranges to the villians, identifying combo draws, bet sizing post flop…things of this nature.  You will sleep better, even when losing, if you know your choices were fundamentally sound.

2. Find a friend - Find someone who is interested in the same games to have serious hand discussions with.  Talking things out with someone who understands the game and the decision points can be invaluable.  I’ll give props to Todd here, with whom I have had some great hand discussions. (He gave me a well-deserved bitch-slap a time or two…)

3.  Use Tools - there are many on line sources for improvement, from the 2+2 forums to the video teaching sites such as StoxPoker.  Take advantage of them.  A little investment can go a long way financially.

4.  Move back until you are comfortably beating a given level.  Yes, its harder to beat games where the rake % is higher.  I’m not knowledgable enough to know if it can be done consistantly when the majority of the table will not fold.  Seek a better answer than I can provide here.

I hope this helps.  Good luck.

2 things here. First of all, that rake is ridiculously high. 5 small bets max, wow. That might keep the game from being beatable, ask Ed.

As far as losing at 5-10 when you feel they were no better players and then losing back at 2-4, you need to read a good book that explains variance to you (Gamling Theory is one). You don’t tell how long or how big of a downswing you went on. 2.5bb/hr. for a novice player is actually, in my opinion, an unrealistic win rate. Especially with that rake. I imagine you were on an incredibly good run.

Also, SSH is a great book. That alone made me into a winning player, well, that and LOTS of hours at the table, reading and rereading, asking questions on forums. Replaying hands in my head and then out loud until my family avoided me like the plauge

That being said, after 6 months and one book , I would be VERY WARY of considering all of my opponents idiots. If you maintained that perspective when you moved up levels, that alone might have influenced your results. The church thought Galileo was an idiot. =)

Really try and self-evaluate your play. I am the first to admit I have played hands where I was the idiot, all the way to and including the river, and won a big pot. I played semi-full tiime limit  (30hrs. a week average) for little over a year. I ended up from start (before ssh) to finish with .85 bb/hr win rate playing 5-10 (lowest availlable at time, I would have loved 2-4 starting out) and later on 10-20 depending on the table line up. And I might have still been on the high side of variance at that. I switched to nl because limit dried up. Couldn’t play regular first year with long stretches of no playing, but trying to get on regular schedule starting as of Halloween. I am finally caught up and winning from my sporadic beginning, but not killing by any stretch.

For limit, stay with ssh over and over again, there’s more in ther than you think. Get King Yao’s " Weighing the Odds" along with Donkstar’s recs. And remember, a lot of your opponents might not be studied, or they are there to have fun instead of craps table, or playing for some reason besides profit, but most of them are not idiots. And some of them might be making plays you don’t understand yet.

So, work hard, study, study, study, play,play, play and good luck to you.

D24,

It took me a long time to understand games like this.  You’re basically playing a limit game against 5 people with random hands.  Every time.

Now, random hands make decent hands sometimes.  What you need to figure out is which hands you can raise for value with, and don’t miss a value raise.  When you’re getting drawn out on, you need to make sure you get as much money in when you have the edge as you can.  

And don’t bluff.  It’s just a waste of money.  People in these games don’t even think about what cards you might have.

The big things though are to read up on the poker concepts like pot equity, pot odds, expected value, etc.  In games like this, your variance will be high, so you’ll need to look at hands after the fact to see if you really played it OK.  Take a notebook.  Take notes.  

With variance so high, your results in any one session won’t necessarily correlate with how you played.  So, you’ll need other ways to evaluate your play.

In many ways, NL would be better.  I find that my variance is lower, and my results correlate more with how I’m playing, even in any one session.  If the rake is lower, too, it may be worth giving it a shot.

Ed’s short stack strategy would be a great way to start NL with.  Once you get the felof the game, and pay attention to what the winning players are doing, you can take off the training wheels, and generally have much better results.