Questions Thread #1

All right I’ll take a crack at it.

In NLHTAP, you distinguish between two types of loose-aggressive players, roughly speakng, “good” vs. “bad” loose-aggressive.

With regard to playing against the “good” ones: Is it profitable to play speculative hands against “good” loose-aggressive players?

Since they are often playing speculative (or worse) hands, will they pay off your big hands, since they themselves have to make a big hand to get involved in a big pot?

Question:

I have read your book on low limit holdem written with sklansky and play at 15c/30c limit tables at eurobet, I find to win I have to be a bit more passiove and loose than you suggest as the amount of people seeing each flop is large and they always pay to the river.
I have turned $30 into $940 (plus another 100 or so in rakeback) in 1 and a half months but this is off course not a wage and I need to play higher stakes to win more per hour.
I find the standard deviation with my style of play is very low and graph my results using poker tracker and it is near enough a straight line with bb/100 of about 6 so I am happy with my play at thisl level.

What I Plan on doing is making $2000 cashing in $1000 and moving to 25c/50c tables
then to 4000 cashing in 2 and moving to 50c/$1 tables
then to 8000 cashing in 4 and moving to 1/2 etc

I was just wondering whether you think this is too conservative and also what level I should start tightening my starting hand selection at as at the moment I see about 40% of flops and find if I tighten up I start to lose?

Sorry about this but having a noted poker authority who is the author of my favourite Poker book willing to answer my questions is too good an opportunity to miss.

My question is this

What do you think of Odds calculators?

There are 2 arguments

PROS :
1. They help a begginig player in both starting hand selection.
2. They help train new players to understand odds and what you see you learn over time.

CONS
1. They never mix it up.
2. They take away the reason to think, and so you may never improve.
3. they might as well be a robot and if you play for fun they remove the fun.
4. They play as if they are playing reasonable players and do not use any of the advanced techniques you talk about against amateurs loose players.

As you can tell I am not pro odds calculators but I wonder is there any way you can tell if someone is using one and if you can exploit this fact?

I have a question about a recent hand.

We have no reads on the players.

The hero is in the small blind with AA and an early position player, a middle position player, a late position player all limp in. The button then raises and the hero reraises. It gets called all the way around.(14SB)

The flop comes 2 4 9, rainbow.

My question is if the play here is to bet out or to check with the intention of raising the button. I know in SSHE you suggest that you need to forget value bets in large pot and instead try to focus on eliminating players. If we do check and the button bets and we raise the field will being offered 8.5:1 on a call. If we bet out they will be getting 15:1.

What is the correct play here?

Thanks for everything!

I’m not sure if this has been asked, but I was curious if you could share with us your favorite books, blogs, magazines, websites, etc. about poker. I’ve read through quite a library of books (all three of yours included), but was looking for something to supplement my knowledge. I already visit (obviously) this site, 2+2, Prof Poker, IGGY’s Party Poker Blog, doubleas, pokerati, table tango, tao of poker, and pocket fives. Heh, quite a list already, but they don’t always have gems. I feel that forums have to be the best resource for any serious poker player.